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Then Ellen started feeling a great thirst for knowledge. She went back to school and became an American citizen “so that later I would be able to work as a teacher.” As an American with a bachelor’s degree, which she had earned at a black college, she obtained a position at a hospital for children with mental illnesses. “I worked especially with autistic children; I was one of the first hospital teachers in the United States, and in our team I had equal status with psychologists and psychiatrists – this was totally new at that time.” She continued to take courses and earned a Masters degree in special education in 1962.

Yet she continued to be involved in her community. “At Christmas we used to invite foreign students from various universities, mostly blacks. That’s how I met David, an economist, who had grown up in Sierra Leone, taught math in America and subsequently worked at the UN Planning Institute in Senegal as well as in posts in the Caribbean and in East Africa. While in the US he used to spend Christmas holidays with us.”