Some years ago, when I worked at Roman Ridge in Accra, I had a quiet morning ritual I never intended - yet it carved itself into my memory, deep and lasting.

Each day, as the city stirred - vendors calling out, trotro horns blaring, the heat already rising - I would see him.

A man the world called mad.

He was tall - easily six-foot-five - strong, imposing, and even in his tangled beard and dust-worn clothes, he was unmistakably handsome. There was something noble in his bearing, something that hinted at a life before the streets claimed him.

Every morning, as I passed him, I would smile and ask,

"Good morning. How are you faring today?"

And always, he'd respond. Sometimes with a quiet nod, other times with a thoughtful gaze or a string of unexpected words. There was a strange, unspoken understanding between us. A rhythm in the brief moment we shared - as if time paused just long enough for recognition.

My job involved travel. I'd sometimes be gone for a week? other times for six. But each time I returned and our paths crossed again, he would say,

"Ei, it's been a while."

And he said it with the warmth of someone who had noticed my absence.

He remembered me.

In a city full of strangers brushing past each other, that mattered more than I can explain.

It made me wonder: Was he really mad? Or had life just been cruel in ways most of us will never understand? Was he abandoned by a world too busy to care, or broken by a trauma too heavy to carry? Maybe, just maybe, he saw things differently - felt more deeply than most - and the world simply didn't know what to do with that kind of soul.

In the city's rush, he became my moment of stillness.

In a world that forgets so easily, he remembered.

I never learned his name.

But I have never forgotten his presence.

And I still pray - from a quiet, aching place within me -

that one day, I will see him again.

Not as he was, but as he was meant to be? healed.