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July 27, 2025

Wait, what?  It’s almost August?  2025?  Are you sure?  How can that be?  Where did the time go?  This is all a bit baffling.

I feel like one of the riders in the Tour de France.  The mountain climbs are such hard work, fighting gravity with every stroke of the pedal.  It feels like the mountain just goes on forever and, cruelly, it gets steeper the higher you go.  A rank amateur like me looks hopefully (desperately) around each bend for any clue that the top is imminent.  But having reached the summit, the exertion ends and gravity works in their favor as the riders barrel down the mountain at death-defying speeds.  Thursday was my last day as a teacher, and life feels as if I’m approaching warp speed as my departure approaches.  Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with any hairpin turns.

I’m mindful that many of you are wondering, “Andy, what are your plans??”

Short Term Plans

My departure date is driven by an event that I learned of only recently: there will be a memorial service on August 21^st for Dr. Benjamin Liu, who passed away recently at the age of 90.  Ben’s stellar career as a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota led to him being appointed as a Regent’s Professor there.  Quoting from his obituary in the Minnesota Star Tribune: “In addition, he was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors for an engineer in the United States.”  If you pay attention to “PM2.5” (Particulate Matter less than 2.5 microns, a measure of outdoor air quality), then you have benefited from his work: He was one of the primary developers of the instrument that is used worldwide to measure PM2.5.  That is just one of many, many important contributions he made not just to science but to humanity.  I was not a student of Ben’s, and our professional interactions were not extensive, but we were friends.  In addition to being an inspiring scholar, he was an excellent experimentalist, and most of all, he was a true gentleman.  He was a soft-spoken man who treated everyone with kindness and respect.  He will be truly missed.

That event happens to coincide with the start of the Minnesota State Fair, which I will attend to see a friend’s artwork that will be on display there and to sample as many tasty treats as my stomach will allow.  Then there’s the annual Labor Day weekend volleyball get together with friends who I’ve played with since 1990.  I also look forward to getting my bicycle out of storage and riding as much as I can (although my endurance will probably be low).  I would love to get together with friends in the Twin Cities while I am there.  Send me a note so we can set up a date and time.

Other activities that I plan to do include visiting my brother in Chicago and spending a week in the DC area visiting my daughter and four of my other siblings.

However, I won’t be rushing into the purchase of a car or a search for permanent housing because …

Long Term Plans

After a 30-day break from Ghana, I’ll be returning here for another year.  I can hear your reactions: What??  Why??  There are several reasons.  First, I joined Peace Corps with the goal of contributing my time in a meaningful way.  Many people have assured me that I am making a difference as a teacher of math and computing but, to be honest, I just don’t feel it.  I suppose I’ve connected with a handful of students over the past two years, but even with them it feels like two steps forward / one step back.  Arriving here, I was naïve about teaching.  I had to learn that the burden is on the shoulders of the teacher to find out where the students are in their understanding of a subject and then tailor lessons to meet them at their level.  Of course, students are not all at the same level.  Some have a good grasp of the material that they’re expected to know and they learn new material quickly.  Others are several grade levels behind in mathematics and it seems pretty clear that a few have learning disabilities.  I spent more time than I would like to admit flailing about at the whiteboard, trying to get through to my students. My respect for the work that teachers do has increased immensely.

While I could spend another year as a teacher, flogging a fresh batch of students with fractions, multiplication tables, and algebra, I’ve decided to pursue a different direction, one that I feel can be a more significant contribution to Ghana and more meaningful for me.  During the 30+ years I spent working at 3M, all of which was in the development of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as respirators, I was fascinated to learn about the wide range of applications for our products.  On an average day, the typical person wearing a respirator is an industrial worker, such as a welder, sandblaster, maintenance worker, or similar person working in any of a wide range of occupations.  But at irregular intervals Mother Nature would mix things up for us, with a volcano (e.g., Mount St. Helens, which was before my time at 3M), wildfires, or, most troubling, flare-ups of diseases such as TB (late ‘80s), SARS (2003), swine flu (H1N1, 2009), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS, ongoing), and, most famously, COVID-19.  These events posed several challenges for us.  First, we had to ramp up production of respirators quickly.  It was like trying to speed up a ship that runs best at a constant speed – it takes time to ramp up.  Second, airborne particles, such as smoke, dust, bacteria, and viruses don’t stop at international borders.  Diseases can spread around the world quite rapidly.  COVID-19 is a clear example: it had traveled from China to the US before most people were aware that it existed, much less given it a name.  So when an event like that occurs, it’s often not limited to one country or one region.  The third challenge associated with these events is that they usually introduced a whole new group of people to the world of respirators; the 3M Technical Help phone lines see a huge surge in calls from people who have lots of questions.  Wildfires and volcanoes are bad enough, making life miserable for those who need to protect their lungs from the inescapable dust and smoke.  Diseases add another layer of complication.  Unlike smoke or dust, you can’t see or smell bacteria and viruses.  Healthcare workers need to be trained how to use respirators properly to protect themselves against these invisible threats.  Such safety training is best done before there is an urgent need for respiratory protection.  That’s what I propose to do for the next year in Ghana.

