Dr J. B. Asare • His Calling Was From God

Very often, priests get their calling to serve society from God but there's one man who's no priest but a doctor and whose calling many believe, came from God. This man is Dr Joseph Bediako Asare, a Psychiatrist who has served this country for many years.

Throughout his childhood, this renowned Ghanaian psychiatrist showed to all around him that he would do anything to ease the pain of others by attending to their minor health problems. Little wonder that at home he was always called on to drain the pus out of boils that his siblings suffered.

"Long before I went to secondary school, I was also the one who castrated animals in the entire village. I used a blade to do it. I believe I did it well, that was why everyone brought his animals to me to castrate.”

Clearly, Dr J. B. Asare, as he is popularly called, has distinguished himself in his profession. His 20 years of service as the Ghana's Chief Psychiatrist saw a lot of improvement in the psychiatric hospitals in the country, especially the Accra Psychiatric Hospital where he worked for many years until his retirement in 2004.

Currently, Dr Asare is working as a member of the International Narcotics Control Board on a United Nations appointment and also as a private consultant psychiatrist.

He was in the country recently for a visit when the Junior Graphic caught up with him. He was at the 37 Military Hospital, Accra, attending to some patients but found time to share his childhood experiences with us and said his early childhood “was a very unhappy one”.

According to him, he stayed with his grandmother when he was only four years old and because his grandmother was very old, he did not get enough attention from her. He had to follow her wherever she went, including going to the farm.

In their village, Akuapem Abeifoso, they did not have a stand-pipe, so the children went to the river to fetch water. However, it was so polluted that those who went into it had skin diseases such as yaws and even guinea worm.

"Since I went to the riverside very often, I was not spared suffering some of those skin diseases."

Young Bediako started kindergarten when he was five years old at Konko in the Eastern Region and recalled that in those days, there was nowhere to keep food they sent to school. We, therefore, put our food under hedges until it was lunchtime.

Unfortunately for them, sometimes by lunch time when they went for their food, chickens would have scattered everything so they had to go without food.

"Happily, when I was six years old, my father came for me and I was able to join the rest of my siblings at Nkawkaw." Young Bediako's chores as a child included washing utensils and fetching water.

"My duty to fetch water for the house was very easy during the rainy seasons but became a very big task in the dry seasons when everything had dried up. I had to walk all the way from Nkawkaw to the Kwahu mountains, a three-mile journey, just to fetch some water. The most difficult part of it was that each of us had to fetch three buckets of water before going to school everyday."

When young Bediako came to Nkawkaw, he was enrolled at Nkawkaw Presbyterian Primary School and also attended Middle School there.

He recounted how they used to walk without shoes to school and by the time they got there, their feet were so dirty.

In order not to be punished for looking dirty, he said “I would go to a small stream nearby to wash my feet and then chew some palm kernel so I can use the juice to rub my feet. That made my feet look nice and clean again.”

Dr Asare said while in school, he was compelled to study hard because he had intense competition from his mates. Everyone wanted to do well so that he or she would win a prize. His efforts paid off.

He was so good that as a Class Five pupil "my teachers would ask me to go and teach those in the lower classes anytime a teacher was absent".

From Nkawkaw, young Bediako attended Presbyterian Secondary School, Odumase Krobo, and said he was “always among the best 10 in class.”

He had his Sixth Form at Labone Secondary School where he described life as luxurious and comfortable because they had better facilities there. He became a House Prefect there and left for Poland from there to further his studies.

He attended a number of universities including the University of Lodz, and the Medical Academy of Krakow, both in Poland.

Among other things, he helped to establish the Ghana Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) of which he was a member from its inception in 1990 till December 2004.

Sixty-six-year-old Dr Asare is married and has eight children.

Story: Augustina Tawiah