Yesterday was a busy day for Agatha Okyere ’81. She was moving—packing her belongings into boxes and bags, fumbling beneath the blue tarp that guards her property.

“I am very busy today,” she says, eyeing the clock on the Cambridge Savings Bank. “I have to pack these things, and then I must run errands.”

She speaks lucidly, although sometimes her soft voice is muffled by the pink scarf that envelops her head. Her eyes survey her surroundings as she rests her hand lightly on a box.

Although she sometimes refers to herself as “Lady Richlove,” most people know Okyere simply as Agatha. Despite the fact that thousands pass by her home for recent months—the area outside Holyoke Gate—she has remained a mystery during her time here.

Today, her constant presence opposite the Porcellian Club and the Yenching Restaurant might end.

Agatha is busy because, if everything goes according to plan, she will be moving off the street today for the first time in more than a year, completing a cycle that began more than two decades ago when she arrived for her freshman year at Harvard in 1977.

From Ghana to Cambridge

Nana Adwoa Tiwaah “Agatha” Okyere was born on December 12, 1957 in Kumasi, Ghana, according to her class records. She says she has three younger brothers and an older sister. Of her parents, she hints only at a guardian living in Ghana.

Agatha is Ashanti, a member of one of the region’s largest ethnic groups. She attended Asanteman Secondary School and lived in West Africa until matriculating at Harvard in the fall of 1977, according to the records.

When she arrived to start school here, she had never before been to the United States.

Her brief statement in the Class of 1981 Yearbook presents a picture of a young woman with a hopeful smile and an immaculate suit. She lived in Currier House and graduated with a degree in Economics.

According to her yearbook, Agatha devoted much of her time to a wide array of extracurricular activities—including the Radcliffe Union of Students, the Black Students Association and the Catholic Students Association.

By all accounts, her undergraduate years were normal.

“From what I know, she was a fine student,” says S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, who has been instrumental in finding Agatha housing.

After graduation, Agatha’s contact with Harvard over the last two decades stemmed largely from the alumni class reports published every five years.