Thorns

Peace Corps is very difficult. Their slogan is “the hardest job you’ll ever love.” It’s true for me. Now that I have been here for six months I feel like I can understand it. It is difficult for many reasons, but God has done so much to prepare me to come here to serve him. I talked a lot about how he made me suffer through being poor for the first time in my life for the last two years so this time is going to be about discovering God. I grew up in Pittsburgh’s white suburbia. When I was in sixth grade, and my father was working for a very successful company at the time, we moved into one of the wealthier parts of suburbia, Fox Chapel. My mother wanted to get away from living in the same community where she taught. This plan of escape resulted in buying a very expensive house for a fairly good price in a very expensive neighborhood. A lot of my neighbors belonged to one of the top notch country clubs and sent their kids to the excellent private school that were both closer to my house than the high school that I attended. These aspirations may have been what my parents had in mind when we moved to this area, but then came the recession of the early 2000s. My father was laid off and I had similar images in my head to that of the Saved by the Bell episode where Kelly’s father loses his job and she can’t afford to go to the high school dance. These images were facilitated by my mother always saying that we had no money and now we were going to have to give up things that we had come to expect. I don’t actually remember this, but my mom tells a cute story about me when I was in elementary school and I told the teacher that my family was too poor to give up some onions so we could make soup for a project. We were living the American dream of the more you have the more you want. From the outside looking in, if you were poorer than my family you might have considered my family to be wealthy, or if you were richer than my family you would consider us to be middle class. My family did control their spending in a lot of ways though, like we never had a pool, sometimes we didn’t go on vacation and when we did it was in the continental US and I went to public school. We have been in some kind of awful debt for as long as I can remember. It’s the American way after all.

Although suburbia has other races in it, specifically a large population of Indian Americans went to my high school, the majority is by far white. My generation has had an advantage over generations before it. The advantage is that we have been taught over and over and over how terrible racism is. But this doesn’t even stop us from becoming raciest. I remember very well soon after moving to Fox Chapel finding it cool to draw swastikas and only making friends with the other white kids. Liking others who are like you is of course a good thing, but that line between loving your own kind and hating those who are different is very fine. I went through high school trying to be cool, and of course I cared to great degree what other people thought of me. We all want to be loved, but I concentrated a lot of my time trying to get into the inner rings that I could never join. I was always trying to convince myself I liked classic rock and that I didn’t like hip hop or pop, which if you know me now you know that it is the opposite. I distinctly remember one of the people that I wanted to like me talking about how he could smell the theater when 8 Mile came out. I can’t remember the things that I said but they were either just as bad or worse. The only contact I had with any black Americans my age was at church, but none of us wanted to be there or have anything to do with each other.

In college was the first time I was introduced to Americans of other ethnicities who wanted anything to do with me. My roommate in our tiny pie slice of a dorm room was Matt aka Matty Voice who was really into hip hop and he is still the best beat boxer I ever met. Matt was white, but he was really popular among the many of the black population that I was exposed to. He won the Black Action Society talent show with excellent renditions of Drop it Like it’s Hot and the Mario Brother’s theme. I became jealous of Matt’s popularity and skills and pushed him away. I feel like we could have been really great friends had I been more mature. I did make my first multicultural friend this year though, Chris aka c-dogg. Chris is half Pilipino and half Chinese and he lived in a dorm down the hall and hated his roommate. I love Chris. He’s one of the coolest guys I have ever met. Chris, Pete aka PTP1 and I were quite the trio and sometimes Mark aka Mulsh was added to our group when he stuck around in Oakland instead of taking off to the Southside. Pete is one of the biggest nerds that I have ever met, and I love the guy. I was really lucky to have these guys as friends. I really need to get in touch with Pete because he is just a few countries away in Cameroon right now. Like I said before I was a selfish, raciest, greedy, immature, self-serving people pleaser who only cared about myself. If you had asked me at this time if I was a Christian I would have told you yes, but I can easily tell you now that I wasn’t. I regularly attended a Christian fellowship called Cornerstone and volunteered occasionally with an organization that cared for the homeless, and I knew the gospel in my head but not in my heart. I cannot honestly tell you that all of the problems that I had back before I was a Christian are gone but I can say that God has done a lot of work on me. All of the sins I listed above are fairly easy to see and hate when you see them in other and you never suspect yourself to be guilty of them. I had a lot of friends at Cornerstone which is really the only thing that kept me coming back, (especially after they rejected me for a leadership position that they seemed to give out like candy, that really hurt my pride but also started the healing it needed) they were all white though.

Between freshmen and sophomore year I went on a study abroad trip to Beijing for two weeks. On this trip I absolutely loved the culture and met some of my best friends in the other people who went including Matt aka Magnum, Eric aka Jackhammer, and Guy aka Guy. Once again they were all white.

