Signs of Life: “Junior was here”

It’s Black Friday, and I am in a computer lab “working” on a paper that will be due on the day that I return to Duke.  It is one of only a few assignments left standing between me and my diploma.  That’s right.  On December 12th, at 5:00PM I will hear “pencils down” for the last final of my undergraduate life, and I will cross over as an alumnus of Duke University.  Dang… that is close… Exactly two weeks away, to be more precise.  There will be no balloons, no parade, not even a ceremony (unless I decide to return in May).  Just a note to vacate my apartment by the 15th at noon and pay the Bursar’s office on the way out; the Diploma is in the mail.  A very uneventful ending.

But I’m not bothered by that, not in the least bit.  There are few things that I dread more than enduring a graduation ceremony anyway (the last couple Duke Grad ceremonies did not really impress me).  What has been running through my mind for the last few weeks is not what I will be leaving with, but what am I leaving behind.  What mark have I made on the university, and what mark have I made in the lives of the people that I walked with and ran into day by day.

Studying at Duke University is a very unique opportunity.  I’ve always seen it, but as with most things, the magnitude of this fact is most clear in hindsight.  Duke students come from all over the world.  They will be going out into all of the world.  Many of them will be very influential and powerful in the future.  They will have opportunities to lead in many corners of the Earth and in many aspects of society.  If there was ever a great place to leave behind a legacy, it would be Duke University.  From this one place in Durham, North Carolina, a man with an enlightened perspective can touch and change the world.  And now, as I prepare to leave, I am asking myself if I have lived according to this enlightened perspective.  Have I touched lives in a way that would positively contribute to great changes in culture and society in the future?

So what is this enlightened perspective?  It is the perspective that King Solomon acquires at the end of his lavishly lived life.  As he was preparing to part ways with his luxurious life on Earth, he had a startling revelation: He had barely lived at all.  He had acquired riches untold, he had won the hearts of countless women, and even the allegiance of kings and kingdoms, yet with all of his power and wisdom, he did very little because it all died with him.  At the end of his life he came to realize that the only things that mattered in his life were what he did in service to his God and his people.

A man with an enlightened perspective is a man who receives this revelation early in his life and is wise enough to plant his life as a seed.  Whoever loves his life in this world (like Solomon) will lose it, but he who gives his life will keep it eternally (see John 12:23-26).  I didn’t come to Duke University to acquire (diploma, status, friends, network connections), but to give, inspire, and receive inspiration that I could pass on.  For the same purposes we come into the world.  There is an eternal perspective that we are called to live from.

In our culture, we are obsessed with getting & acquiring, and building up around ourSELVES.  We live in a culture of “me.”  We live in our own little worlds, having no desire to interact with one another unless we absolutely have to, or unless we can gain from it.  We build up our lives around this desire, and our technological “advances” feed into it.  Don’t get me started on iPods…  Let’s just say that they silence lips on buses and at bus stops and inhibit the life-giving interactions that the human soul craves.

The major problem with this “me” culture is that it leads us to chase the life of Solomon, a life that only leads us to the revelation that we have never even lived at all.  The man who invests only in himself is ensuring his own bankruptcy.  When he dies, none of him is left.  We all admire the man who is able to “waste” his life by giving it away in service because we all secretly wish we had the guts to do the same.  What if you did?  What if you could just let go of yourself and live life completely free?

I want to ask you a question that has come to be one that drives most (and hopefully eventually all) aspects of my life and how I live it.  When you die, what evidence will there be on Earth that you actually lived?  When you look down from Heaven (hoping you get there) will you be able to see “your life” still at work in people who were blessed and inspired by you?  Or will you see your life waste away in the poor stewardship of the material riches that you acquired and left behind?

I believe that we all, especially Christians, should live with this question in the back of our minds.  I want my life to count for so much.  I want my life to impact millions and continue on for every generation until the return of Christ.  I have no desire to be famous.  Fame has nothing to do with legacy.  My mother, through her investments into her children and community, is watching from heaven as she sees how she was able to touch millions through a diligent life as a mother and homemaker.  That is because everything that she stood for lives through me, my siblings, and through countless others that she touched and inspired.  It doesn’t matter if history forgets my name, just as it is likely to forget hers.  I want the world to be filled with signs that I had actually lived, that I have made my contribution.  I want the angels of Heaven to fly to and fro, marking God’s seal of approval on movements around the world, saying “this is possible because Junior Was Here.”  The only way that I will ever see this fulfilled is by giving my life away.

