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Yet when he reflects on his school days at Achimota, one of the people he remembers most is not a famous teacher or a celebrated athlete. It is a classmate who quietly carried him when he could no longer walk.
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Mr. Bernhardt Kuma has lived long enough to witness countless achievements from becoming Ghana’s first orthopaedic surgeon to training generations of doctors and earning national recognition.
Yet when he reflects on his school days at Achimota, one of the people he remembers most is not a famous teacher or a celebrated athlete.
It is a classmate who quietly carried him when he could no longer walk.
Achimota was one of the first co-educational schools in the Gold Coast, and for many students, having boys and girls on the same campus was a novelty.
“It had advantages and disadvantages,” Mr. Kuma says with a chuckle.
Asked about the disadvantages, he laughs before sharing a story from his teenage years.
“Well,” he says, “I was very popular with… I think about four or five girls each time we were having athletics.”
Kafui Dey laughs in disbelief.
“Four or five girls?”
“Yes,” Mr. Kuma replies, smiling. “They were very fond of me.”
His popularity, however, may have had unexpected consequences.
According to Mr. Kuma, the referee officiating one of his football matches had an interest in one of the girls who admired him.
“The referee was interested in one of those girls who was interested in me,” he recalls.
During the game, he collided with the goalkeeper.
The impact was devastating.
“I broke my right leg.”
The girls had come to watch him play, but as the final whistle blew, another moment stayed with him far longer than the injury itself.
“The referee went into his car and drove off,” Mr. Kuma says. “He left me with my broken leg.”
In that painful moment, it was not an official who came to his aid.
It was a friend.
“It was my classmate who carried me on his back from the field,” Mr. Kuma says.
The young man did not stop there. The following day, he accompanied him to the hospital as well.
“He carried me to the hospital the next day.”
The two boys lived in the same house at Achimota, making the act of kindness feel natural to the classmate but unforgettable to Mr. Kuma.
Decades later, he still remembers what became of his friend.
“He became the first pilot in Ghana,” he says proudly.
Mr. Kuma has spent a lifetime repairing broken bones, restoring mobility and helping countless patients stand on their own feet again.
But before he became the surgeon who would carry others through their darkest moments, he was once a teenage boy with a broken leg, unable to walk.
And on that day, another young man quietly carried him.
More than 80 years later, Mr. Kuma has never forgotten the strength of the back that bore his weight.
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