Sophomore year I lived with Eric aka Erow in a sweet hotel like dorm room. Eric has got to be one of the most goal oriented people that I have ever met. He is already married to a beautiful woman named Beth (I had the honor of being his best man) and works as an industrial engineer for a grocery store and tells me about how he should be making more money, he would rather be doing consulting and he plans to move to Copenhagen within ten years. No plan to have children yet though, but if that did happen he would have to reconsider all of his other plans. He is the one who got me interested in joining Peace Corps, which I am confident he would also love to do this, but I feel like his life is too structured to move to Africa without knowing what things will be like beforehand. I really liked living with Eric. He made me better. He got all A’s because he studied a lot. I remember complaining to our mutual friends that he would be studying when I wanted to watch TV or play video games. I did not study nearly enough. I would cheat on homework and just scrape by in the classes that I wasn’t interested in. When I think about what I learned in college the thing that sticks out the most is that I learned how to learn and think. Civil engineering is an excellent degree and I do feel like I earned it, but I would have had a much better GPA had I not cheated so much. I never turned to performance enhancing drugs to get better test scores, but that doesn’t make me better than those who did. Cheating is cheating.

My cheating drove a wedge between my relationship with Chris. We were studying the same major, but at the end of sophomore year he changed to Architectural studies. This was a good move for him, but at the time I felt like I was being abandoned. Now he is in graduate school studying architecture and he is really good at it. I frequently asked Chris for his homework so I could copy it and he was always unhappy doing that. I caught some students last term copying homework and they got zeros. When I caught them doing this I wasn’t angry. Instead I felt sympathy for them because of my own experience with cheating. I hope they can learn the same lesson that I did. Things are cool between Chris and me now. He is still one of the coolest people that I have ever had as a friend.

Between sophomore and junior year I worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. My position was as a co-op working for the bridge inspection crew. I hated this job and my boss. Everyone I worked with appeared to hate their job and their boss. I did make a lot of money though so I bought a flat screen TV. I decided not to return to that co-op.

Junior year I lived with Chris and Pete, but we continued to drift apart and I blame it on me. Although I wished this had never happened I can see why it was necessary. I was spending a lot more time at Cornerstone getting to know everyone there and a lot less with the friends that I had held onto since freshman year. I started to attend cornerstone events whatever they were. I didn’t care if they sounded fun or if my friends were going to be there. I went to a lot of volunteering opportunity and also all you can eat prayer (all night prayer was the real name for it but I like calling it all you can eat because there were a ton of snacks there so you could indulge in that too). I saw and admired this in my friend Dan aka Fish and decided to emulate it. Every event that I went to I could always tell myself that Dan will be there. Also at this time God brought into my life the best friend I have ever had JB aka Josh. JB is not cool. He is not attractive. He is very weird and childish a lot of the time. He is only the most loving and humble person that I have ever met. Oh yeah and he is black. I can imagine now how difficult it must be to be one of three or four black people in a crowd, but JB did it and changed my life because he did. There are a few reasons as to why JB became my best friend. JB and I have been perpetually single. We may date a little, but there has not been anything that you could possibly consider a relationship. We went to the same bible study for a long time and share 90% of our friends because of this. Lastly I see who I want to be in JB.

Second semester of junior year I started a new co-op at Bunting Graphics Inc. I was working as a project manager of sorts. They never gave me any real responsibility. I hated this job although my boss was alright. Everyone I worked with appeared to hate their job and their boss. While working here I went on a mission’s trip to the Naomi house orphanage in Navajo Nation Arizona during spring break. I went with a lot of people that I knew but didn’t hang out with. I don’t think I would have done this the year before, but now that it no longer mattered to me who was going. It did still matter if these people liked me though so that was my main focus of the trip. I succeeded. It didn’t really matter to me how much I could help out there even though that was really the reason I went there. I have been told many times that an experience is going to change your life, but never actually experienced that. The Naomi trip did not change my life. All it really did was showed me more people that I desperately wanted to be like. Rob aka Ham Loaf was the guy I admired most. I knew Rob from before, but we hardly knew each other. I would consider Rob to be the most genuine person I’ve ever met. Rob is married now to Chelsea who also went on the trip and lived in the apartment above mine at the time. I missed their wedding because I moved to Africa the month before. Another guy I became friends with is Andy aka dad. Andy and I have a very similar sense of humor so we hit it off rather quickly even though he is a huge West Virginia fan. He also was one of the Cornerstone leaders.