Would you join me?  Will you plant your life like a seed into the lives of those around you?

I pray that my life at Duke University amounted to much more than the piece of paper that I am leaving with.  In these last two weeks, I pray that I will have many more opportunities to give out of what God has invested in me.

Godly Investment: Duke CCF Devotional

Focal scripture: Colossians 1:3-14

“…As indeed in the whole world [the gospel] is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth… For this reason, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God… “
–Verses 6, 9 & 10

In the face of the current financial crisis, many Americans have been suddenly re-introduced to the concept of “smart spending” and “smart investment.”  Many are beginning to learn the difference between a luxury and a necessity, when they once thought them to be one in the same.  By working part-time at classy restaurant, I am witnessing first-hand that many are learning to forgo the regular splurge on an expensive meal to embrace the culinary arts at home.  When resources are scarce, we wise up.

What is interesting to me about this scripture, is that Paul assumes that God is also a wise and frugal investor, even though the resources of his knowledge are unlimited.  If you step back a few verses to verse 6, you will see that Paul and his partners prayed for the Colossians relentlessly because of the fruit being produced by their faithfulness to the word that they received.  Paul saw a chance for a “great return” on God’s further investment into the Colossians, so he prayed that God would give them more.  We do not see the result of his prayer in scripture, but I can guarantee, based on other scriptures (namely the parable of the talents–See Matthew 25:14-30), that God surely answered that prayer.

We all want to know God more.  We all want to know His will.  As you pray and fast today, I challenge you to examine the fruit of the gospel that you received.  God gives more to the faithful.  Pray that he will do just that for Christians on this Campus.  Pray that he will exalt the knowledge of the faithful, in increase the faithfulness of the knowledgeable.

Not so bad after all

After dissecting the project proposal with the Doc. (a teammate), it looks like I’m not so bad at writing them after all… just inexperienced. In his opinion, it has every detail that it needed, but not in the right places. I’m giving myself 3 days to turn around and re-produce it according to his advice. Then one of our ladies, who reads proposals all day for a living, will take a crack at the finished project. We have one more very important meeting left, because now that we have a stable proposal all of the real work starts. I have some work that I will do long distance (i.e. compiling international scholarship and grant information), but as I said before most of the work will be left up to the team. Our final meeting will allow us to establish specific roles and tasks to lead us up to the actual event.

So what was accomplished? (edited post)

I am so thankful for the partners that I finally found to turn this vision into a reality. SOOO very thankful. As I said last time, working with trustworthy Christians who I know and respect has made a world of difference. It’s partly because they already know and respect me, but also because I fell upon a unique group of people who believe in my vision, who put forth excellence in all that they do. Previous relationship makes a huge difference. Of course that is natural, but I am still unsettled by how “un-natural” it feels to me the way so many people/professionals are unwilling to trust and help a perfect stranger with a good vision and good intentions. My dad told me many times, but it took me a long time to understand that when I approach someone with a great idea in Haiti, the first thing that they are wondering is “what is this guy trying to take from me?” The second question they ask is “how can I use this to my advantage?” It doesn’t matter what the project is. Those two questions almost always pass through the person’s mind.

A few weeks ago an American pastor, who used to run a Haitian adoption agency/orphanage, stayed in my home for a week. We had a lot of time to talk about his experiences in Haiti and our dreams and visions for Haiti. He told me a very unfortunate story of how he had to shut down the orphanage after being taken advantage of so many times. Why would people take advantage of a man who is helping fatherless children find families? Well, when they asked themselves the two questions that I mentioned earlier they determined that this pastor must be making a fortune by “selling” these children to American families. (If you are wondering how they can assume such a thing, look up the term “restavek” or “restavec” on Google and do a little reading). They also determined that they could capitalize on this supposed child-trafficking by stealing from him and/or requiring an unlawful “tax” for processing the children’s papers. Little did they know that this pastor was being forced to pay out of his own pocket because his ministry was running out of money. It was not uncommon for this already expensive process to become 10x more expensive than it should have been, all because of greedy, heartless men and women in power. All this because in a culture where everyone is used to doing whatever it takes to survive, people seem to have have little capacity to believe in purely good intentions. Not even from a little angel like me.

