Boadua, the village in southeastern Ghana where I grew up, had a population of about two hundred. It was so tiny that it was not on the country’s map. Much of the rest of the nation didn’t know we existed. With nearly all adults there being illiterate, subsistence farming was the main source of employment. “Farm helper” was the job title of every child born there. Essentially, life began and ended there for everyone.

There was a small elementary school in the village where children could go and learn to read but there weren’t many serious takers. Most people were too busy simply trying to survive. Fortunately for me, the time my parents allowed me to spend in those “classrooms” was, after a couple of years, just enough to make me capable of looking at words on paper and making some sense of them.

Armed with this modest ability, I made a discovery on a newspaper scrap I picked up in the village square one morning. It would completely change my life. The words on that piece of paper revealed a world that I didn’t know existed. They also generated an intense desire in me to leave the hamlet to try and experience this outer universe. I was about eight years old then. I had no inkling that the thought I was entertaining was pure insanity, and that the mission I was about to embark on was an impossible one. The cluelessness was the force that led me out of the village.

First, I had to obtain secondary education. It meant that I had to leave home to go and live in a boarding school in one of Ghana’s major cities, where those institutions were located. By dint of hard work, enormous sacrifice, and sheer determination, I managed to pass the rigorous secondary school entrance examination and gain admission to the most prestigious school in the country. It was then that I first learned about the word “poverty.” I didn’t know that people paid money to obtain education in such places. That opportunity went down the drain because there was no chance my parents could afford the tuition. But I wasn’t going to be denied. I went back to the drawing board and studied even harder, earning myself acceptance with a scholarship at another school the following year.

It was upon arriving at that school that I realized what I had really gotten myself into. I was unable to eat my dinner that first evening at the dining hall. I was required to use a cutlery set and I didn’t know how to. In the village, we ate everything with our fingers. I left the food mostly untouched, although I was extremely hungry. It was a frightening introduction to the world that I had learned about on that newspaper scrap.

Throughout the seven years that I spent in secondary school, I faced one obstacle after another, mostly financial in nature. I was hungry much of that time. The biggest problem though, was fitting into this new world. I couldn’t quite relate to the other students because of the vastly different environment I had grown up in. I largely kept a low profile on campus.

I hit another one of those impenetrable financial barriers when I completed secondary school and gained admission to university. Once again, my family resources were nowhere near enough for college expenses. So, it was back to the village and my previous role as farm helper. I did that job for another two years before winning a scholarship, rather fortuitously, to study electrical engineering in the Soviet Union.

In the fierce battle for influence around the world between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Soviets were arguably more successful in finding sympathetic ears in the developing world. A majority of the countries there had been—or were still—colonies of Western European powers. Because the colonizers were America’s allies, many of the newly independent nations in Africa, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere naturally gravitated toward the Soviet Union. That was the case with Ghana. By the time I completed secondary school in 1982, the Soviet scholarship program that sent young Ghanaians to college in the Soviet Union had existed for about two decades.

Over the six years that I spent in the Soviet Union, I lived in three Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. The dormitories had a mix of Soviet and foreign students. It felt as though the Soviets had completely managed to capture the hearts and minds of people in the so-called Global South. There were nationals from everywhere, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Regardless of where we came from, none of the foreigners spoke any Russian before we set foot in the country. We all learned the language from scratch. As a result, we hardly had any interactions with our Soviet dormitory and classmates in the first several months. And, because of the closed nature of Soviet society at the time, we really had nowhere to go. Even if we could, the language would be a barrier anyway. So essentially, we were trapped in our dormitories.

This “forced” cohabitation with people from so many countries allowed us to form some intensely strong bonds. In reality, we had the same linguistic limitations among us as we did with the Soviets. But that didn’t seem to interfere with our relationships. We were united by our shared adversity: the combination of loneliness and fear of being in an unfamiliar place. After school and on weekends, we organized lots of social activities, including parties and soccer games. That was how I came to develop extremely close friendships with people from everywhere in the Global South. Most importantly, living so closely with all those people also allowed me to learn deeply about the various cultures they came from.

Almost exactly ten years after I graduated from university in the Soviet Union, I began my MBA studies at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College. Tuck is world-renowned both for its tight-knit student body and strong alumni network. Located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the middle of nowhere, it is one of the smallest business schools in America. That remoteness, in a way, forces Tuck students to associate a lot more closely with fellow classmates than they perhaps would if the school were closer to a metropolis boasting many attractions. The small class size further promotes the collaborative culture.

Quite often, life at Tuck felt a lot like the one I had experienced at my universities in the Soviet Union. Once again, my classmates came from every corner of the globe. But there was one major difference. This time, the overwhelming majority of them were from the rich world—the so-called Global North. There were students from Australia and Japan to Western Europe and North America. Just as I did with my friends in the Soviet Union, I had ample opportunities to learn about the cultures of the places my Tuck classmates came from.

After I completed my studies at Tuck, I felt like I had met everyone in the world. In fact, I had. That set of experiences I had in the Soviet Union and in graduate school at Dartmouth is extremely rare. Because of that, I feel as though I have a special duty to use that background to help build bridges in our current fractured world.

My mind has become programmed to see everyone I meet as a friend. It doesn’t matter to me what someone’s ethnic, religious, political or other affiliation is. Crucially, I have learned from all those interactions I had with people from everywhere that while our foods and cultural preferences way vary widely, on the things that matter most in life, we are all fundamentally the same. Deep love of family, desire to be treated with dignity, ability to make personal choices, and many of the other basic freedoms, are universally cherished principles.

Generally, I reject blanket labeling of entire groups of people as evil. Every society has its bad apples—often a small minority, thankfully. Those few should never be used to taint entire barrels. Mistrust and outright hatred for others, often without basis, are fueling much of the divisions we see in the world today. And much of that is due to lack of avenues for people to have the kinds of close interactions that allow deep learning about others. The truth is, quite often, the opportunities actually do exist. People simply refuse to take advantage of them. That inertia mostly derives from deeply ingrained perceptions that have been passed down from generation to generation within societies.

For someone who was born to two poor, illiterate parents, and was never supposed to leave the confines of his tiny village in a remote part of West Africa, it is a tremendous blessing to have gained such a panoramic view of the world. To whom much is given, much is required. That is why, in my writings, I try to share some of the many valuable lessons I learned on this improbable journey. I will continue to do so. My hope is that some of those little messages will encourage at least a few readers to look at the world in slightly more positive ways than they may have done previously.