I’ll admit it — I’ve spent most of my 25 year professional career hoping for the best and planning for the worst.  Handling very expensive marketing programs where you have one chance to get it right for clients that aren’t interested in excuses.  It’s this experience and perspective that I believe gives myself and The Peace Project an edge in places like Africa where there is often a desire on the part of aid workers to assess, evaluate, plan and then get to work and then at the end of it all, do some more assessing, evaluating and it seems, possibly more back-patting than the results warrant.

In this sea of caution, I feel like a cowboy that more than one person has heard utter “People are crawling on the ground — it’s pretty obvious they need crutches.  The result?  They’ll be walking.  I don’t need no study to tell me that!”

Needless to say, I’ve been the recipient of a few raised eyebrows that others haven’t tried all that hard to hide.

It became apparent today that there is a hell of a lot of work to do between now and World Peace Day and that things ain’t gonna be picture perfect once we get there.  As a friend in Africa laughingly informed me “There are no well-oiled machines around here, so don’t worry.”

Strangely enough, I haven’t been, which was either a testament to my delusion or exhaustion as I made my way through the following with an odd (and possibly unwarranted) sense of calm today…

o  10am meeting with the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. State Department who offered to have the U.S. Ambassador to Sierra Leone visit our main site, bless our efforts and take a photo with yours truly.  I’ll admit that while there are many things I won’t stoop to that others will, I’ve realized that a photo with the Ambassador might break loose some spare change and as we say around here these days — “whatever it takes”.

o  Spent the next hour or so juggling two iPhones and scheduling lots of meetings.

o  1pm meeting at UNICEF to discuss the press conference and crutch distribution. I’m purposely leaving out the discussion about the container that we’re working to untangle in Customs — there are some things one just can’t dwell on.

o  3pm meeting with Handicap International to discuss how they can support Operation Rise.  Thanks guys, but we’re a little too late in the game for that change of plans.

o  4pm meeting with Musa, Michele D’Acosta’s African son, to hand over an iPhone for him to unlock for Michele and discuss child party on Sunday.  Follow-on phone call to ask him to also pick up SIM card.

o  4:30pm meeting with head of Aberdeen site which caused me to really understand how much work we still have to do.  Lots of deep breaths immediately following.

o  5:30pm meeting with head of Grafton site during which I was told that the t-shirts weren’t being printed, nor had they followed up on other items they had agreed to do.  Time to regroup.

o  6:00pm meeting with journalist Theo Gbenda, recommended by journalist Joan Baxter, who mentioned he also works for Culture Radio.  Perfect — any chance you can get me a DJ, sound system, podium and microphone?

o  6:30pm meeting with Gibriel Kamara who did the first Peace Wall and who will be doing another this year…and who unexpectedly now finds himself manufacturing Peace Project t-shirts.

o  7:30pm is the time Tejan shows up (early) and as Gibriel and I walk back up the hill to the hotel to meet him, someone calls my name from a cab.  It’s Wizzy who’s got the 8pm slot on my dance card.

While I peel off some cash for Gibriel to buy some t-shirts, Tejan wolfs down some chicken in the hotel restaurant and Wizzy winds up for the sales pitch that comes after we discuss plans for the Amputee Soccer League to provide peace-keeping detail at all eight distribution sites.

“Sure Wizzy…I’d love to join you on the radio and television first thing on Monday morning to talk about how the Amputee Soccer Team was the inspiration behind The Peace Project.”

Several hours later while Tejan snuggles beside me playing video games, I find myself writing this blog in hopes that you’ll get a glimpse into the wacky wonderful world of “whatever it takes here” in Sierra Leone.

Tomorrow we’re off on a whirlwind tour of four of our distribution sites and back in Freetown Wednesday night to meet Dave Zuern and Michele D’Acosta, two of the other gun-slinging cowboys who have been practicing their own special brand of “whatever it takes” today to get this project done.

See you all on Wednesday.  Until then, stay blessed…

Earlier this week, I got home after a particularly long day at the office and was more than a little exhausted.  I decided to take a walk while waiting for my daughter’s father to bring her home.  As I rounded the corner in my neighborhood, gratefully thinking about all of the people that have walked beside me on this Peace Project journey, I looked up at the moon and felt a jolt of energy so strong that I was taken aback.  I later spoke with a shaman and she shared that I had many powerful guides walking beside me on this journey and this was their way of letting me know that I needed to stay out of the fear, live in gratitude, and that all would be fine

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re one of the people that I was thinking about after that long day.  Thank you.  Because of you, we’ve continued to have many large and small miracles this week and I wanted to quickly share some of them with you.

