f not for a friendly taxi driver from his home country of Ghana, George Cleland might never have made it to the University of Georgia.

“When I got to Atlanta, I was lost,” Cleland said. “A taxi driver came along. He pointed out the vans that would take me to the Holiday Inn in Athens.”

From that less than auspicious beginning, Cleland began a successful career in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences – earning a bachelor’s in Nutrition Science and a master’s in Foods and Nutrition – before moving on to medical school at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta and his current medical practice in Elberton as a board-certified internist.

Although Cleland is quick to praise his UGA education, his decision to travel from his homeland in western Africa to Athens was based on weather and cost.

“My father had grown up during the British colonial era, so he was comfortable with the idea of me traveling abroad for my education,” Cleland said. “It’s amazing what you can get from the encyclopedias in the library. I studied them and decided to apply to Georgia and the University of Florida because the weather in both places was somewhat similar to that in Ghana.”

His decision was eventually based on the cost of tuition. At that time, Georgia was less expensive than Florida.

Cleland’s original plan was to major in dietetics then return to Ghana and help combat the problems of malnutrition that are rampant there. But Cleland’s cultural upbringing led to a change of major.

“After the first or second quarter I began taking quantity cooking, where you work in the dining halls learning to prepare food,” he said, chuckling ruefully to himself. “I just couldn’t do that. Men in Ghana don’t cook and I just couldn’t do that. I went to my advisor, who was Dr. (Jim) Peifer and told him I had to change my major. He encouraged me to change to nutrition science.”

As Cleland continued his education, Peifer, who died earlier this spring, became a friend as well as a mentor and advisor.

“We had various get togethers and parties at his house,” he recalled. “I got to know Dr. Peifer and others in the department even better after I got a job in the department cleaning the lab glass and animal cages. Eventually, I began preparing food for the rats."

After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1983, Cleland immediately entered the master’s program with Peifer as his major professor and earned his master’s degree in 1986. Two publications came from his master’s thesis with Peifer focusing on how vitamin B-1 (thiamine) and vitamin B-12 function in animal populations.

“As I was finishing my master’s, I really didn’t know what I would do next,” Cleland said. “But I ran into a fellow student who told me he was going to medical school and suggested I should do that also.

“I said, ‘I’m a foreigner, how can I go to medical school?’”

Cleland’s friend explained about the entrance tests required for medical school and, after Cleland learned it was too late for him to register for the review course, his friend loaned him the handouts he received in the course.

“I took the test and I passed,” he said. “That opened the doorway for me.”

Six medical colleges expressed interest in Cleland, including the Medical College of Georgia, Harvard Medical School, George Washington and Morehouse. He received his first acceptance letter from MCG and immediately wrote the remaining five colleges withdrawing his name from consideration.

While it would seem that traveling halfway around the world and earning two degrees would be enough difficulty, Cleland faced a new issue during medical school.

“If you were to call people at the medical school and ask about me, they would say, ‘He’s the doctor with the baby on his back,’” Cleland says.

During medical school, Cleland and his first wife divorced and he gained custody of their then 2-year-old son. When he couldn’t find day-care, Cleland would load his son – George Jr. – on his back and off the two of them would go to the hospital on the nights that Cleland was on call.

While his classmates knew of Cleland’s extra burden as a single parent, his professors did not. At least not until one suggested Cleland visit a counselor for what appeared to be depression.

“In Ghana, you don’t talk about your difficulties. You don’t ask for help. But when I told this professor that I was caring for my son while going to school, he made several suggestions that helped me,” Cleland said.

Since finishing medical school and his residency in internal medicine in 1994, Cleland has worked in several Georgia locations beginning with a stint in Vienna. He stayed there until 1997 as part of a loan repayment program that encourages physicians to work in rural areas. He next moved to Montezuma until August 2003 when he moved to Elberton.

“I received a call from a physician’s search agency asking if I was interested in moving. In February 2003 I met with the administrators of Elbert County Hospital,” he said. “Elbert County provides me with some new challenges. For example, the hospital here has an intensive care unit. That wasn’t the case in Montezuma. Here I’m able to concentrate more on my work as an internist, rather than serving as a general practitioner.”

Cleland faces two frequent challenges with his patients in the U.S. – there are those who li ke to express their own medical opinions and those who are unable to follow instructions, particularly on their medications, because they can’t read.

“When I came to Georgia, I thought that everyone could read and write. When I began practicing medicine, I discovered that’s not true, but very few people acknowledge that they can’t read. They’ll say they are following the instructions on a prescription, but if you ask them to read the prescription to you, they’re not able to,” he said. “Also, some patients have their own agenda. In Ghana, patients accept what the doctor says. I like patients to have questions, but sometimes patients decide they don’t need medicine, yet I know they do.”

Before he settled on medical school, Cleland said he had dreamed of earning his Ph.D. in nutrition and coordinating research and outreach projects between Ghana and the University of Georgia. Even now, he thinks about establishing a clinic in Ghana and spending half of each year there, but there are many problems.

“At this point, the most I can do is visit and occasionally give presentations,” he said.

Cleland finds many of the same health problems in both his practice in Elberton and in Ghana – hypertension and diabetes, and their complications.

“The life expectancy in Ghana is approximately 45, attributed to illnesses, particularly hypertension and diabetes,” he said. “At my mother’s funeral in 1998, I spoke for the family. I asked for hands to be raised by everyone who had diabetes or hypertension. Everyone did. But no one had sought help. There’s a culture of silence. It’s taboo to discuss it. There is still the idea that when someone has a stroke that it is a contagious disease and that sudden death may be attributed to evil spirits, particularly a young adult’s death.”

After 25 years in Georgia, Cleland has lived longer in the United States than in his native Ghana. His son, George Jr., is completing his freshman year at Valdosta State. In addition, Cleland has remarried and he and his wife, Hilaria, are expecting a baby in October.

As he thinks about his life as a doctor, Cleland recalled what prompted his interest in medicine.

“There was a young Ghanian from Germany who came to live in the town where I was attending high school. He was a friend of my older brother,” he said. “I remember staying at his house on the weekends and he would get calls in the middle of the night about an emergency. I remember thinking, ‘This guy is an important person.’ I thought, ‘Maybe I’d like to be like him.’”