Finding Love at Ashesi

Ask alumni about their time in Ashesi, and you will pick up a common thread — a rigorous academic experience, a growing honour system, frustrating group-work tales and getting used to cafeteria food. However, there’s one more; it’s not necessarily a prevalent ethos, but it’s an open secret, a softer landing, not everyone gets into it, but everyone gets involved in one way or another — Ashesi is also a place to find the love of your life.

Whether for better or worse, Ashesi, has helped set the scene for many love stories. From the rented country houses in Labone in the early days, to the lush greenery in Berekuso, countless students have not just graduated from Ashesi, but also have found a life partner here.

This season of love, we’ve invited some of our alumni to take the spotlight, and share stories of how they found love here.

Daniel Botchway ‘13 & Tonilola (Ayonrinde) Botchway ‘14

Let’s start with why we chose Ashesi:

Daniel: Ashesi caught my eye because of its size and mission: a small institution daring to do big things. I also liked the concept of a small community; few but deeper relationships could be formed instead of many shallow ones — I felt this would help me develop as a person. It was also the only university doing robotics at the time and it was a field I was interested in.

Toni: When it was time for college, my search for a strong and stable educational system brought me to Ghana. After seeing Ashesi; a small university with big stories, it resonnated with me. It challenged me to grow an ambitious spirit despite my petite nature. I stopped seeing ‘small’ as a limitation, but more like an opportunity to grow better.

Thanks to Ashesi’s close-knit community, we met in Toni’s first year. I was in my second year at the time. I got to know her through my friends who were in the same hostel as she was- and we started off as casual friends. Our friendship grew and we got much closer, eventually becoming study partners through the Programming Resource Centre … this is when things got interesting.

Ashesi can be a highly pressurized environment but there are a number of extra curricular activities that help build friendship. Primarily we were in the same Christian campus fellowship, and it was a place we got to know each others’ mind-sets, values and character. Additionally, school events like ASC week was a good place to see a full expression of each other’s interests. I remember one Crazy Day activity where Toni dressed as a Pregnant teenager- I was shocked yet I got to know that she has a very courageous and somewhat charismatic personality. For me, that was a very interesting trait to align with since I was mostly quiet. In simple terms, let’s say I have evolved to have a fair share of a charisma too.

Ashesi really helped us appreciate our diverse cultures and backgrounds. Also we can say Ashesi created this social environment for us to meet and connect. But more importantly, I think the friends and family we got from Ashesi have played a vital role even till now.

I think a relationship is private affair but there is wisdom in having public/supportive/familial/accountability network you both can rely on. And Ashesi created that.

Right now, we are a very young married couple, we are still getting to know each other and understand who we individually are and what we want to achieve. It would be a great image to envision a 2nd and 3rd generation Ashesi family from us. Lol. That’s a long way out, for now we are just taking one day at a time in the only way we know how — together.

Kojo Biney ’10 and Akosua (Agyei-Boahene) Biney ‘10

Interestingly both our mothers insisted we attend Ashesi: His mother said it was what God wanted for him, mine had friends whose kids attended Ashesi and she saw a difference in them, so that’s how we ended up in Ashesi.

Here’s how we started talking…

Nii Lantei Kumi-Bruce ’10 left his backpack in class after school. I found the bag and instead of handing it over to Nii I decided to ‘teach him a lesson’.

I approached Kojo (although we were in the same class, we had never uttered two words to each other) gave him the bag and instructed him not to give the backpack to his friend Nii, till I asked him to.

Kojo: no problem, but for keeping the backpack you will have to give me a kiss.

Akosua: sure, just keep the backpack for me. (Not that I intended on honoring that agreement)

Kojo leaves and hands the backpack over to Nii and then comes to demand his kiss. Let’s just say the kiss never happened but we became friends.

While in Ashesi, we hang out a lot but we made sure we had breathing room to develop relationships with other people. We tried not to suffocate each other but most importantly we had friends who help ground us and realign our emotions and thought patterns.

Ashesi was the melting pot. All the unfolding sequence of events was because Ashesi made room for them to happen. The right timing, the right friends and the right mind-sets. It’s like having made-in-Ghana stamped on your goods; Ghana usually doesn’t lift a hand but she gets the credit.

Following Ashesi, we are focused on life, and truly living it; taking advantage of every opportunity. Staying true to ourselves and not losing our personal identities in our marriage, at work or even as parents.

David Dei Awuku ’13 and Nana Adjoa (Hagan) Dei Awuku ‘13

We met on the first day of school — she was the first person to arrive at English Bootcamp, a pre-college preparatory program to help bring us up-to-speed with Ashesi’s curriculum. This was in 2009.

We were the only two who had arrived, so naturally we whipped up a conversation, and after realising we had a lot of friends in common, things sort of begun to pick up there.

Though we didn’t exchange contact details till about after two weeks after our first meeting, we had struck a growing friendship by then, and we were already working at something good.

Four years is a lot of time to be with someone, first of all. With the whole small -school experience and being in the same year group, we managed to spend a lot of time together. From studying together to belonging to the same circle of friends, we grew and matured together.

Maturity was a key component in our relationship-when we started going out, we were both only 19, and by the time we were graduating from Ashesi we were between 23 and 24 years old. So that’s a long time in between, however, this allowed us to pass through certain pivotal stages of life together . For us, Ashesi allowed us to grow together: easily checking up on each other, working on assignments and projects together and sharing jokes all the time.

Three years after we graduated from Ashesi, I proposed to her, and we got married in January 2017. Currently, we are both rounding up with law school, looking to be called to the Bar.