Getty Images has jumped on the Peace train and will be sending a photographer to shoot Operation Rise in Sierra Leone on World Peace Day.  I’m also thrilled to share that filmmaker Sergi Agusti (whose work was a major source of inspiration for The Peace Project), will be joining the documentary team led by Michele D’Acosta and supplemented by a number of local filmmakers from We Own TV.  Michele has been quietly pulling footage from one of our recent visits together, seeking funding and putting the World Peace Day filming plan in place.  I invite you to take a look at one of the clips from an orphanage whose children will be the first crutch recipients.

I was also excited to learn this morning that our first container of product has arrived.  (Yes, that noise you heard was a sigh of relief…)  Our second container is due to arrive early next week.  We’ve put a plan in place to get the word out and are now working on World Peace Day activities and looking ahead to what happens after World Peace Day.  It’s hard to believe, but after we distribute the remaining crutches and take a vacation, we actually have something even more monumental planned for the coming year.  Stay tuned and let’s prove that it is possible to change the world!

If you’ve been around since we launched The Peace Project a year ago, you may remember reading this blog in which I shared not just my trepidation about the safety of Sierra Leone, but the response of photojournalist Pep Bonet (whose incredible photos of Sierra Leone were the catalyst for The Peace Project) as he laughed (loudly) when I questioned him about the safety of this country, telling me with amazement in his voice “Sierra Leone is the safest country in the world right now.”  Now that I’ve been working in and visiting Sierra Leone for a year, I can see why he laughed.

The media plays tricks with you – reporting loudly all the drama and trauma that happens, instead of sharing what it’s like every day down in the streets where people are quietly finding their way to peace.

As Edward Emmanuel, Director of One Family People, an amazing NGO and another one of our partners for Operation Rise, said to me yesterday “You have to have peace in the streets to have peace in the country.”

But in order to experience peace in the streets, you must be in the streets, and this is where the disconnect happens for many who work here.  If you land at the airport and then spend your days being ferried around in a white 4×4 emblazoned with the logo or your respective NGO, you’re going to see a Sierra Leone that is much different from the one that I experience.

I’ll admit that riding around in cars that are typically 20 years past a quiet junkyard death in the United States was shocking at first, but I’ve actually come to have a weird enjoyment of Freetown’s bizarre taxi experience.  Since there are no buses in the city, an amazingly intricate system of rattle-trap vehicles has been set up – patrolling the city in zones, looking for people casually holding out fingers that correspond with the number of people in their party that need a ride.  If you choose to participate in this system instead of hiring a taxi for a solo ride, oftentimes you’ll find yourself in a car with three or four others – which gives you a real chance to get up close and personal, especially as people get packed in and picked up and dropped off at random places along the way, arriving at their destinations or jumping out in preparation for catching another taxi patrolling an adjacent part of the city.

This trip has found me in lots of taxis accompanied by Tejan who has taken the lead in the navigation department, unerringly leading the drivers to our destinations.  These destinations have included numerous meetings with other partners – partners like One Family People, who also believes that “Through creativity and community, we can change the world.”, and lives that motto every day – ministering to some of this countries most disadvantaged, bringing dancing into the lives of deaf people, and music into the lives of polio survivors, amputees and others with mild to severe disabilities, and then at the end of the day, taking on one of the most difficult tasks of all – going out after midnight into the wet, dirty streets to offer comfort to those who are disabled and living in conditions that make homelessness in Los Angeles look like a luxury.

This journey that I’ve been on has left me speechless dozens of times and found me with me tears in my eyes a number of others – but there’s only been a handful of times where I’ve been both.

“Do you have your dancing shoes on?”  Edward asked me yesterday when I showed up to his office so that he could (as he said), take me on a journey into sound.  I smiled slyly – realizing that Edward doesn’t know me well enough (yet) to know that I always have my dancing shoes on.  As he led me into the first performance room where a PA system had been set up and eight musicians (including one of our Peace Children, Posseh Conteh) sat wearing their RISE UP! wristbands, my eyes adjusted and they began to sing.  What the performance lacked in refinement, was more than made up for in heart, and as they sang U2’s rendition of Nina Simone’s song “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free”, tears welled up in my eyes at the beauty of the transformation that I was experiencing – not just in them, but also in myself.

