Keeping the dormitories and lecture halls spotless for Ivy League students has been his livelihood since Lajeunesse moved to the United States as a young man. He works two jobs to support his family: janitor by day, taxi driver by night.
But it’s what he’s done thousands of miles away that will amaze you most.
There is a part of all of us that hangs on to where we are from, that wants to help those we leave behind. For Lajeunesse, that desire consumes him. Though he lives in New Jersey, his heart and mind are never far from Haiti, where he was born.
In November we traveled to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with Lajeunesse. We were on a journey to his hometown of La Source, a tiny village in the mountains to the south of the island nation.
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It’s clear he has no idea how much he has eased their suffering, and in a way, given them a gift greater than water.
“The government cannot do everything,” Lajeunesse says emphatically as we walk through La Source, dodging the rain under the canopy of trees. “The Haitian … population needs to take the responsibility. Everybody, you know, can help, can put hands together, all of us. Because this is our country.”
As he wraps up another janitorial shift on Princeton’s campus and clocks out in the bitter cold of a January afternoon, Lajeunesse leaves us with this:
“If I can work another two jobs again to change the community and the life of the kids for the next generation, I will. I will do it with happiness.”
