As a little boy with limited resources I concentrated on things that really mattered. Having less made me appreciate what matters the most: the love of my mother and father, the efforts it took to provide for us (my two sisters and brother). Life as a young boy had many challenges. Losing my father at 10 made me look at life differently. I was a boy left to do a man’s job, well that’s what I thought. It was really an opportunity to see life for what really mattered like finding direction for life as a young man with no teaching, having someone to say good job or you are going to be something.

In high school I was teased by my peers because of how I dressed. Money was scarce but I was close in size to my deceased father so his clothes became mine. I learned to devote my energy to things that mattered like a place of acceptance and not rejection. My life was good because I lived it on my terms not on someone’s expectation of how I should look or what I should wear.  I became developed in an undeveloped world!