After I finished working at Bunting Graphics Inc. I went back to school for an entire calendar year. This wasn’t my plan. I wanted to find another co-op and continue trying to make civil engineering work out. Any civil engineering job is a good one right so if this is the case then in order to be successful I needed to continue down this path. I had hated both co-ops that I had had so far and neither of them wanted me back either. The co-op office decided that they weren’t going to help me find a new co-op. On the same night we had bible study. I was off during bible study and it must have been obvious because at the end of the night Andy started asking me what was wrong. We talked for a long time about how I felt like a failure. Andy praised me for my actions on the Naomi trip. This was the life changing experience that I was waiting for. God was speaking to me through Andy. I was like Jacob, wrestling with God for my whole life; serving myself instead of others. Any good that I did was a selfish desire to make myself feel a little happier. Happiness isn’t based on what happens to you it is how you face what happens to you. I thought that money and success would bring me happiness, but the only thing that could make me happy is doing as Jesus says. I needed to die to myself and live for others.

Becoming a Christian can be instantaneous like it was for Paul, but for me it took years. It was a slow painful process where all of my sins had to be revealed to me first. I needed a reason to repent before I could do so.

I went on a trip to Akagera National Park. It was great. I went with a bunch of friends on a safari. While riding on the truck I kept hanging out of the window to get a better look. Once when I was hanging out of the window I got whacked in the ear by a jaggerbush. The thorn on this jaggerbush was probably about an inch long. My ear got really bloody and hurt for a long time. I usually sleep on the same side that I got hit on and that night I could not sleep at all. Luckily the thorn did not stick in my ear because that would be serious. My ear healed completely within two days. I boast in my weakness like Paul did to the Corinthians. I rejoice in my failures. God has removed my thorns and healed my wounds, but I am always finding new ones that I need to ask Him to remove.

I attribute most of my understanding of the gospel to Greg aka The Baron. He was there for me from the first time I went to Cornerstone up until I left for Africa teaching how to be a disciple. Christianity is an education and I got a good one. He just got married as well to Jenna who is one of the coolest girls I have ever met and was probably not supposed to tell me this but she said if I hadn’t moved to Africa they would have wanted me in their wedding. I am happy to let someone else have the opportunity to share that special day with them, but it did hurt to not be able to make it. I just hope that what I said in this blog doesn’t embarrass him in any way because I know that I might have it wrong.

 

Akagera National Park is beautiful.

Everyone who went and the drivers.

Giraffes

Me hanging out the window.

My poor ear.

I’m taking the bull by the horns. It’s a metaphor but it really happened.

I cannot Accept!