It was particularly difficult for me to adjust to this. But like I said several times already, this team from my church changed everything. I shared my vision and they took it and ran with it. Suddenly I don’t feel like the only one in the world that cares. I noted in the last week or two that the project is still moving slow, but this time its because the team cares about it and wants to do everything possible to make it a success. They have a strong desire to accomplish the goals of this project with excellence. There is a world of difference between how things are going now and how things went last year when I was working on a project through the Ministry of Education (government). In the M. of E. they only did the work because it was handed down to them from their boss. When I realized that they didn’t care enough to do the project well, I myself withdrew, because I was unwilling to put my name on yet another mediocre government project that makes them feel like they actually did their job. I would hate to help them make that mistake.

Now that I have a team, I find myself being more able to stick to what I am good at and entrusting other details to members of the team. This project forced me to do some things that I am not really hardwired to do. I’d say that for any project I am best used as a good set of eyes. Whether you need someone to see and envision the future, learn from the past, or to look over something current to find its strengths and faults and suggest improvements, I’m a great man for the job. These things I do very well, yet I did very little of that this summer. Those skills were only useful in the first month of research when I had to re-evaluate the need and adjust my plan to suit it. But more recently, I have been required to get down into the specific details. In the past couple weeks, while writing and translating the project/grant proposal, I was reminded that I don’t write grant proposals. At least not without getting a headache. I may have been forced to in past projects in Haiti because of lack of support, but truthfully I’m just not that kind of thinker.

When it comes to communicating, me and details aren’t very good friends. Its a strange thing. If you ask me questions, I can explain to you the details, because I’ve thought them over. But even if I can envision the whole thing in my head, I have trouble putting the minute details down concisely and clearly on paper. It’s as if I write with my head in the clouds. (Its strange that I can write concise political memos really well, but this skill still escapes me–probably because memos benefit more from my skill of evaluating a situation). What I do communicate well is vision and ideas. My proposal reflected that very well, and now a couple of my teammates who are more experienced and skilled in the domain of grant-writing are taking the vision, now clearly outlined and explained, and working with me to write a real proposal out of it. Then my evaluation skills will be handy again.

As I said, things slowed down again, but this time for a different reason. So chances are, I won’t be around for the initial meetings with the grant-givers and our potential speakers, but now I have full confidence in our team to handle that and many other things when I am gone. My project has truly become ours. It’s a really good feeling when you are able to share something as important as this. But now that I have about two weeks left, I have been thinking… “what have I really done here that is of value?” The only thing that I can say is that I dreamed and I persisted… I dreamed and I persisted through a difficult and unfamiliar terrain, and after rolling away many stones, I finally found fertile soil in which to plant my vision. Slowly, but this time very surely, it is growing. As you saw from my former posts, I had hoped to leave with a lot more tangible results. But after looking at the terrain, and seeing this idea in the hands of capable and passionate people, I believe that I can truly say that my mission was accomplished. At least a very important part of it. I have many years ahead of me to work with this same team. I’m confident that we will see the rest of the vision come to pass in the near future. Then again, I am a hyper-optimistic idealist…

Ahh… Much Better

Things have gotten much better since we established a team in my church to move the project forward. We have similar schedules, so it is much easier for us to meet together and even talk on the regular without planning (I see many of them every day). It’s also much better because they already know and respect me. One man, a doctor, was unable to make an important planning meeting on Saturday. Any minute now he will be coming to my house to find out what he missed. I would have never asked him to do that, especially after working with other busy people in Port-au-Prince. I half-way expected to have to chase him down, but the pre-established relationship changes things completely.

We have the resources available to create a great internship program through professionals in the church alone, but in order to tap all of those resources, there is some preliminary work that would be required by the church’s association of professionals, which is still being developed. We have chosen, rather, to keep our focus on organizing a conference to get the issues out in the open, and developing and providing resources to students to help them find alternative routes toward their career goals. We hope to provide internships through our more obvious resources, but it will not be highly publicized. You could call it a pilot for the original pilot program that I was developing. That means that my original plan has become a long term goal.

The team-members came-up with a fantastic line-up of potential speakers for our conference. They know some pretty amazing people (one team member is a journalist for a major radio station, so between he and my dad, we probably had all of the contacts that we needed). On the list we have people with unbelievable success stories, people who are great motivators, and people with a lot of vision who are all capable of giving our teens new focus. By the end of the week, I should have completed an English version of our project proposal for the conference (for grants). A member of the team will help me with the French version next week. We have several places to submit our proposal that will get back to us within a week, so within that week of waiting, we hope to begin contacting our list of superstars.

