It was the last day of the final trip of the summer in Dominican Republic. I woke up with great expectations of finishing this trip with excellence and enjoying the community party to the max. However, the sky did not look promising, and I was trying hard not to stress about the what if’s: What if I forgot something? What if it rains? What if no one shows up at our party? Worse yet - what if no one can get to  our party and we just blew all that money on the two roasted pigs and all the rice and beans? But, there was absolutely nothing we could do about it, so we just watched and waited.

When the time came for the party to start, it was pouring rain. So, because of this, we decided to go ahead with the party anyways! As we were trekking up with steep mountain roads towards the village we were hosting the party in, I was reminded of how this location ever came to be for us. Last summer, at the beginning of August, in the last days of her short life, we met a little girl named Danica. Danica’s life was lost to a totally preventable disease. She was 18 months old and was stateless, too poor to be helped in time, and basically abandoned. Her death rocked us to our core, and it actually was what provided the inspiration for the clinic that our friends, Phil and Donna Williams, have built in her name. It is called Danica’s Clinic and it is a clinic of hope in a poor community where health care is often a pipe dream and rarely attainable. Danica’s Clinic now provides this community and the surrounding area with a compassionate doctor and quality health teaching, and a stocked pharmacy, and all this is made possible because of people like the ones that joined us on this particular Hero Holiday. Because of all of this, this community seemed like the perfect community to celebrate friendship and solidarity…and really,  what says “I love you” better than a couple of roasted pigs?

As we pulled up and fishtailed up the mud hill beside the clinic in the pouring rain, I smiled as we saw a group of young boys out in the rain playing percussion on the five gallon pails and with a stick…it was festive, if not soggy! After spending the first two minutes trying to not get wet, we all gave up and stood in the rain and laughed. This is what memories are made of! Our roasted pigs were skillfully chopped up with a machete by Garcia, one of the our Dominican friends, and some rice, beans, and casava finished off the menu. Within moments, word had spread far and wide that we were serving the meal, and people came hurrying up the hill through the mud and sludge to get their meals. We set up a sound system and just began to celebrate life and love and friendship, and it was a beautiful thing to behold! Children laughed and danced and sang with the music, and many of our team laughed and danced right alongside of them.

In my mind, I had fully believed that by some stroke of divine intervention the rain would eventually stop and we would have a little time to just stand outside, but it never did. In fact, it only seemed to rain harder and harder the longer we stayed there. However, that meant little in a moment like this where for just a short time you can indulge in the gift of great food, great company, and great entertainment!

To all the Danica’s Dream Team, I would like to say, “Thank you”. You made that party a success, and your gifts made that clinic possible. The world needs people like you to do things like this. Thank you for giving of your time, your talents, your passion, and your love.  I think a little girl would be very proud of you right now…

This trip with our Hero Holiday nursing and medical students has been non-stop learning, understanding, and memories. Each day I joke with the teams that it is just another day at the office as we march through mud, walk on trails through the jungle to get to the garbage dump, we hand out food to people and watch kids eat pizza for the first time, we paint and mix cement by hand, and we see countless patients through our clinics…quite the office environment if you ask me Today we were out at the garbage dump, working among the people, and something happened that caused me to stop and think…

There were about 20 of us at the garbage dump today working with the people there who collect bottles for income and scrounge for food and provision. We are honored to be able to work alongside them, even if it is for such a short time. Today, while working, Smith, my translator and friend, walked toward me, laughing, and said, “I have to tell you what the people there are talking about. They have a theory on Creation, and I thought you might be interested to hear it: they say that when God made people, He had two piles, one with paper and the other with sand. The paper was white people like you, and the sand was people like the Haitians. The paper gets to learn and grow and become something else, but the sand has to work hard and nothing ever seems to change.” I stopped walking and looked at him. “Is that really how they see it? Do they really think that it is because of my skin color that I can move ahead?” Smith, who is Haitian, said, “People have no answers for their hurt and hard times, and it just seems like it would be easier to be you.”

