A former financial analyst and Harvard College graduate who lived on the street outside the Holyoke Gate for more than a year is currently bringing her resume up to date and preparing to return to professional life.

Nana Adwoa Tiwaah “Agatha” Okyere ’81 has received treatment for a debilitating mental condition, and is now taking a computer class and researching the job market, according to Kwadwo Frimpong, a fellow Ghanaian expatriot with whom Okyere is now living.

But some members of the Ghanaian community, which has been helping her to get back on her feet, wonder why it took more than a year for Okyere to get the care she needed to get off the street.

Okyere began living on the Cambridge streets around the time of her twentieth class reunion in June 2001, says Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesperson Steven G. Catalano.

She lived for more than a year in the shade of Harvard’s halls, moving from the Science Center to the Holyoke gate with a growing collection of bags that contained her belongings.

She would sometimes spend a few days in local shelters, Catalano says, but found mobility difficult as her collection of belongings grew.

Catalano says HUPD “pulled strings” to find a shelter that would accept Okyere and her copious belongings, and in October 2002, Okyere left the street for good.

Frimpong describes her recovery over the past nine months in awed tones.

“It’s been nothing short of a miracle,” he says.

Okyere will probably avoid returning to a former life in the street, due to the degree of support she has received from the surrounding community, says one mental health expert who helped Okyere and asked that her name not be used.

But, the expert says, Okyere had to endure life in the Square too long before receiving the help she needed.

“Someone should have said, ‘Wait, this woman is not acting of healthy initiative, we must call someone to intervene,” the worker says. “And nobody did that until several months later.”

For the homeless population of Harvard Square, escaping life on the streets often requires much more than a single telephone call. Recent funding cutbacks, overcrowding of local shelters and a delicate and multifaceted intervention process can make a successful effort to help someone difficult, if not almost impossible.

For Okyere, as for hundreds of people who live homeless in the Boston area each year, escaping life on the streets means fighting against a host of mutually compounding obstacles.

Fighting Mental Illness