“We had a great support system.” A conversation with Dr. Abena Kyere and Dr. Nii Adjei Sowah.

This week, we’re very excited to present this conversation with PhD super couple, Abena Kyere (AK) and Níí Adjei Sowah (NAS), who jointly studied for and recently completed their PhD programmes at the University of Ghana. A must-read for all current and intending PhD couples and families. The interview was conducted by Dr. Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman (HKA), transcribed by Iretomiwa Dele-Yusuff and edited by Titilope Ajayi.

Original post date: 26 November 2020

HKA: Congratulations! How recent is this PhD?

AK: I did my viva voce exactly a month ago. The PhD is in African Studies with a focus on gender and religion.

NAS: I got my PhD in Development Studies just about three weeks ago. I focused on climate change and adaptation and it’s slightly because I am a sociologist by training too. Everything I look at, I want to explore how social systems affect people’s ability to adapt.

HKA: That’s very interesting. I have lots of sociological leanings as well and I, too, use sociological lenses to look at things. Did you attend the same institution?

AK and NAS: Yes.

HKA: And your vivas were one week apart?

AK and NAS: Yes, yes. They were (both chuckle).

HKA: How was that experience?

AK: It was crazy! It was intense because when I had my real viva, he had his mock viva and in his department, it is an institutionalised thing. It is a big deal where you have senior members coming in and commenting and prepping you up for the real deal so my house was like, okay… (gestures and laughs). What was the word again? How were we describing it? (AK and NAS laugh).

AK: We were in the same house but we were both speaking to our computers and then raising our heads every night to say, “Where are you? How are you? How are you doing?” And anytime we talked, it was to present something to each other (laughs). So it was very intense for us. It was emotionally charged. Our vivas happened at almost the same time. He went for his ten minutes after I started mine so he joined my viva late but he was with me throughout. We were in his office till the viva. So, it was pretty intense.

HKA: Wow!

NAS: It was not just intense, we had to manage the emotions because we were under so much pressure. We usually support each other, especially when one person has an important presentation to make, but this was a time when both of us had to make life-changing presentations. I mean, you are at that crossroad and both of you are preparing for a very important assignment. It’s like you are trying to be there for each other, but at the same time you have to focus on what you have to do. So it was a very challenging balancing act (chuckles).

HKA: I can imagine. I honestly can imagine. Do you mind me asking if you have any children?

AK and NAS: (Laughter).

NAS: We have two sons (laughs).

HKA: How old are they? Because that has just added into the mix of complexities.

NAS: In our case, both children were doing the PhDs (laughs heartily).

AK: The first one is five, he will be five in November. The second one is two, so we started the PhD pregnant and then in the third year, we got pregnant again. We literally did this PhD with them. So yes, crazy (AK and NAS laugh)!

HKA: I am right here thinking about the last five or six years and what it has been like for you guys. If you had to write a book about it (laughs).

AK: Oh my God! I think the title would be something like ‘Five Years of Unknown Horror Movie’ (all laugh)!

NAS: I mean looking at it in a very graphic manner, it will look like the waves, or the currents of the ocean. At one point, it is high tide, at another point it is low tide. And we had to go through it like that. I think what helped us pull through was that both of us are ambitious people (chuckles) and nobody would ask the other to stop. In fact, we would have gotten upset with each other if either of us had decided to stop. At a point, I wanted to stop because I was tired (laughs).

HKA: So you were motivating each other?

AK and NAS: Yes! Yes.

AK: I tell people that I wouldn’t advise them to do a PhD and have children. If it happens, it is something you can do with a lot of headache and a lot of tears. But it is also not something I will readily recommend because it is extremely difficult and emotionally draining. In our case, it came with a whole lot of things like the financial aspect of it, because both of you are students, not working and married to each other. There is also this feeling that you cannot really put your life on hold because you are getting a PhD, so you can’t say I am not going to have a child because you are also getting older. We are both ambitious. I mean, at no point was I going to give up. It just wasn’t a conversation I was ever going to have and so if I am not going to give up, you are not going to give up. It’s as simple as that. We had contrary ‘advice’ here and there. People said, “Oh...you should stop, one of you should defer for the other to finish.” I thought to myself, well, I’m not going to give up and I’m not letting him give up because I know him. He’ll get upset if he gives up because this is his dream. It might look like a temporary solution but in the long run, it would really get to him because it’s something he has always wanted. So there was no way either of us would give up. So, it was tough, for me it was emotionally intense . It was like nothing I’ve experienced before. You know, you start off feeling like oh my God! It’s just a classroom and a pregnancy (both laugh) and then you realise that…

HKA: This is a journey like no other.