Smiling Edward then led me into the dancing room and after clumsily introducing myself via sign language to the eight deaf performers, the drumming began.  And then, as the dancing began, I learned what it looks like when people who can’t hear the music, feel the music.  Thus, I was ready when one of the dancers who had shyly averted her eyes when we were introduced only moments before, boldly grabbed my hands and pulled me onto the dance floor.  And then, as Tejan looked on, I too felt the music, and really understood once again, that creativity and community does change the world.

I’ve come to believe that it’s hard to really help people if you don’t understand them and it’s hard to understand them if you’re in your car, splashing by, windows rolled high so that they don’t get too close.

As Edward said, peace starts in the streets, but you’ve got to be in the streets and have your dancing shoes on if you’re really going to feel it.

Since we launched The Peace Project a year ago, I’ve been head down, working an incredible number of hours as we try to build a social movement from the ground up and create change – not just in the country of Sierra Leone where we’re currently working, but in the hearts and minds of people worldwide.  This journey is sometimes tinged with sadness, often it is joyful, sometimes I’m just plain tired, and occasionally I feel a sense of exhilaration unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before as I feel my heart opening up, the limiting beliefs that I’ve held my entire life melting away, my worldview broadening, my spirituality expanding, and a confidence in my personal power to bring light awaken within me.

Often this evolution happens at light speed causing me to look back in surprise – the person I was just moments before unrecognizable.  My beliefs about the importance of money and  material possessions and about what constitutes poverty or aid, are just a few that have undergone radical shifts – another radical shift is the belief that success should measured by one thing across the board – whether or not you’re happy.  Not by how much you own, or who you know, not by where you went to school or your GPA, not by where you live or what your accomplishments are, but by whether at the end of the day, you go to sleep with a smile on your face and wake up the next morning with another one.

My daughter, Willow, has been another instrumental factor in this shift.  Her first words upon waking in the morning are typically “I love you Mommy” followed invariably by a more practical line of thinking, “Can I have my juicy please?” knowing that I’ll have it sitting right next to the bed – waiting for her to wake so that we can share what are, without a doubt, the most precious moments of my life.  But she often surprises me, as children do, with her keen understanding of how simple life really is “It’s going to be a great day Mommy!”  were her first enthusiastic words one recent morning.  I couldn’t help but smile and then asked “Why Sweetie?”  She looked at me somewhat quizzically, wondering I’m sure how I could miss something so obvious, and then she replied “Because the sun is out.”

Early this morning before the commencement of my two days of travel to Sierra Leone, I was slurping down some coffee and going through my early morning ritual — emails, TheWhole9.com, and a quick visit to Facebook and I came across a photo posted by someone that showed himself and a bunch of laughing Malawian children.  I used to think these photos were somewhat gratuitous until I experienced this phenomena for myself – realizing that the African children always shown were indeed happy and loved having their photo taken.  So the fact that he had a photo like this was not surprising to me, what was surprising was his comment — which went something like this “Don’t be fooled.  These kids may be happy, but their life is hell on earth.”

I smilingly left this comment “If they’re happy, then perhaps we should examine our definition of hell-on-earth.”

Does lack of plumbing constitute hell?  Or does lack of happiness?  I’ve learned many surprising things in the last year and one of them is that those in Africa that don’t have (m)any of the things that we’re brought up to believe are necessary to a live a fulfilled life don’t seem to be any less happy than many of the wealthiest people in the Western world who have more stuff than they know what to do with.

As I’ve continued to pare down my lifestyle so that I can help finance The Peace Project, I’m not any less happy because I allow myself to buy less stuff, or because I buy less expensive stuff, I’m happier because I’m fuller – because the values I’ve adopted and the mission I’m so passionate about and the love and support I’m getting from the community and our comrades in Sierra Leone leave me feeling more fulfilled, and unlike those Malawian children, I’ve still never had to skip a meal.

Hell on Earth?  Hmmm.  I wonder.  Or Heaven on Earth?

