Magnifying abilities: U. doctoral candidate continues to defy the odds

SALT LAKE CITY — Growing up in Ghana, Tina Naami felt fortunate that her siblings would carry her to school on their backs; that her family didn't simply abandon her to beg in the streets; that she was valued as a person, rather than dismissed as a disability.

While her dreams for the future were considered daring by peers who, like Tina, couldn't walk — she wanted to become a seamstress like her sister — the idea that she would one day earn a doctorate from an American University was something akin to believing she could set foot on the moon.

The fact that she will defend her doctoral dissertation next month at the University of Utah is testament not only to "a deep belief in God's ability to magnify" her abilities, she said, but to what the love of a family can do for a child who won't give up.

One of 11 siblings, Naami said four of the children lived together during the school year in the town of Salaga so they could attend a better school, while their parents lived and worked as subsistence farmers about 28 miles away.

Brothers and sisters took turns toting her to school on their backs. When she wasn't in school, she remembers helping her mother sell produce and braiding the hair of those who could pay her a tiny sum for the service.

She finally was able to get a wheelchair at age 7 through the help of her brother-in-law, who had gone to a university in Europe. She used it for 10 years, wearing the wheels and moving parts to the point of exhaustion because there was no money or parts to repair it.

An elementary teacher became her mentor, telling her she was smart and needed to continue her education. He urged her parents to find a way to make it happen.

Knowing she couldn't crawl her way through high school, they scraped together the money for surgery, which allowed her to walk with crutches. She went to high school over the protests of a teacher "who didn't really want me there. He said I should go to vocational school and become a secretary."

The sting of his prejudice planted a determination to prove him wrong, leading her not only through high school, but to the University of Ghana, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics.

"I was going to prove to the whole world that I can make it, just like anybody else. All I needed was the support," for which she gives credit to God through her Pentacostal faith. "I know he has endowed me with some strengths and capabilities. I just needed a little support and that came from my family."