NAS: Indeed. I think one part of it for both of us was that as Africans, our life is not just about us as individuals, our spouses or our children. You have your parents, your siblings and your friends. Managing all that wasn’t easy. I was fortunate enough to have worked before coming back to do the PhD and I mean, once you are working, you are in a position to support. She also had worked and was supporting, then suddenly we couldn’t support anymore and the expectation didn't go away. So that pressure, the emotions of having to sort of change your life to suit the conditions you find yourselves in and then also manage people’s expectations as you try to still focus on acquiring a PhD. It was a very challenging exercise for us.

AK: I think one thing that also stood out for me is the sort of denials you have to endure. I mean, you are going to offend so many people--friends, family members. You offend so many people but you have to deny yourself so much. You have to cut out nights out and little leisures that you used to enjoy, even as a single person. because you are looking forward to getting something in five years’ time. And then come the children and everything is about them. So, you literally live your life for the children and the PhD. That’s it. And sometimes, if you don’t really even make a conscious effort, you find that you get drowned in the whole process because there is no more you; it’s just about this PhD and how to make it.

HKA: How did you find dealing with all that? Like, sometimes one of the fallouts is you will lose friends and like you said, the PhD comes with a huge financial issue that can also have an impact on your mental wellbeing. Did you have that as an issue? Or was that not a thing for you? What was your support system? How did you cope?

AK: Okay. So, first of all, there was a lot of mental stress. I think for me, tears helped because sometimes I would cry and I tell people this is not something I am ashamed of because I cried so many times (laughs). It was therapeutic because we faced a lot of mental stress. Because we are married, sharing our PhD frustration sometimes went with sharing our marital problems. It was difficult sometimes to separate them. You don’t want to wash so much of your marital dirty linen in public so you try to manage it by talking constantly, otherwise things just degenerate. Because you’re both dealing with so much mental stress, it's easy to take it out on the other person. But we had a great support system and that it is basically like 60 percent of why we succeeded. Our families have been fantastic and amazing by helping with the kids and other things. It’s just a matter of letting them know you need help. Our friends have been amazing too. It's almost like everybody knew that what we were doing was so herculean--that it isn't something two young people should take on alone. I think we got married in January, got pregnant in February and started the PhD in August (all laugh).

HKA: (laughs) I’ve been married for over two decades. If you can survive this at that stage of marriage, you can survive anything (laughs). You guys are good, you’re fortified (all laugh).

AK: We had a lot of support, because we had friends. We had friends who were willing to help, especially for our PhD colleagues at the university. And you know, sometimes, when you have people rooting for you, you don’t want to disappoint. We were driven partly by the fear of disappointment because we realised that a lot of people were making so many investments. People were calling, visiting and sharing beautiful moments with us. We also had our share of people saying, “these people are crazy, they are attempting something they cannot do”. People said our marriage would crash.

NAS: You will be amazed by the kind of people who will actually say such things to you. Things like, “Don’t you think you are biting more than you can chew?”

AK: I think in my case; my institute too was amazing. There was amazing support from the senior members in my institute. They were worried about my health.  People would call me, others would encourage me in the hallway. Some would send me materials. And my supervisor, Professor Adomako Ampofo, was like my mentor. She actually gave us gifts. I remember we went to her house one day and she gave us food. My second supervisor always gave me money for a taxi anytime I visited him. So we had so many people investing in us that we could not afford to fail. These sorts of networks were what did the trick for us.

HKA: Do you have anything to add, Dr.? 