I think that one of the most important things that I am learning to do this summer is how to “degaje’m” in Haiti. That is Creole for “make due with what you’ve got.” In the U.S. I’m used to regular schedules, timeliness, courtesy calls for canceled meetings. It’s not the same here. Degaje is the most important verb for any Haitian entrepreneur to learn. I’ve always been resourceful and flexible, but “degaje” is on a whole new level. In the U.S. people say to make lemonade out of the lemons that life throws at you. Well, let me tell ya, I’ve got a whole lot of lemonade to sell. At least now, I finally found some sugar.

How to lose an entire day…

You’ve probably heard of “Latin Time,” (or probably more likely the politically incorrect CP Time), but you haven’t seen a thing until you have experienced Haitian Time. It is on a whole different level. You all know that I am pretty laid back and not too bothered by non-punctual people, and I am extremely patient, but there are three things that I cannot stand.

1.) I can’t stand when people walk too slow (kinda random, i know). Why take pleasure in walking when you can take pleasure in resting when you arrive? If we have nothing to do and have decided to enjoy a nice slow walk, I’m all for it (I do that often in the Duke Gardens), but if we are going somewhere, lets get there!

2.) I can’t stand excessive waiting. I can understand starting something 10 or 15 minutes late, schedules are often hard to line up. But If I could have read or written a book during my wait, I am more upset that I didn’t actually take the time to do that. (this wasn’t a problem when I had my PDA, through which I could literally read or write a book/poem/song… but i was smart enough to leave the charger at home).

3.) I hate making people wait for me (this one, for me, is the worst). I want people to respect my time, so I do my best to respect theirs. Even if I know for sure that when I arrive I will have to wait for them. You may see me walking into a meeting or a function late when it doesn’t depend on me, but when I am a key person, I try not mess around. in Haiti, this has only proven to exacerbate frustration number 2.

The following events happened in a single day. One looong day.

Last Tuesday night I called a man and scheduled a meeting with him for the following morning. I woke up early on Wednesday, did some work (grant searches) and at 10am got all my things together and got ready for the meeting, which was at 11am. My driver picked me up with plenty of time to get to the meeting, so I grabbed my flash drive and had him drop me off at a Cyber Cafe first to print some forms and documents that I would deliver to my supervisor or, his son later.

As luck would have it, there was only one man working the cyber cafe and about 10 clients wanting different things. Some making international calls, some wanting web time, others buying things, and me printing. Again, as luck would have it, nothing seemed to be working, and the man seemed to be very disoriented. Trying to serve all of the clients at once, he effectively managed to make us all wait longer by serving us slower. I knew how to pull up the documents and print them myself, so I offered to do so on my own and then pay him, but he was reluctant to let me touch his machines. He plugged in my flash drive, and I was forced to wait as I stared at an easy job waiting on the screen. It took all I had in me to refrain from touching that mouse. The computer was begging to continue, and I couldn’t relieve it. Minutes later he returned to my job and opened my documents… then went to another client (no lie… I was about to explode). Minutes later, he came back to my job again and hit the print button. Then finally, after another wait, I paid him and left.

To me, this was the working equivalent of walking too slowly. If you know where you are going, just get there and be done with it. I know that I am a terrible multi-tasker, so I only try to do it, when I really don’t want to do what I am doing (a.k.a. procrastinating). This man had no clue how bad he was at multi-tasking. I would have left and went to another cyber cafe, but knowing that this is how things work in Haiti, I was afraid to run into a worse problem. I figured that giving the man my flash drive was a good start… little did I know that I’d be there for a half an hour.

Luckily, I left for my meeting REALLY early. So if traffic was favorable, I could still be on time. Well, you guessed it, traffic was unfavorable. When I realized that I was going to be late, I texted the man I was meeting with and let him know. I managed to arrive about 8-10 minutes late (which in Haitian time, is not bad at all). So here’s the worst part… just as I was pulling up outside the office, he calls me. “Hey man, I’m sorry, I just received your text… I’m in Jacmel… A friend called me early this morning so I hopped on a plane and left. Yeah, so clearly I won’t be able to make it to our meeting. Can we reschedule for tomorrow?” I told him I’d get back to him in the morning… I was not counting on his schedule again (the next morning didn’t work out, and this particular meeting has still never happened).

