From Ghana and Suriname to Harvard

Every once in a while, someone has a truly inspirational story that demonstrates how hard work, dedication, and a little help from others can lead to success. Pascal Mensah, a freshman on the men’s soccer team, is one of those people.

Mensah grew up in a small village in Ghana as the third oldest of 10 children. Even though he lived in a mud house with dirt floors and his dad had only completed the third grade, Mensah still understood the importance of education.

During Mensah’s childhood, his dad worked for Charles Hutchinson, an American man who came to Ghana to work on a project. When he had time, Mensah helped Hutchinson take care of his adopted kids to help them assimilate to life outside of the orphanage. This connection would be the start of an incredible path, one that would eventually lead him to Harvard.

But first, his next stop was the rainforests of Suriname in South America. Due to the help Mensah had given over the years, Hutchinson decided to take him and his dad.

“It was the first time I’d ever left the country and the craziest trip I’ve taken in my life,” Mensah remembered. “I was experiencing so many new things...I was definitely digging it.”

“Pascal was always earnest, hard-working, and taking advantage of whatever opportunities came his way,” Hutchinson said. “He was a good influence on the kids, and it seemed like the right thing to do to give him some opportunity.”

Mensah attended the American Cooperative School, one of the only schools that provided an American education in the country. At first, it was a struggle; his preliminary tests showed that he had the average vocabulary of a five-year-old. Despite this result, the school placed him in the fifth grade.

He couldn’t have improved as quickly as he did without the key aid of his teachers in middle and high school. To help, his dad also stopped speaking their native language in the house so Mensah could focus on learning English.

“My English definitely started getting better,” Mensah said. “I got list of Newbery Medal books and just went through all of those. It was hard for a while, but I relied heavily on myself and the resources I could find at my school.”

After living in Suriname for seven years, moving back and forth from the major city to the rainforest, he received another unexpected opportunity. Jesse Stone, a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill who tutored Mensah’s brothers and sisters, saw his potential and decided to help him go to school in the United States. Eventually, she received enough money through fundraising with her local churches back home for Mensah to travel to North Carolina.

After moving in with Stone’s parents, he faced another setback when he had to repeat his junior year at Veritas Christian Academy. Although it was a jump in academics for him, he managed to beat the odds and graduated as the valedictorian by a mere .01 in GPA.

“It was a personal victory for me and a motivating factor,” Mensah recalled. “I will never forget that you may not always be the most outstanding person in terms of natural talent, but you can always work hard.”

While living in Suriname, he picked up soccer, but Mensah never considered it seriously until playing at school in the U.S. When he was a senior in high school, he compiled a video of his highlights and sent it out to every Division III school that he knew.

It seemed like a shot in the dark, but another stroke of good fortune came his way. He received a message on Facebook from a man whom he had never met, Kevin Ayoola. Like others in Mensah’s past, Ayoola decided to help him get recruited for soccer. Before he knew it, Mensah had heard from Cornell, Duke, and, eventually, Harvard.

“I either found out about Pascal through an Internet story or through his basketball coach, whom I knew previously,” Ayoola said. “I saw a kid that had gone through so many things but still persevered...And he looked so dominant in his videos.”

Mensah took a huge risk when he decided to turn down a full scholarship from Liberty University. Instead, he attended Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire in the hopes that he could improve his SAT scores and have the chance to play soccer in a Crimson jersey. But it all paid off for him. After six years of high school, he earned a spot on the Harvard soccer team.

“This opportunity is about me enabling others with backgrounds like me to realize their dreams and [to realize] what they would like to do rather than what they have to do,” Mensah said.

From a small, rural village in Ghana to Cambridge, Mensah achieved what seemed impossible. Now, as his journey comes full circle, Mensah wants to play a key role in the lives of others and give them a similarly unexpected chance to find success.

—Staff writer Steven T.A. Roach can be reached at sroach@fas.harvard.edu.