This afternoon, some of the participants joined me as we brought out rice, beans, and oil to our friends in the village that work at the dump. As we pulled up, it started to rain really hard, so we jumped out of the car and followed them to where it was out of the rain to get organized for delivering the food. We ran under a tiny tin roof on a porch that was held up by sugar cane stalks, and everyone followed us. So here we were:  4 Canadians  and  about  55 Haitians jammed together listening to the rain pound on the tin roof. I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden the hilarity of the situation struck me and I couldn’t stop laughing as chickens were dodging our feet (I guess they didn’t like the rain either) a dog was leaning up against me, a little boy was holding my hand, and I watched our translator wrestle with a Winnie the Pooh umbrella (that someone handed him) that wouldn’t open and probably was a ‘treasure’ from the dump. Just another Saturday at the office, I guess! To the people that lived there, this was life as normal, with the exception of a few extra Canadian faces in the mix. As I kept looking at my watch and wishing the stupid rain would finish because I had other places that I needed to get to before the day was out, they patiently waited in the rain for the food that they desperately needed to feed their families. We really do live worlds apart in so many ways, and I could really learn a few things from these amazing individuals who have lived through more than I can even comprehend.

I have to admit, I guess I can see how my friends’ theories on Creation could seem to be more real than either of us care to acknowledge. Here I am, sitting at my laptop, trying to get my work done, but knowing that in a few minutes I am going to have food, that tonight I will get sleep and be safe, and that for me, the garbage dump is a place to visit, not the place where my existence currently depends on. Nothing but mere location of birth truly separates me and them, and today, after sharing our rainstorm moment, I am even more keenly aware of it.

As we drove back from the village, the car smelled like a wet dog, but we all had a great laugh at the seemingly random moment that we just experienced with total strangers. One of the students with me in the vehicle said, “That’s it - this is definitely what I want to do with my life.”  I assumed she was referring to working with those less fortunate and experiencing change, not standing in the rain with humans, dogs and chickens all vying for dry space, and so my response to her was, “Then if this is what you want to do, I think you should definitely make it happen. This experience can not only be a memory, but it can be a major moment in your life that you will look back on as the moment that changed your way of thinking.”

So, on behalf of changed lives everywhere, I need to thank the dogs, chickens, and humans that shared today’s experience with us. You people are what make it worth it all! Thanks for making this Saturday at the office another great moment in my life where I can learn and make a memory with you. You give so much meaning and perspective to who we are and you inspire us to want to grow to be able to help you grow and move ahead as well…Thanks!

Property tycoon Frank McKinney’s extreme birthday party

Jacqui Goddard in Miami
As the creator of some of America’s most opulent mansions Frank McKinney knows a thing or two about luxury. So when it came to marking his 45th birthday, the flamboyant tycoon was likely to treat his guests to an extravagant party.

Indeed, a tour of his latest construction — a $29 million (£15 million) affair in Manalapan, Florida, with glass staircases, fish swimming in the ceiling, indoor waterfalls and two wine cellars, one for red and one for white — proved a perfect start to the three-day celebration. Then came dinner and champagne at his beachfront estate near by.

But there was barely time for the maverick millionaire’s 55 guests to sleep off their hangovers before they were whisked away for the next phase of his $5,000-a-ticket birthday experience — a sobering trip to the festering slums of Haiti. The Tour of Extremes took them from Florida’s Palm Beach County — among the nation’s wealthiest communities — to Cité Soleil, the poorest suburb of the poorest city in the western hemisphere’s poorest country.

There, Mr McKinney has built more than 500 homes for 4,000 people living in abject poverty through his charity, Caring House Project Foundation. His guests’ ticket money will fund the construction of 55 more.

“It’s not everyone’s idea of a birthday, but it is mine,” he told The Times. “I’m a modern-day Robin Hood. Here I am providing property to the world’s most wealthy; should I not be providing it to the world’s poorest and homeless too?”

Mr McKinney, who started working life with $50 to his name and who now creates properties worth up to $135 million, is a regular on the motivational speaking circuit, giving tips on how to succeed in real estate.

A brazen self-promoter, he even sells $250 talking action figures of himself — in aid of his charity — which come complete with his trademark long blond hair and which spout his mantras: “Make it big!” and “Don’t let fear stop ya!” His favourite, though, is: “Be sure to share your blessings with others.”

