Beyond "I'm Fine": How Chicago's Ghanaian Nurses Are Healing Our Diaspora
By Anonymous · 11 September 2026 · Health
I write to report that your "Forward Ever" spirit is alive and well, currently wearing scrubs in Chicago. The Ghana Nurses Association Illinois is hosting a weekend devoted to the mental health of our Ghanaian community, beginning Friday, October 9th.
Nurses are some of the most selfless people I know. All week they care for strangers. They remember that the patient in Room 12 takes his tea with two sugars, and they hold a stranger's mother's hand in her final hour. Then they go home and serve as nurse, counselor, and pharmacist to every relative from Kumasi to Chicago, free of charge and with no appointment necessary. Now, instead of resting, they are giving up a whole weekend to care for their own people.
And their people need it, Osagyefo. Life in the diaspora is heavy. We work double shifts and second jobs. We are far from the family who would normally sit with us in hard times. We are the "strong one" everyone back home calls when something goes wrong, and we send support home every month. We explain, for the hundredth time, that Ghana is not a city in South Africa. In our culture, we are very good at carrying heavy loads on our heads and very bad at admitting they are heavy. When someone struggles, we say they are "just thinking too much," or we whisper about them instead of helping. So many suffer in silence. Prayer is good, Osagyefo, but even the Good Book mentions physicians.
So our nurses have written the community a prescription in three doses. On Friday, the Mental Health Seminar will tend to the mind. Aunties, uncles, students, pastors, and Uber drivers alike will talk openly about stress, depression, anxiety, and when to seek help, all explained in plain language by people who look like us and understand where we come from. We will finally retire two phrases: "I'm fine," when we clearly are not, and "just pray about it," as if that were the only option. Pray, by all means. But you can do two things at the same time. You can hold your Bible in one hand and an appointment card in the other.
On Saturday, the Dinner and Dance delivers the second dose, because joy is medicine. Work clothes give way to sharp suits and glorious kente, the kind that enters the room five minutes before its owner. Every speaker has promised to keep it to "just two minutes," which in Ghanaian time means forty-five. When the Highlife plays, the dance floor will test the structural integrity of Chicago real estate, and no clinical trial has yet disproved the healing power of an aunty doing azonto.
On Sunday, the Family Picnic brings the strongest medicine of all: belonging. Loneliness weighs on anyone living far from home, and community is the antidote. Jollof wars will be fought between rival aunties, children will run wild, and the elders will sit under the trees complaining that the autumn breeze is nothing like the breeze in Takoradi. Nobody will leave feeling alone.
This weekend is not a luxury. It is preventive care. We would never tell a patient to wait for the heart attack before treating the blood pressure, and we cannot wait for a crisis before we make room for rest, joy, and connection. For three days, someone will ask, "And how are you doing?" and actually wait for the answer.
So to every Ghanaian in Chicago: come. Come to learn, to dance, and to eat alongside the nurses who spend all year caring for us. And if you know someone who has been "fine" for far too long, bring them too. These nurses have shown up for us again and again. This weekend, let us show up with them.
You always reminded us that the Black man is capable of managing his own affairs. These nurses manage their patients, their families, and now the well-being of an entire community. The most revolutionary thing we can do is look after our minds.
One small request: if you have a direct line to the weather angels, kindly ask them to hold off on the October rain and keep that famous Chicago wind in check, at least until the picnic is over. We have minds to mend, jollof to eat, and far too much kente to hide under rain jackets.
So long,
Ato_KD