Harambee Center home page
Road Rules: Mississippi 1999
Road Rules: Mexico City 1998
Road Rules: Korea 1997

Note: We didn't take any pictures - I'm not sure why - but we had a good time even though no pictures were shot. However, in lieu of photos, we've scattered some images that we believe "relate" to the trip.

Text: by Harambee Associate Director Rudy Carrasco

WEDNESDAY

Harambee Friends, over the next few days you will receive email dispatches from the 2000 Harambee trip to the MacWorld Expo.

Each year, Harambee staff takes a group of children to San Francisco for the Macworld Expo, one of the world's premier Macintosh computer shows. Our goal is to create memories surrounding technology that will motivate Harambee students to excel in school and in computing.

This year's group numbers seven: Tamika, Magdalena, Jasmine, Corey, Giovanni, and me and my wife Kafi. We will be driving in a seven-passenger minivan.

We ask that you prayerfully track with our trip. We also hope you learn more about our work in developing indigenous leaders from among Northwest Pasadena's urban young people.

Our itinerary is as follows:

THURSDAY
6am -- depart from Pasadena; drive the I-5
2pm -- arrive at Stanford University. Tour of school.
5pm -- Visit PayPal.com and Dave Wallace in Palo Alto
Evening -- cross the Bay Bridge and stay in Berkeley with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (Hanson and Wong families)

FRIDAY
8am -- Tour exhibit area at MacWorld Expo
2pm -- Visit Biospace.com and Jennifer King in San Francisco
3pm -- Tour San Francisco area (Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, etc.)
Evening -- in Berkeley

SATURDAY
8am -- Visit Handshigh.com and Pekary family in East Palo Alto
11am -- depart for home

Please keep us in your prayers.

THURSDAY

We left Pasadena at 7am and at 8:30am we ran into dense fog just past the Grapevine. On the drive into the Silicon Valley we passed the garlic capitol of the world, Gilroy, and we also drove by Harris Ranch and thousands of cattle. The kids were impressed by the smells of both places. The girls made birthday-type cards for Kafi and presented them to her at the 152 Junction - only it's not Kafi's birthday. They just thanked her for letting them come on the trip.

We arrived at Norm Nason's office in Saratoga about 1pm. Norm talked to us about SpanishConnection.com, an Internet startup creating portals for Central America. But what got the kids' attention were artifacts inside Norm's office: a 200 year old table, a 250 year old cabinet, and a clock that is a mere 100 years old. I told the kids to touch these things as they are not soon about to touch anything that old. After Norm's we stopped and said hello to Michelle Atkins of The River Church Community in Cupertino. Michelle and I were both part of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at Stanford and spent two months in South Africa with an IV missions group.

After visiting Michelle we popped over to Stanford's campus to visit Ernie Chuang, a sophomore at Stanford who served last summer as a Harambee intern. We hung out in Ernie's room for a few minutes, and Ernie and his roommate graciously fielded questions about dorm life. Yes, there is 100-base T Ethernet connection in every room. Yes, you can play your music as loud as you want, as long as your neighbors do not complain. No, you cannot take the room furnishings with you when the year is over.

After checking out college dorm life our little group walked around campus. We walked around the Quad, visited the bookstore, and drove past the various dorms and row houses that I called home at different points in my Stanford academic career. Stanford is always a great place to take students. We have taken roughly 50+ Harambee students to the campus over a nine-year period. We stopped and peered in a Quad window as a class listened with rapt attention to a disheveled, middle-aged professor. The kids wondered why students would sit there at four pm on a perfectly peaceful afternoon when they could be doing something else. One student asked Ernie, "Is college fun?"

From Stanford we went to PayPal.com, a startup offering a unique e-commerce solution that uses email as a primary mode of security (trust me, it makes sense; else, visit PayPal.com yourself for a demo). At PayPal.com, Dave Wallace explained to the students the life of an Internet startup. Graciously, Dave chose not to reveal many secrets about me, with whom he roomed for a year. The PayPal.com operation was very impressive. The place is just growing beyond its space. People are crammed into offices, two and even three in one. People seem so young and energetic and glad to be doing what they are doing.

From PayPal.com, in the heart of Palo Alto, it took us two hours to get to the Berkeley home of Bruce and J.J. Hanson. At the Stanford Bookstore we had purchased books-on-tape for two of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Final Battle and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Listening to "Wardrobe" made the long commute from Palo Alto to Berkeley bearable. The kids all tracked with Aslan, the stone table, the so-called Deeper Magic, and they themselves reflected on what God was trying to say through this book. It was only when we got to the Hansen's that we learned that the Bay Area's traffic is rated as worse than L.A.'s. At the Hansen's we enjoyed a nice evening of pizza and Outburst with Bruce, JJ, and their beautiful daughter Stasha.

Two things stand out about today. It was great to see Ernie and to see how the kids responded to him. They lit up in his presence, and he seemed a bit lit up as well. I chalk that up, somewhat, to the fact that our kids know him from the summer. The other great thing is that, while in the computer section of the Stanford Bookstore, I checked my email and saw a letter from Jud, a Harambee volunteer. He said hi and asked if Corey could respond at some point. I called Corey over from the Pentium III he was using to surf the web and had him craft a response.