With stomachs still groaning from their birthday banquet, Mr McKinney and his friends — largely business owners and real-estate entrepreneurs — toured the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, passing roadside stalls that sold cakes made of mud to fill the stomachs of the starving.

In Cité Soleil, a squalid shantytown where 300,000 people live without running water, electricity or sewage disposal, violent crime and gang wars are commonplace and few outsiders will enter without an armed United Nations escort. But to those he has helped there, Mr McKinney is known as “Bon Papa” and greeted as a hero.

“Here in the US, people miss one episode of Desperate Housewives and they have to go and see their therapist. In Haiti, they have so little yet they are a faith-filled and happy people — they are desperate, but also full of hope,” he said.

“When you take care of sustainable needs like housing and water, they flourish. It has an impact on generations, not just the here and now.”

Angel Aloma, executive director of Food for the Poor, a US charity whose feeding centres in Haiti have received thousands of tonnes of rice from Mr McKinney, said: “His contributions are nothing short of huge.”

In a final cultural twist, Mr McKinney and friends wound up their tour with a night at Haiti’s five-star Hotel Montana, where they ate birthday cake and partied to a calypso band.

“You can have maybe a handful of epiphanous moments in your life and the Tour of Extremes was one, for almost every one of those 55 people who came,” he said. “When they shared their reflections afterwards, not a single one mentioned the mansion or the hotel. They spoke about Haiti.”

Mr McKinney says that he takes his inspiration from “biblical wisdom”. A parable in the Gospel of Luke, is paraphrased into a personal motto: “To whom much is entrusted, much will be expected.”

I have to be honest: it was a little hard to look her in the eye when she was pouring out her heart to me. I felt weak, helpless, and I felt the sting of injustice in a whole new level; it was as if I was seeing my life for the first time from someone else’s perspective…and I was entirely uncomfortable.

Hero Holiday DR was over, and Vaden, myself, and three others had taken the long trek to the southern border with Haiti and now found ourselves in the middle of the poorest neighbourhood in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The area was called Cite-Soleil, and my life was changed by what happened that day. As we crossed over the foot bridge that spanned over a river of deep black sludge, human waste, and rotting garbage, I held Vaden’s hand, and tried to imagine what a place like this could look like if it didn’t look like this. In truthfulness, it was a very difficult image to conjure up in that moment. As we walked up to the group of people staring at us, she caught my eye almost immediately.

Her name was Analiecia, and she looked so tired. Her eyes were sad, her hands weathered, and her clothes looked like they were doomed to be eternally filthy. She was a single mother of 7 kids, and but it was what she said when she looked me in the eye that struck me: “We have nothing and no one cares. We watch as our children starve to death in front of us, with no hope of feeding them enough to survive. Yesterday, 15 of us put our money together to buy one pound of rice between us for our families. Why does no one care?”

I had no answer for Analiecia, only the silent tears in my eyes as I bowed my head in recognition of her intense need. I didn’t even have money on myself, as we were too scared to come into this dangerous neighbourhood with anything of value, and I wondered what it would be like if, in that moment, her eyes were mine and mine were hers. What would I see differently? What would I view as important and worth giving my life for? What would I be willing to do for what I loved?

This past month I have spent many hours and days with incredible people in a very bizarre set of circumstances. With Hero Holiday, we have the privilege of leading Canadians on a journey of self-discovery and global awareness. Through the course of time that our trips take, I am always in awe of one thing more than anything else…Everytime I hand out food, or shoes, or reach out to a hand that needs to be pulled up, I am struck by one simple truth: there is nothing except birth that has separated my hands from theirs-my eyes see life from this view purely because of where I am born, and not because of anything I could have ever done to deserve it.

Analiecia’s eyes held mine that afternoon because they were eyes that reminded me to keep going, to keep believing that something can change, to keep joining hands with those who love the poor and reach out to the exploited.

Analiecia, your eyes have told me of deep truths that I needed to be reminded of and they have stirred a compassion that is not letting me sleep at night. I can’t not become a voice for you; I can’t not see your pain as my own. I can’t not want to be changed by what I now know.

Thank you, Analiecia for having the courage to look me in the eye. It was what I needed to realize that I need to look back into yours and recognize that which I can do to begin to change things for all of us.

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
C.S. Lewis