As a married couple now, we try to live everyday as a learning experience — learning to build a family and working towards starting up businesses, perhaps a law practice. For now though, we’re learning more and more about each other everyday.

Emmanuel Antwi Nkansah ’13 and Elysia (Amarteifio) Nkansah ‘13

Elysia’s mum chose Ashesi because someone recommended it to her and she thought it was a fantastic idea and since she didn’t want her at home for the gap year they asked her to start Ashesi.

I chose Ashesi because it gave me the opportunity to experience a liberal arts education in Ghana. Ashesi came to Ghana International School when I was applying for college abroad and for me it was like studying abroad in Ghana. It looked great! The final decision was made when I realized the financial strain studying abroad will put on my family. So I chose Ashesi

The first time I saw Elysia was when Olubumi Thomas ‘13, her friend at the time brought her to the Labadi boys hostel to say hi to his friends. I couldn’t get her out of my mind after that day, especially her smile. Subsequently, the boys and I were at danquah and I went to her apartment to say hi. So I’d say that’s the first time we met -in her apartment (she claims she doesn’t remember seeing me when she first came to my hostel )

Slowly, we started spending time together. Though once in a while I’d go to her hostel just to chat with her, we were in different classes so I couldn’t see her often. When we finally chose our majors, things mapped out nicely, I chose to do Computer Science, she Management Information Systems. This way, we were in a lot more classes together so we’d share ideas, do assignments together and our friendship grew into a relationship

So being in Ashesi, we were encouraged to solve problems together and to embrace teamwork so we found doing homework together or thinking through projects together very beneficial to the growth of our relationship.

Outside Ashesi, we had always been encouraged to be entrepreneurial so fast forward 2014, when a classmate, Frank Anamuah-Koufie’13 and I decided to start Cavemen , Elysia was very understanding and supportive. And when she decided to do Aurore Bruce I didn’t think twice about being her pillar.

Also we push each other to aim higher and work harder since it’s something we both learnt from Ashesi. I for one have learnt a lot from Elysia’s drive and passion for excellence and i believe it has made me a better person.

Today, we’re thanking God for how far he has brought us, honestly, He did all this. He kept us together. We’re looking forward to growing in God, growing our businesses and growing the Ashesi family some day, God-willing by enrolling our children there. All Glory to our Lord Jesus Christ!

Ted Okpoti-Paulo ’15 and Abena (Gyekye) Okpoti-Paulo ‘15

We chose Ashesi University because we believed Ashesi university would give us the quality education and the right exposure we needed, to prepare us adequately for the cooperate world. We were not wrong on this J.

Aside some common reasons we both had for coming to Ashesi University, we did have other personal reasons, for instance I(Ted) believed that Ashesi was the best place for me in Ghana where I could study a course which could equip me both in the Computer Science field and business administration field. There is no doubt that Ashesi gave me a strong foundation which later was a stepping stone for me to further my education in Cyber Security and Big Data. Abena chose Ashesi because of the small student-faculty ratio and the liberal arts curriculum which would allow her to take a wide variety of courses in Business Administration. She believed that this would not only allow her to gain an understanding of most of the courses that shape up the business world, but it could help her decide which sector she would want to work or master in.

Six years ago at Ashesi University, a high school friend introduced Abena and me. We had the same lectures in our freshman year so we got into the habit of saying “hi” every time we saw each other. After a difficult Statistics quiz, we met after class and decided to start studying early every morning. Right then, we exchanged numbers. The next morning, I woke up some minutes before the scheduled study time, wondering if she was going to keep her word and call. After waiting a few minutes, I decided to call. Funny enough, she was waiting to see if I was also going to keep to my word and meet up to study with her. We laughed over it, met at the hostel lobby and commenced to campus to study. This was where our love journey begun!!! : -)

As a young couple in Ashesi, we came to the conclusion that time is the most important factor of every relationship. If you spend time with someone, love is built, trust is built and information is communicated easily and faster. In our first year, when we become friends, we both took the same courses hence we spent time revising and going over whatever we did in class. In third year, when we officially started dating, we were doing different courses and were engaged in so many extra curriculum activities which reduced the amount of time we spent together. However, we decided to make time for each other while making sure that it did not interfere with our studies. The three things we prioritized during our years at Ashesi was God, Academics, and our relationship. Having these priorities in our lives kept us focused and helped us grow closer together as a couple while navigating through our years at Ashesi.

As quirky as it may sound, we think the location of Ashesi helped us to grow closer together. As much as we loved being in each other’s company, the location did not make it so easy to go to town. Hence, we had to come up with our own activities/ events on campus to keep us entertained. This meant that we got to spend a lot of time together on campus after academics which helped solidify the bond we had. Additionally, we had clubs in Ashesi such as Kingdom Christian Fellowship, which brought people in to talk about Godly dating/ relationships and gleaning insights from these seminars was helpful in our relationship. Above all, the Ashesi community was very accommodative and warm. Due to the size of the student population, it made it easy for us to get to know people, and also helped us to be accountable to each other.

After Ashesi we were both looking forward to completing our Master’s degrees which we both have done, in the U.K. Thanks to the education/training received at Ashesi, we got into the top 10 tier universities in the UK to pursue Cyber Security and Big Data and International Business respectivelt. Now that we are back home, we are looking to apply the entrepreneurial skills developed while studying in Ashesi, in starting our own business which could ultimately help decrease the unemployment rate in Ghana. We also look forward to Ashesi prospering and achieving its goals so we bring our children to Ashesi and forever stand as proud Alumni of the institution.