After researching the possibilities over the past eight months, I’ve cobbled together a plan that has three parts.  The first part involves moving to the eastern part of Ghana (the Volta Region), where I’ll work with staff at a hospital in a town of about 50,000 people.  I’ll live in guest housing on the hospital grounds, which are close to the center of town.  The Statement of Work for this position reads as if someone fed the keyword “respiratory” along with a variety of other medical terms into an AI app to generate a job description.  During my first visit there in January, I asked to meet with their Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) staff, who were excited about the opportunity to learn more about respiratory protection.

The second part of my work plan was sparked during that visit in January.  I was intrigued to learn that there is a School of Public Health on the hospital grounds.  A School of Public Health is the customary academic home for occupational health and industrial hygiene programs (which include classes and training on personal protective equipment).  In subsequent visits, I met with the Dean and members of the faculty of the school, who were very interested to hear more about what sort of teaching I could do, as well as serving as an advisor on student research projects.

I look forward to working with the doctors, nurses, and staff at the hospital and the faculty and students at the School of Public Health, but I felt that my impact would be limited if I just worked with that one location.  So, I continued to dig, which led to the third part of my plan.  Two weeks ago, I met with the Director of the Public Health Division of the Ghana Health Service, which has responsibility for protecting healthcare workers from diseases that could be acquired through their work.  During our meeting, he asked me to send him a proposal describing the kind of training I can offer.  If he accepts the proposal then I anticipate traveling to hospitals and clinics around Ghana, teaching people about respiratory protection and how to test healthcare workers to ensure that their respirators fit them properly.

Now, a skeptical person like me, who looks for ulterior motives, might conclude, “Oh, Andy’s going to sell 3M respirators in Ghana.”  To which I reply: While it is true that I continue to have a financial interest in the success of my former employer, I will not be selling or even recommending any products.  My goal is to train people on how to properly select and wear a respirator.  The best product is one that can protect a person against the hazards they are facing and that they will wear consistently, regardless of where it comes from.

Politics

[Start Rant]

Another quite different factor that affected my decision to spend another year in Ghana is that the political climate in the US is disheartening, to say the least.  I’ve already commented on the callous destruction of USAID.  Now, after destroying all of the infrastructure needed to distribute emergency food supplies, the current administration finds itself having to destroy food aid because it has expired.(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/17/emergency-food-aid-usaid-hunger/5757866c-6359-11f0-bf70-56d8888ebb94_story.html).  Greedy, self-obsessed, vindictive  politicians who don’t understand why the US should care about “shithole countries” are clearly out of their depth and unqualified for high office.  If you don’t like immigrants coming to the US from these countries, then why not invest a pittance in them so that their citizens don’t feel the need to cross borders in search of better working and living conditions?  The people who leave these countries aren’t looking for easy living abroad – most are desperate for survival and/or to escape life as a pawn caught between warring factions.  They would much rather stay home among friends and family.  The policies and actions of shithead US politicians and their minions only increase the motivation of people from shithole countries to look abroad for their survival.

Equally distressing is the fact that the US is living in a Catch-22: If you are an expert who is qualified to do your job, then it is assumed that your motives are suspect.  God forbid you are an employee of the federal government: your qualifications are prima facie evidence that you are a member of the Deep State and therefore unfit to do your job.  If, however, you have little or no experience or qualifications to do a job and you are free of Deep State taint (and a white male) then you are a prime job candidate.  It is absolutely Orwellian.  I’ve spent my entire career learning and conducting research in my chosen field and as a result have become an expert.  I believe that everyone who has invested similar effort in their careers is deeply offended by the know-nothings who think AI tools or “research” they conduct on the internet can replace us.  God help the USA.  Clearly, President “Not My Fault” won’t.

[End of rant]

So, while I do miss seeing friends and family very much, I feel that my life here has reached a stable point.  Yes, I miss lots of creature comforts in addition to missing all of you.  But I like the people of Ghana, and I want to make another attempt at a meaningful and long-lasting contribution to Ghana in the best way I know how.

I look forward to seeing many of you while I’m in the US in August and September.  And if the past two years are any guide, then 12 months from now I’ll be wondering again where the time went.