Unwinding at the Grand Canyon

The Fellowship that started a little more than one month ago has a purpose – to experience and have the ability to come together with your co-fellows and share those experiences. So it was natural for all of us to look forward to the half way point of the fellowship experience to be able to come together and share.

My co-fellows are wonderful people who have literally worked their hearts out into making the most of every minute of every day during the past 4 weeks of their stay in the United States. They have pushed their limits and personalities to the hilt; demanded more of their individual Program Officers than any other generation of fellows; and have managed to meet more people and attend more receptions than ever before.

I think the group of 24 of us represents a unique combination of people and talents. As Rafael Bundoc from the Philippines smiles and says, “there are people who are quiet, those of us who enjoy parties and those who don’t, those who are here with the ambition to change the world and others who are here with the intention of learning what they can manage to fit into these 10 weeks – we have a very well balanced group.” And a well-balanced group indeed.

However it is amazing how closely-knit the group is when it wants to unwind and share its energy with one another. It would be unfair to say that the group enjoys a party despite the fact that they can rock the pebbles out of the Canyon, but it’s something more than that.

It’s about being together and drawing from one another. It’s about talking through the successes and resolving the frustrations of meetings that work or don’t. it’s about addressing issues from different perspectives and angles. But yes – it is largely about being together, which is why each member of the group was just so eager to assume a role in making this trip such a blasted success.

Thankfully, what happens amongst the Eisenhower Fellows, shall remain amongst the Fellows, and I am certainly not at liberty to divulge the details, but I can tell you this much about the character of each of my co-fellows – these people are amazing and are made up of some of the most fantastic energy that brings all the exciting karma into this world. They are an unbelievably inclusive group of some outstanding individuals that know how to share and how to give back. Regardless of race, ethnicity, background or creed, these guys are off to take on the world and stitch it back together… bit by bit (of course with a bit of that technical support provided by me) –

Rejuvenated, revived and recharged, the fellows take off today to different states and locations to continue on with their journey of the Fellowship.

More details from them as I hear from each one, later on!

The Grand Canyon Comes to Life

The Grand Canyon was beautiful, breathtaking, benevolent, sacred and a collection of about a million other adjectives that I could use to describe its beauty. It’s as if God took a brush and painted one of the most beautiful and intense canvases that can neither be captured in any camera or any post card. You can’t help but put your faith back in the Supreme Being who created something so precious and beautiful. Untouched and untarnished by the vulgar habit of humans to commercialize every inch of mother earth.

As I ran/walked the morning of our second day with Caroline Casey, and took a walk with Tiffany O’Neal over a path on the afternoon of our third day there, that’s all I could think about. Time has come to stand still in the aging rocks of the Grand Canyon. I wonder what atrocities the underbrush has witnessed. I wonder how much history has been archived in the walls of the Canyon. What stories the Hopi Indian tribes may have shared there or the pain and joy that John Wesley Powell, the one-armed explorer who braved the rivers and valleys of the great canyon and made the basis for much of the documentation that is followed even now.

Despite the fact that there was such immense beauty all around us, it did seem a bit surprising that there was such limited connectivity for cell phone reception or internet out there. The hotel that we were staying at, provided the equivalent of a slowspeed, dial up connection that worked only when it was fed two dollar bills for a duration of 8 minutes. Sharlene, Roberto and Bulent were all those who suffered from money-gone-no-service syndrome when the browser refused to spit out ay data after receiving what it referred to as the “generous contribution” from each of them.

Here’s a piece of advise of people who consider the internet to be part of their lifelines into the real world – take a satellite phone with you or invest in some kind of communication peripherals that will allow you to have two-way communication. Even those little walkie-talkies would do.