“You looked like a Rock Start when you got here.  What happened to you?” a British gentleman (who was on the same flights from London to Freetown and then returning back to London during my last trip) asked me as we were boarding a return flight to London.  I looked at him with a start — surprised not just at his blunt observation, but at the fact that he called what I looked like when I got here after nearly two days of travel a “Rock Star”, as well as the reality that what had happened to me since then manifested itself so visibly.  The reality is that if you arrive in Freetown looking less than fresh, after being in the trenches for a few weeks, you leave looking like you’ve been through the wringer.

Life in Sierra Leone is hard.  Lodging is poor – the hotel I typically stay in is worse than any Motel 6 I’ve ever seen except the walls are filthy, hot water is spotty, it’s noisy as hell and after 12 days seems almost as depressing.  When you travel it can get worse – I’ve stayed at places with no running water, barely any ventilation in the rooms, and there are no public restrooms while you’re on the road traveling which is why you constantly see men, backs to the road, relieving themselves.  If you’re a woman?  Be sure not to drink much water, because what passes for a toilet while you’re traveling is invariably smelly, filthy, usually has insects and spiders, a toilet with no seat and no water running through it.  Shockingly this is an improvement on what most Sierra Leoneans live with day to day as evidenced by a comment a native made when describing the restroom in her office “We have a nice restroom here.”  After using it, I could only wonder what she was comparing it to.

But if life is hard for a visitor, for those living in Sierra Leone, it’s almost impossibly difficult – with unemployment estimates often topping 90%, money is hard to come by, begging is considered a viable way to earn a living especially by the disabled who simply have no other options, you’re dirty nearly all of the time, food is cooked over a fire is you’re lucky enough to have it (food and a fire that is), people (and especially children) are sleeping on dirt floors, sometimes water has to be carried from miles away, clothes are washed by hand, close to 90% of the people don’t have electricity (much less any entertainment) and education is a sad joke by standards on any other continent – I would venture a guess that a high school education here is not much better than a 4^th or 5^th grade education in the United States.

Oddly enough, that’s part of the beauty of this country as you see people creating opportunities for themselves and living their lives without complaint because they simply have no choice.  Given half a chance, people here want to work – I’ve seen it time and again and while in Kenema caught a glimpse of the most amazing example of hope and perseverance I’ve ever witnessed.  As Eku Scottland, a polio survivor, explained that he was trying to create opportunities for the severely polio afflicted people he represented so they wouldn’t have to beg, he showed me the blacksmith shop that he had developed in the Opportunity Training Center (one of Operation Rise’s distribution sites).  The photo below shows men crouched over open fires, their legs twisted into position not because they do yoga, but because, atrophied from polio and thin as sticks, their legs have no muscles to provide resistance.  The open fires they work on provide the heat to shape crude knives, latches, and other functional items made from discarded metal and sold for pennies.  Eku also runs a tailoring shop and an electronics repair shop and says his wish is for a welding machine so they can improve the level of the work that they do.  My wish is that we’ll raise enough money to get him one.

Another example of ingenuity was a group of weavers that we came across.  “Pull over, pull over” I urged Mohamed as the magical sight of dozens of handmade looms caught my eye while driving past the community of Grafton.  Upon looking at the fabric produced, one of the few handicrafts I’d seen in Sierra Leone that I thought (with modifications) would be embraced by the American and European markets, I started envisioning The Peace Project’s first exported goods and in addition to having a blanket made for Tejan, I’m carrying fabric home to have a few prototypes designed for a Peace Purse, Peace Blanket and Peace Scarf, all “Made in the Peaceful nation of Sierra Leone”. 

On this trip, I was also lucky enough to see the opposite end of Sierra Leone’s spectrum – Michele and I met a group of gentleman including the CEO of London Mining, Sierra Leone’s largest mining concern (mentioned in this blog) who represent the elite class of Sierra Leone, all of them educated abroad, extremely well traveled and by all appearances, quite wealthy.  The night we had dinner with them was highlighted by drinking nice wine, eating in a great restaurant (who knew there was such a thing here?), and visiting the O Bar (shown below) which shockingly reminded me of a bar one would see in NYC right down to the scantily clad bar maids and people drinking expensive champagne.

As I surveyed the scene here, including all of the people who had never seen the things I’ve seen in this incredible country, I had the same urge I’ve had numerous times before to shout “Are you AWAKE?”, but the music was too loud, the smoke too thick, and piercing the bubble of those who didn’t want to see too great a task, even for me — someone who used to be a rock star but who now is just a peace-loving hippie hoping to change the way a few people think about change.

Through community and creativity, we can change the world.