The Light I Started With
What studying by kerosene lamp in Gaspard still means to me
Before I ever opened an AI assistant, I opened books by the light of a kerosene lamp.
I grew up in Gaspard, Haiti. Electricity was not part of my everyday life, but learning was something I wanted. Looking back, that small circle of light remains one of the clearest images of where my journey began.
Today, I work with tools that would have been difficult for my younger self to imagine. I can ask questions, explore ideas and build software with artificial intelligence. Yet the distance between those experiences feels smaller when I think about what connects them: the desire to understand something I did not understand yesterday.
That is one of the threads running through From Rural Haiti to AI. The book follows my life from rural Haiti through education, banking, teaching and entrepreneurship, and into my experience with AI.
Writing it has meant returning to my beginnings. Gaspard belongs in the story because it is where the story started—and because readers deserve to know the person behind the practical advice.
Perhaps you have a place like that in your own life: somewhere that continues to shape how you see the world, however far you travel.
Where did your own desire to learn begin?