NAS: I think she has basically said it all. Our family was our backbone. Sometimes, I’d ask myself, ‘why am I even doing this? Why am I subjecting myself to this?’ I was working and earning money before the PhD. But with support and affirmation helped me. There may be challenges, no doubt about that, but you tell yourself that you have to brace the storm and keep going.

HKA: For me, when I see unmarried people without children doing a PhD, I always feel some sort of envy. Like they can do it without distraction. For those of us with families, we have no choice. We just have to do it.

NAS: Exactly. I mean, I have always told myself that I should get a PhD before 30 and I didn’t want to combine marriage with going to school. Even when we married, initially when we were looking to get a PhD, I wanted to get a scholarship to do it in Europe or America so that I would be rid of the extra burden of carrying family along while trying to study. But once you are married, are you going to leave your wife and go stay in somebody’s country for four or five years? I was lucky to get institutional funding from DAAD for my PhD.

HKA: I was going to ask that question. I wanted to ask if there was any funding and I also wanted to ask why you decided to do a PhD in Africa. 

NAS: So, for me one of the reasons I decided to do it in Africa, Ghana for that matter, was because I was married and I was less than six months into my marriage. I couldn’t just walk away in the name of going to get a PhD. Then, she was also pregnant. Even at that, we were still applying for funding. There was this funding from DAAD at the German Centre for Development Study in the University of Ghana. So I was like if it’s possible to get funding, why should I bother detaching myself from everything to go get my PhD and then come back and struggle to re-immerse myself? Staying meant I had to face the strain of challenges, expectations and responsibilities which come as a married man, a son, a father and all that on top of getting a PhD. Going abroad would mean having your ‘peace of mind’ without any distraction. But with a pregnant wife, it would have meant not being around when our child was born and then bonding would become a problem if you only rely on Zoom, WhatsApp calls and other things to communicate. Then, you also have to deal with loneliness and boredom. So to be a stable person and keep your sanity, it is best to stay home.

AK: I also had funding--from the Luce Foundation through the University of California Irvine’s project on religion and humanitarianism. As part of that, we ran a blog called Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa--The CIHA Blog. I think I was a month pregnant. Initially, I had been applying abroad then at a time, I said if I get funding here too, I will take it. I have never really been so keen on going outside Africa. If I got a chance to do it, yes, but if I had to do it here, fantastic. So, I think a month after we married, I got funding and I also found out I was pregnant, so for me, there was no way I was going to move anywhere else. I was content with having to do my PhD here, having been into African Studies for a very long time. I knew that my department had a great supervision system. I had worked with them before so I was comfortable staying in the country. My Masters experience [in the same department] was fantastic. I learnt so much and I knew that if I did a PhD in Africa, on African soil in Ghana, I wasn’t going to miss much. And my funding came with opportunities to travel, to have conferences every year, so I felt what’s the point. I went to about five countries, US, Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa. It’s more like we have a community of graduate students across the globe. For me, it was a good place to be. I had my mum, family, everyone here so I didn’t think I was going to miss much. In fact, I felt and still feel that if I had gone outside to do it, I wouldn’t have been able to finish in time with a pregnancy because I wouldn’t have had the same support system.

HKA: Honestly, that is amazing. I feel how passionate you are about just being in Africa, doing things in Africa. What will you tell a PhD student right now? For those in the thick of it, what words can you offer them?

AK: Generally, I think one thing I have come to learn in the PhD journey is that it’s not necessarily for intelligent people.

NAS: (laughs) It’s for good managers.

AK: It’s for people who, I think, have two things: ability to manage it and the spirit of tenacity. Like, you must be somebody who wants to finish what you start. Just have that spirit and then just manage the whole PhD: your time, everything about it must be managed. The PhD is like a baby that you manage from birth till they are able to work out life literally (laughs). I didn’t see the difference between the PhD and my kids, really. You just have to learn to manage it till it is out of your home. And then, be tenacious--the ability to do it. Just take it one day at a time. You have to see it as a journey and divide it and manage it and get it over with.

