BROKE AND BEGGING: Ofori Amponsah Recalls Asking His Mum For GH¢60 To Get A Passport After Being Kicked Out Of School

Before the fame, the international tours and the hit records, Samuel Ofori Amponsah was a young musician with little money and a dream that seemed increasingly difficult to explain.

In 1997, while struggling through what he describes as his “wilderness” period, the aspiring musician found himself with virtually nothing.

He had been dismissed from school for repeatedly chasing music, and there was no obvious path to the career he wanted.

But then, he says, he had an unusual feeling that he needed to prepare for an opportunity he could not yet see.

“I just had this intuition: go and do a passport and a yellow card,” he told Kafui Dey.

There was just one problem: he had no money. Ofori Amponsah went to his mother and made a difficult request.

“I said, ‘Mom, I’m coming to ask you something. I know things are hard, but please give me 600”, he recalled

Still, his mother found a way to help him. He used the money to obtain his passport and yellow card, then forgot about the documents.

Two years later, everything changed. Daddy Lumba invited him to Germany to work on music. When Ofori Amponsah went to the German embassy, an official asked whether he was a musician.

He said yes.

The official then asked him to produce his yellow card.

“I said, ‘Yes, I have it.’”

That small document, obtained at a time when he could barely afford it, became crucial to securing his first visa.

Looking back, Ofori Amponsah believes the decision to get the documents was part of a bigger plan.

“That was the voice that I heard and was manifesting in 1999,” he said.

The young man who once had to beg his mother for money to get a passport would eventually board a plane for Germany and begin a new chapter in his music career.

Sometimes, he suggests, the things you struggle to afford today can become the very things you need for tomorrow.