Asuoya
This month I have returned to Ghana, after several years and a pandemic in between, to reconnect with the purpose of what we do. These have been busy weeks, buying building materials, visiting local projects, traveling to the airport to pick up volunteers, getting quotes… It is the rainy season but just like in Spain, the weather is changing and it is not raining as much as it used to, in fact, practically not a drop has fallen these days.
I find many changes in the country, from high end vehicles, to new international hotels, to construction sites everywhere. Inflation is further squeezing the lives of the population, the value of the cedie continues to depreciate against the dollar, which implies a considerable rise in the value of imported goods, which affects citizens day by day. It seems that there is more foreign investment, but this is far from those who live day to day, especially in the poverty belts. Theft has increased, many people are engaged in scamming and inequalities are even more evident.
We are still going about our project. Block by block we are moving forward with the Asuoya Learning Centre. A few years ago, we wanted to buy some land to expand the space. After reaching an agreement and raising a crowdfunding to get the funds, the intermediary did not keep his word and asked us for more money, and finally ended up selling it to open a Muslim church without caring about anything. Over the years the land is still intact. We are looking into it and it seems that they were sold again, so there is still hope and we are trying to buy them back. It is a dream to go back to the original project, and we have put up for sale other land that we bought at that time.
I don’t believe in coincidences and suddenly last week the current owner came by to check the boundaries of the land. We found out that he had not been there in the nearly two years since he has been the owner, so we took the opportunity to approach him. He tells us that the land is for his girlfriend and that we should talk to her when he returns from doing business in China, we take it as good news. We will see how the soap opera ends, but I am too optimistic to think that the operation will slip away again.
On the other hand, we are opening in Spain the rural coliving as a way to diversify the sources to generate income and finance projects. These days it makes me think that at some point it would make sense to experiment in Ghana with a Pop Up experience, that is, to bring a group of teleworkers and digital nomads to live in community in Africa. I think it would be awesome, we could connect them with authentic projects, they could help as volunteers, they could also do tourism and connect with nature, we could do experiments in generosity and certainly the business model could help fund the next work in the pipeline. We are going step by step with parallel projects that could become more directly connected to these kinds of experiments.
This summer we already welcomed a student from The Social MBA program as a volunteer, thanks to the benefits of this new initiative we have been able to reactivate construction and everything is becoming more and more connected. By not distributing dividends, we can offer scholarships in the programs, fund Hola Ghana projects and conduct experiments in kindness and generosity in our new home, Pas Coliving Rural, a dream come true.
Just as in Spain we grow the project by buying the land with bungalows, I would like to buy the new land in Ghana to make the leap to a larger scale project. My brother Wisdom and I live parallel lives, we have known each other for more than a decade, we are both married, we have adopted a child and we live as a family but with open doors, our houses are always full. We also share a vocation to serve, enjoy conversations, treasure time together and inspire each other, to keep going and overcome adversity.
And you … Do you dare to serve?
