Adin ‘The no money man’ — Stories from the road by Ruan Smit

Adin van Ryneveld

When I left Johannesburg a month ago I was intro­duced to Adin van Ryneveld via a friend on social media, which means that I’ve never met this per­son and that all the con­tact we’ve ever had was on twit­ter and Facebook. No phone calls, no e-mail.

For the whole month I’ve been on the road he’s been sup­port­ing my jour­ney, when I fell off my bike he was the first to ask if I was okay, when the heat was more than forty degrees, he was one of the people telling me to drink enough water. Odd from a from a per­son you’ve never met before, well that’s what I thought ...

What I heard about Adin before I reached Cape Town was not much, just that he’s set a goal to live without money for five years and that he has almost fin­ished one, unsure of what his goals are and how he man­ages to live we arranged a lunch meet­ing to actu­ally meet the Facebook photo we’ve seen so much of.

Cape Town

The day Before the Argus Cycle Tour in Cape Town we arrange to meet at a little Rasta type res­taur­ant close to Kloof Nek. We recog­nize each other without a moment of hes­it­a­tion and then for the next two hours I exper­i­ence the dream and hope of so many pos­sib­il­it­ies that I’ve seen in so many other South Africans. During this time we hardly get time to eat our per­fect wood fired pizza, and if you are too busy to deal with a pizza you know the con­ver­sa­tion is good…

Adin used to do many other things but eight years ago he was dia­gnosed with a dis­order that made him think about his life for a second. He felt he had it within him to change the world but then laughed it off as a crazy idea. Then after he was treated he real­ized that there might be some­thing to his whole sav­ing the world idea and he star­ted look­ing at options to save the world. He explains this with eyes shin­ing and hands telling as much as his mouth is. He gets excited when he shares his story and it’s abso­lutely amaz­ing to listen to this man’s story.

Then he switches over. The story is not about him, it’s about the people that make it pos­sible for him to do what he does, so what is it that he is doing you might be scream­ing at this point. Adin is try­ing to show that there is an altern­at­ive to money. Not that money is wrong or that every­one should fol­low his example, just that money has altern­at­ives. That why for the next five years no money will go through his hands, that means cash, plastic, EFT’s, noth­ing. The philo­sophy behind it is quite beautiful.

Cape Town

He wants to give away R5555555,55 in 5 years and the 5^th of May is his first anniversary, he laughs at his little obses­sion with the num­ber 5, he used to have OCD and everything he did had to be in mul­tiples of five. So he made use of the num­ber, tongue in cheek. One has to laugh at your own little obses­sions and issues. What bet­ter way than to learn from yourself.

I wish every­one could meet this per­son sit­ting before me. He has the energy of a teen­ager and the thoughts of a wise old man. He believes, like Gandhi, that you have to be the change you want to see.

So how does one live without money, my ques­tion as well. His new­est pro­ject is 25 tat­toos on his right arm. The tat­toos are neatly placed in a roll of film that winds up his arm. A com­pany can tat­too their logo here and in exchange help him out with some­thing he might need to fin­ish his pro­ject. He’s also a life coach and will exchange ses­sions. The oth­ers are ran­dom acts of kind­ness, a man heard of him in a Cape Town news­pa­per and decided to spon­sor his pet­rol every month for a year, people buy him lunch in exchange for a blog post, people just care.

And that’s why he’s decided on the new avenue, telling the story of the com­munity that makes his jour­ney pos­sible. He wants to fur­ther this pro­ject by the help of every­one that is will­ing and in the pro­cess give 50% of everything to char­it­ies that the com­munity decides on.

Read Adin’s blog and see what this man is about, he’ll inspire you just like he inspired me. This is Ubuntu, shar­ing without expect­ing any­thing in return. I’m join­ing in this journey ...