NAS: Yes, I also share in that idea that doing a PhD is a management process and I like how she put it--a child. I don’t really see it like a child, I see it as a pregnancy (chuckles). A PhD is as good as getting it done so that you can say that I have had a successful pregnancy.  So, if you manage it well, you will have a better outcome at the end of the day. If you don’t manage it well, there are two possibilities. Either you drop out at a point or you fail in the process. I personally will encourage people in spite of everything. I am not saying we don’t have challenges with our supervisors, with the institution. In spite of all those challenges, I will advise people to actually stay and do their PhD on the continent because the way our systems are organised, once you go out of the system for a while, you lose touch with everything and when you come back, rebuilding everything takes time. Even those who have stayed have challenges getting access to certain resources. Just imagine going away for such a long time. I had a friend who went to the US and spent seven years. He went with the idea of doing it for five years but he spent seven years. His fortune was that when he was there, he kept very good contacts with other people around. He came on repeated visits about five times before he  came back finally to settle down. I have some friends who are afraid to come back because they wouldn’t be able to fit in, get a job and all that stress. I don’t wish it on anyone. It is better you stay and endure the challenges that come with this place and then do the PhD. It is doable.

AK: I have always wanted to do it wherever so I didn’t mind. I think leaving comes with a lot of uncertainties. Like he said, you lose a lot of your social network and it can be hard to reintegrate when you come back. And, you know, it’s human nature; the moment you leave, your space gets filled. People don’t wait for you. Sometimes, you come back and realize that you have to start carving a new niche for yourself and trying to fit into society and it’s difficult. It’s like trying to manoeuvre yourself into a system which you have left for so long and there is such a striking difference between where you are coming from. There is almost always frustration with any system so when you stay in it, it helps. What this PhD journey has taught me is to learn to be patient, at least with our students. You begin to understand how the system is, the difficulties and challenges a student has to face and how it affects their capacity to do a PhD. Sometimes, people are just products of systems, so you become patient with them and go the extra mile to make it easier for people to discover and help them to grow. My supervisors helped me to grow and I think it’s because they understand the system. One thing we must learn as PhD scholars is team work. When we are doing our PhDs, we make the mistake of thinking it’s a competitive process.

NAS: Someone who wants to complete and submit ignores colleagues who are also struggling. People also keep their thoughts to themselves. One of the good things I have learnt during the PhD process is that it’s good to share. No matter how brilliant you think your idea is, you will be doing yourself more harm by keeping it to yourself than sharing for others’ insights.

HKA: The best idea always comes at night (laughs)

AK and NAS: In the shower!

HKA: So, my next question to you guys is what next? Are you missing the PhD yet?

NAS: Oh! We will have another baby (all laugh). That is a very important step. In fact, it is the biggest step we have to take after our PhD.

AK: We will probably have another baby but adopted (laughs). Because of the void created by pregnancy and school, we couldn’t write as much as we would have loved to. We have a book of ideas that we have not worked on, so I think for us, the next step is to write as much and as fast as possible. Also, as a couple, we need to merge our lives.

NAS: (laughs) ...because we’ve been living like roommates.

AK: Classmates actually (laughs).

HKA: Yeah, I think you have always had another thing in the marriage, a third thing which is the PhD. Now, you have thrown it out finally (laughs).

NAS: Yes.

AK: When we married, our desks faced each other. We married in a study, that’s our honeymoon area (laughs). We need to make time for ourselves. We’re like an old couple going for a new wedding (laughs).

HKA: Are you hoping for a job in academia?

AK: Yes. I don’t think I’ll survive anywhere else apart from teaching. I love talking too much not to teach.

HKA: What about you, Nii?

NAS: I love academia actually but I have worked in industry before so presently, I keep my options very open. I only left industry to do a PhD because I wanted to teach. I have always wanted to teach though academia is my first option, so I’m not ruling out going into that.

HKA: Should we look out for a joint paper from both of you?

AK and NAS: Definitely!

NAS: We have too many ideas together.

HKA: Are there any overlaps in your research areas? Do you see areas for collaboration?

AK: Yes, so many. I mean, his work is actually focused on gender and social change and I am a gender person. In fact, when I was pregnant, we were collecting data together. We’re working on two papers together that should come out soon. One is on metro masculinity and the idea of grooming.

HKA: Both sound fantastic and I can’t wait to read them!