This man was lucky that I needed to see my supervisor, whose office is in the same neighborhood. The only problem was that I didn’t have a scheduled meeting with him. This wasn’t a huge deal because all I needed was to show him some forms, have him sign them and be on my way. Unfortunately, this day had turned out to be a headache for him. And also, unfortunately for me, he doesn’t work like the man at the cyber cafe, serving everyone at once (which in this case, would have got me out quickly). He very deliberately avoids opening another case with someone else before he is finished with the person in front of him (except for answering his phones during meetings). I came in as he was dealing with one that was very complicated and had another one or two waiting. He passed me by several times, apologizing every time. What was also unfortunate was that his son was also out of town, or I would have given the forms to him. I didn’t want to leave them with his secretary because they required some explanation that I didn’t want to pass through her. So I was stuck waiting… For several hours.

Luckily, I had my laptop with me. I decided to pull it out and prepare some things that I could talk about and make this meeting worth the wait. I accomplished a lot during my waiting time, and the meeting wasn’t too bad. But I didn’t leave his office till about 3:30pm. I left my house at 10am. Most of the day was spent waiting.

This was probably the worst case, but it is not a far cry from what I have faced pretty regularly. I’m writing this because I have recently experienced other time setbacks (which I don’t feel like talking about). Everything in Haiti moves veeery slowly. I guess that is how problems pile on top of problems. It is also becoming more real that in order to get anywhere, you have to know someone very personally. Sometimes it isn’t enough to say “Your good friend, So-and-So sent me to you…” You have to bring So-and-so along with you in order to get someone to respect a meeting. That is another headache to coordinate. All I can say is it’s a good thing I’ll be here 50% longer than most Duke Engagers, and its a good thing that this work is at “home,” where I can come back and tie up any loose ends.

Speaking in Tongues

When I first got off of the plane this time around, I noticed something interesting happen. As soon as I found myself around other Haitians, it was as if a switch was flipped in my head. That switch not only switched my default mode for language, but it was wired deeper and also turned my “ows” to “woys,” my shocked/disgusted looks are now accompanied by a breathy “oh oh!” and all of a sudden, my vocabulary included teeth-sucking noises, facial expressions, and frequent sarcasm. Only a year after beginning to learn creole, I’m starting to feel fluent in every sense of the word.

Of course, my tongue has to catch up again. After all, I am still pretty new to the language. I spoke better on January 8th, when I left Haiti, than I do now. I actually preached 45 minutes entirely in creole on January 6th (the day of my ordination), but recently had a bit of trouble with a 10 minute radio transmission. But it will come back. Not too long from now I’ll be thinking in creole again, and it will come naturally. This time I plan to hold on to it better. I have my creole Bible that I used to read out loud to help my pronunciation, but to add to that, if you know creole, be prepared to hear nothing but creole from me.

On a similar note, my other languages have been tested recently. The director of my dad’s school speaks to me in Spanish, and so does my barber. Since I have recently been learning French, that has proven to be disastrous, but fun. Still the biggest test has been on my French, and I must say, I am pretty impressed. I actually learned something from the Duke Language Department (Mme. Gleisner, Mme Wu… merci beaucoup!). The first test came with my contact in Cayes. When I first met him he started speaking to me in a language that was familiar, but it was neither English nor Creole. It took me two seconds to realize that it was French. So I responded… in French. And I did pretty well for a few minutes, until creole rushed in like a river to save me from myself, haha.

In Haiti, French is also an official language, although less than 20% can speak it fluently. Schools are taught in French and all Government affairs are dealt with in French (you can imagine how that builds up the wall between the poor and the government–yet another way to say “you don’t belong here… you don’t matter to us”). Haitian academics often greet each other and converse in French. It’s something that I have seen and participated more than once here, and will see more of soon.

More recently I have been putting together the details of the project and our progress in powerpoint form. The first presentation I created was for my supervisor (who speaks English fluently), so I did it in English. Then realizing that it would be important to use for others I talk to, I translated it and added the appropriate slides. A friend of mine helped me to make the necessary corrections, which were surprisingly few.

I think the difference between learning Spanish and learning French, for me, was the motivation. Spanish is fun, and it’s a beautiful language, French is a headache. Spanish makes a lot of sense and is mostly phonetic, French has a million rules that never apply. But I need French. When I enrolled in the class, I had Haiti in mind. And as you can see, I am not at all disappointed by the results.

Now, I am off to rehearse a prayer that I have to do in a wedding today… in French. I also have to present my project to a group of academics/professionals directly afterward (still looking for open doors–businessmen have proven to be hard to reach even when you have the contact). The presentation was made in French, but don’t even think that I will present in French. I’m not that fluent. They are just gonna have to put up with my american-accented creole.