The 21,333 kilometers an African child traveled to reach Barcelona

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Today, seven-year-old Rita has a special plan in place.

Although she does not understand it very well, the walk through Tibidabo (Barcelona) that she has been waiting all week to do with her mother, Laura Munné, is different from the others.

Munné will carry Ousman Umar's autobiographical book in his backpack and will read pieces of the extremely hard journey of the Ghanaian migrant who left home when he was just a child in search of answers and opportunities.

”My idea is to show him the photos and tell him how difficult other children have it.

It will be like reliving Ousman's story through my daughter's eyes, ”she says.

As they walk, their mobile will record the kilometers traveled and, for each one, Umar's foundation, NASCO Feeding Minds, will receive a minimum donation of 0.5 euros to continue the educational work they carry out in Ghana.

Rita will walk part of the 21,333 kilometers that Umar did when she was practically the same age and her only goal was to reach the “country of the whites”.

More information

• Hell on the way to paradise: five years crossing borders to reach Spain

• The music of the Big Family: 15 migrants tell their story to the rhythm of 'trap' and 'afrobeat'

• Another immigration crisis without a plan to care for minors

Everyone decides how to participate: walking, running, swimming or cycling.

In this way, both the sections that Umar made by land and by sea will be added.

Registration is now open on the organization's website and will remain active in all corners of the world until the journey is completed, with which they hope to raise between 10 and 11,000 euros thanks to the contribution of the participants and also some collaborating companies.

Sergio Millet, 47, has not yet decided how many kilometers he will do.

He only knows that he will call all his friends for a day of cycling, swimming and running.

"I really like sport and more if it is for such cool initiatives," he says.

"For me it is also special because it is as if I walked again, but not alone anymore," says the activist by phone.

As the journey progresses, which can be followed on social networks under the tag # CorrealPaísdelosBlancos, anecdotes, people and realities that the young man encountered during his journey will be discovered.

That's how it all started.

An airplane crossing the sky

And there was no going back because curiosity moves everything.

Ousman Umar migrated to the Land of White in search of opportunities.

A hellish journey to what he believed to be paradise.

# CorrealPaísdelosBlancos

Are you going to miss it?

pic.twitter.com/5WKyAfQp0f

- NASCO Feeding Minds (@nasco_ict) January 7, 2021

Although the initiative intends to change shoes for a while, nothing compares to the hell that Umar went through until he reached Spain.

He left Ghana as a child, crossed the Sahara on foot in the hands of the mafias - who abandoned him halfway - the sea in a boat and saw most of his fellow travelers die, including Musa, his best friend.

He traveled 21,333 kilometers to Barcelona, ​​where he now resides, crossing eight countries in more than five years.

He came to Spain as an unaccompanied foreign minor and, when he was still 17 years old, he lived on the streets for two months.

“I ceased to exist for people.

Nobody looked me in the eye ”, he recalls.

He came to Spain as an unaccompanied foreign minor and, as soon as he turned 18, he became homeless

Of all the experiences that he relives when he tells, one continues to make his throat lump: the affection of Montserrat Roura, who is now his adoptive mother.

"I still don't understand why I felt I had to talk to her when I saw her on the street, but when I did, she grabbed my hands and looked me in the eye," he says before stopping a few seconds, excited.

"He took me to his house and welcomed me."

The first night she placed him in a room, gave him blankets and warm food, and a kiss on the forehead before going to sleep.

That gesture of love brought him down: “I spent the whole night crying, I was 18 years old and I had had such a bad time… At that moment I understood that it had to be the voice of those who do not arrive alive;

I had to say that the normal thing is to die trying to reach Europe and find a way to improve opportunities in my country so that young people are not exposed to all this ”.

I feel that humanitarian aid that is only focused on giving food is badly focused.

We have to feed minds, so that they have opportunities there and do not try to come.

It's the key

Ousman Umar

This is how NASCO Feeding Minds was born, a non-profit organization that aims to improve the quality of education in Ghana through digital training and the creation of computer classrooms with computers at the service of public schools.

More than 20,000 children have already passed through these classrooms.

“I feel that humanitarian aid that only focuses on providing food is misfocused.

We have to feed minds, so that they have opportunities there and do not try to come.

It is the key, "he criticizes," If they become programmers, for example, they will be able to practice from Ghana to any part of the world and with a decent salary.

They will not run away thinking that everything here is better ”.

He did.

At the age of nine, he wondered why the airplanes managed to fly and the toys that were made among Fiaso's neighbors did not.

He asked and the answer was always the same: "Planes are made by whites."

“I just knew that whites were geniuses;

they were doctors, engineers… I thought they were all intelligent ”, he now laughs,“ I did not know that intelligence did not depend on skin color.

I dreamed of being white ”.

Today, from Spain, he wants to be the one to explain to the smallest of his community that the "intelligent are those who study."

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