We hit the SEND button and Corey said, "He's going to get that? From here?"

"Yes," I said. "Cool, huh?

He flashed that big smile of his and went back to surfing the web on a sales-floor computer from inside a bookstore, hundreds of miles from home.

FRIDAY

Show day! Thank God that the traffic into The City was light. We arrived at the Moscone Center at 10am and descended to the MacWorld Expo Show floot. We didn't quite start with a bang. Kafi, my wife, was tired. She's five months pregnant, after all. So she and I sat near the MacGaming area while the five kids (Corey, Jovani, Tamika, Magdalena, and Jasmine) observed gamers competing in the National Mac Gaming Tournament.

After a while I toured the floor. There is so much to say about a computer show that it would be either (a) redundant, because you've experienced it already, or (b) rambling and disconnected, since there is too much to say. The kids, however, remember most the umpteen IMacs of all flavors that litter the show spaces. There were other objects of desire: The Apple Cinema Display is the largest, flattest, coolest monitor anyone ever dreamed up. Buttons, t-shirts, pens, and print propaganda is all cheaper than water, and much easier to carry in an Iomega shopping bag.

What was coolest about the show was meeting people from Earthlink at their booth. They recognized Harambee Center (Earthlink sponsors our computer lab) and gave the kids funny orange pens. Next coolest was meeting Bryan Johns, the Apple employee who last year sent us the Think Different posters for Jackie Robinson and Cesar Chavez, which at present adorn the wall of our main tutoring room at Harambee.

At 1pm we left the Expo and visited BioSpace.com, a startup run by Jennifer King. The three story building is a work in progress, but full of employees who seemed very pleased to be working there. (BioSpace is a news and sales sight for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries). After that we asked the kids what they wanted for lunch, and they said...... McDonald's. Sometimes I think that if the choice was between dinner at Red Lobster with Kobe Bryant and Cobi Jones or a #1 value meal at McDonald's, the kid would still pick McDonald's.

Following a hearty grubbing, we rolled up on the Golden Gate Bridge. Kafi was tired again, so I took the kids walking up on the bridge. 1/3 of the way across all the kids, save Jovani, got spooked by the height of the bridge. We debated whether someone would survive a fall (they wouldn't). One girl asked if there were fish in the water. No one was interested in the spectacular marvel of engineering that produced this puente. After my speech they all ran back to the van.

Then it was off to the home of Dieter and Val Zander. Val opened the front door and we smelled.... warm cookies! Wow, I didn't know such a smell could be so welcoming. We got Kafi a spot to lay down for a nap, then our group of six and the Zanders plus their three boys hoofed it over to Golden Gate Park for a little touch football. That park is magnificent! Dinner and chat were very pleasant. The Zanders are planting a church in the Richmond community where they live, and we talked a lot about neighborhood and/or parish-based church planting. Soon after leaving the Zanders were back to our lodging at the Berkeley home of Barry and Michelle Wong.

What I remember most from the day are a set of pauses. While lunching at McDonalds, I told all the kids that instead of praying as a group for our lunch, I wanted them to "take responsibility for their own relationship with God" and pray for their food individually. The pauses followed. The kids were trying to figure out what it meant to do what I said. Finally, one boy asked if I meant that he should pray for his food. Yes, I said, and under my breath prayed that one day he would understand the first part of what I told them.

SATURDAY

After missing the Dunbarton Bridge turnoff and driving all the way around the Bay, from Berkeley to East Palo Alto, we arrived at the home of Shannon and April Pekary and their five children. Our kids knew we were stopping for breakfast with a long-time Harambee friend. They didn't know this was the fourth and final Internet company they would visit on the trip.

Shannon and April made pancakes from scratch, and even crushed their own wheat. We brought the syrup and the turkey bacon. The kids grubbed, then when outside to play in the Pekary's sizable back yard. Finally, one girl came up to me and asked, "Aren't we going to visit another company?" I gathered all of the kids together and said, "Look at this house. This is an Internet company."

They all gave that bewildered, Virginia-Tech-really-beat-Florida-State? look of unbelief. Inside we went, to Shannon's bedroom. Handshigh.com, maker of award-winning software for the Palm Pilot, was sitting there on a small table next to the bed. Shannon's business has no inventory and no storefront. The software he writes may be downloaded from Shannon's store.yahoo.com shingle. Tech support is done entirely over the web.

The kids got their hands on a Palm III, a Palm V, and a Palm VII and quickly quit listening to us adults. There is something about these Palms that grabs their attention in a way that even IMacs don't. Maybe because they are like GameBoys, I don't know.

======

We left the Pekarys and drove home. We listened to a Shakira CD so many times that Corey began to learn the lyrics, even though he doesn't speak Spanish. We arrived home safely around 7pm.

Thank you, thank you, to everyone who prayed for us. So many people made this trip a blessing. Thank you also to everyone who emailed during the trip. I will be replying shortly to the long list in my Outlook Express IN box.

As it says above, an archive of this Road Rules journal will be available from the Harambee web site.

The Lord bless you!

Rudy

Check out Harambee's youth internet program