Esi Woarabae Cleland was born in Aboso, Ghana, where she lived for the first six years of her life with her grandmother among Hausa speaking Moslems in a village that was largely Christian and monolingual – the language being Fanti.
After being transplanted to Accra, she obtained her basic education at University Primary School, excelling in English, Fanti and Athletics. She proceeded to Wesley Girls High School (WGHS) in Cape Coast, Ghana for her secondary education. At WGHS, she was active in the Writing and Debating Club, later became Co-president, and was instrumental in the production of the student magazine as well as organizing debates between WGHS and other secondary schools, notably Holy Child Secondary School, and Presbyterian Boys Secondary School.
After secondary school, she had a year-long stint doing voice-overs for radio and television in English, Twi and Fanti which she thoroughly enjoyed but had to give up when in 2002, she was awarded a Coulter International Scholarship for excellence in academics and leadership to attend Smith College, MA. She graduated Cum Laude from Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in Physics, was a First Group Scholar, finalist for the IBM/APS fellowship, recipient of the Adelaide W. Bull Paganelli Prize in Physics and was elected to Sigma Xi, a scientific honor society.
In addition to Physics, she held various leadership positions, and pursued her love for literature and philosophy and became interested in the role of formal logic in persuasive writing. She also wrote a column for the student newspaper The Sophian and in her final year, served as its Opinions Editor. While earning her Master’s degree in Medical Physics at Duke University, NC, she participated in several writing seminars which emphasized technique and structure. She kept up with her writing by self-publishing her articles on Facebook, an online social networking Website. In her last year at Duke, she joined a small community of intellectuals and dreamers engaged in the spiritual search and who met regularly to discuss books, life and self-knowledge, an engagement which heavily influenced her decision to return home upon completion of her studies.
Esi currently lives and works in Ghana and continues to marry her interests in science and literature. Ms. Cleland writes for The AFRican, a New York-based lifestyle magazine for Africans in the diaspora, is involved with The Baobab Prize, an African literary writing competition, maintains Wo Se Ekyir..., a blog that is gaining increasing popularity with young people in Ghana and the US and has recently taken up acting. An aspiring novelist, Ms Cleland is working on her debut novel, which she hopes to complete in 2010.
We’re at the end of January so I thought I should start posting updates on my writing. I’m having a bit of trouble putting in writing time because I don’t have a computer at home. I was hoping to buy one when I go on my trip to the
She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He’s not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska? Full Story
........
........