Most of the Rwandans that I talk to think I am really rich. They think that all Americans are really rich. They also think that no one is unhappy in America. They desperately want to go there so that they can escape poverty and suffering. They hear about the welfare checks and food that our government offers and they think that everyone gets these things automatically and that no one goes hungry. One of the five English phases that all Rwandans know is “Give me money”. They know to say this to abazungu (anyone who isn’t African) and I hear it on many days. I also get asked a lot if I can take someone with me to America when I return. By American standards I am not rich, but even a fairly poor American is rich compared to a Rwandan. The story I am about to tell is one I have been telling recently to people to justify why my life in Rwanda has been easier than when I was in America. I’m definitely not saying that my life has been hard or bad because it has been good. I have had every opportunity available to me to succeed living in the upper middle class in an affluent neighborhood. Last year I got my taste of the real world that you hear about all the time while you are in school and honestly I am not in a rush to get back to it.
Last year I was a poor American. I would just call it two year except that I escaped to Africa for the last part of the second. I was lucky that my mother took it upon herself to continue to feed me even though I wasn’t living at home, but other than that I had a very hard time. This started when I returned from a vacation to Hawaii and found 90% of what I had in my apartment had been stolen. All that the thieves left were my surround sound system because it was too much work to take probably and my golf clubs that were hidden in the basement. My best friend Eric, aka E row, lived really close to me so right after leaving my luggage at my place I went and told him about it. I couldn’t be there. I had just gone from a lavish family vacation where we were blowing all of the mileage and hotel points my dad had built up to being as upset and pissed off as I have ever been. After that I got in Eric’s car and he drove us to a bible study and I remember really well the joke that he made, which turned into a trick because I went along with it, he actually had people believing that my bed was taken. The next week I was scammed into buying a sound system that was supposed to cost 1800 for 250 dollars but was really worth about 100. So right after I lost most of the things that I had spent my money on I wasted more with the idea that I could get them back (I was hoping to sell the sound system on the internet to make some kind of profit). I soon after applied to the Peace Corps and when I realized how selfish I was and how prideful I was of the things I had. But I was by no means done learning this lesson.
After graduating from college I got a job working as an independent contractor for Dan. I liked working for Dan although I did hate roofing, but that was only because it was hard work. This lasted for three weeks until Dan dropped a downspout that sliced into my thumb. This is when I found out for real that my health insurance was gone and how much I use my thumb because it was three weeks before it healed (independent contractors do not get insurance provided for them or work man’s compensation). After returning to work I told Dan that I no longer had insurance so he fired me. The money that I made working for Dan held me off from July till September when I found a job working for another contractor Rich who didn’t care that I didn’t have insurance. I worked on and off for him for about six weeks. He told me the story of when he was growing up which puts this one to shame. At the same time I had met someone who told me that they would hire me to tutor math at a high school not too far from my apartment. All that I had to do was receive child abuse clearance. I applied for this clearance in September and waited until the end of December before it came. So I started that job in early January 2010.
I felt like such a loser when I couldn’t pay the rent because my tutoring job didn’t pay me for two and a half months. It was just as bad that I couldn’t pay my roommates for the gas, electricity or cable. I remember when my bank account hit zero was when I was paying for my vaccinations to get medically cleared to join the Peace Corps. I went into the bathroom of the clinic and cried. Then I walked to the office of my friend Greg and prayed and cried some more. My life was so filled with uncertainty. I was counting on the Peace Corps to accept me, but everything they sent me just made me more uncertain that I would ever get my invitation. The following Sunday I went to a different church than I usually go to for service, but I did attend Bible study there, because I was volunteering there after the service with my bible study to give away lunch to the homeless. I was sitting in the pew with about 27 dollars in my pocket and negative two on my credit card and 25000 in loan debt and no income to speak about. And I felt God speak to me. He told me to put the money in my pocket into the offering. I then convinced myself that I shouldn’t do that though so God told me to go home to my parents’ house and break my piggy bank that I had completely forgotten about. My mom had mentioned this piggy bank to me on one of our grocery shopping trips but I blew her off partly because I didn’t want to count it or pay to have someone else count it for me. I finally got over my pride and counted it. There was nearly 600 dollars in it that I had been collecting since I was in elementary school so I could settle at least most of my debt with my friends all in quarters, nickels and dimes. Once I was paid I didn’t just sit on it either like I had done for all of the other jobs I have ever had. I tithed immediately because I felt bad that I hadn’t given when God told me to. I also called up friends that I hadn’t seen in a while to get lunch with them and tell them I had gotten my Peace Corps invitation.
The next thing I knew I had gotten a job working for the census, which paid well. I only worked for them for seven weeks but that was enough for me to ride on until I left for Rwanda.
I was living in fear and I hated it. I imagine that this is a lot like what Rwandans go through. I had a lot of people who bailed me out of my misery by either taking my word that I would pay them back or by giving me handouts out of the goodness of their heart. These handouts include the time amazing friends who I lived with or hung out with, and of course my family continuing to buy me the food I wanted. And one thing that I remember specifically was when Greg took me to the AFC championship game between the Steelers and Ravens, which was followed by the Steelers winning the Superbowl. That happened the weekend after I bought the junk stereo system. I had a conversation with Magnum who was my roommates through all of this right before leaving for Rwanda. He said to me that he knew how hard this time was for me, but he hoped that I would remember all of the fun we had together, and while I was unemployed he could always count on me to be home to hang out or talk to. He more than anyone else except maybe me, noticed a change in my behavior and Maturity. During this time was when I realized for the first time what Jesus meant by you cannot serve two masters and to not worry about tomorrow. This is why I think that I like it when Rwandans say be patient to each other. I know that God put me through this period of suffering so that I could become more of the person he wants me to be. Difficult periods are parts of life and all we can is be patient because for everything there is a season.
For the Rwandans who tell me that I am rich I give them the facts. I try to be completely transparent about it. I tell them that I have 20000 dollars in debt (my parents paid for some of it but that is only because they had told me they would and I was using their word as leverage for things like getting them to agree to the Peace Corps that they would take care of my loans while I was serving and cosigning a lease for me which they never did anyways and another one of my roommates had to sign in my place. I am not bitter about these things and I am grateful that they paid for so much of my college tuition. I have forgiven them for any and every way they have ever hurt me. I do love my parents. I know that I am just another prodigal son anyways). I tell them my monthly salary here. (I don’t usually tell the students this though). It is a lot less than what they all think I am making. A student at the school thought I was making 40000 dollars a month. I told him my actual salary and his response was “I cannot accept!” By this response I can tell that I am not rich by Rwandan standards either, but I am not living in poverty either. I have also told people that my life was harder in America than it is here in Rwanda and I get the same response. I respond to that with “Have you been there, how do you know?” but that doesn’t really change their minds. This last statement still might be difficult to agree with if you know both Rwanda and America, but I have a different perspective of both than most do I think.


This is me with my teaching staff on our school picnic out to Gisenyi. This picture was taken in Musanze though





Gisenyi is right on the Lake Kivu. Notice how everyone is looking at me.





The view of a mist filled valley from Byumba.












Taking the water buffalo by the horns. It’s a metaphor but it really happened. I would love to get a picture of me doing this for real but I haven’t worked up the courage/been stupid enough to go through with it yet.