Mt. Namuli, Mozambique

A month ago we left Mozambique and Malawi. Less than a year from now we will be back. How much time does it take to gain perspective? Our goal for this initial trip was simple: to learn if an expedition pairing science, climbing, adventure, and conservation would be possible on Mozambique’s Mt. Namuli. Here is what we found:

MAJKA

Mt. Namuli is an extraordinary mountain of rock in northern Mozambique I’d been looking at for over a year from afar, and this November finally got to see up close. My expectations were realistically low. My hope was unrealistically high. What transpired had nothing to do with either emotion. What transpired had everything to do with the unique combination of granite, climbable grass, a strong partner, a scientist, a gecko, and a queen. Are these the necessary ingredients for adventure? Maybe in this case, yes.

Two months ago, before I’d been to Mozambique, if you’d asked me if I were going on a climbing expedition in Mozambique I would have told you I was going on an expedition that involved climbing… and science, and culture, and conservation. What I would not have told you was that the climbing part was the glue. I would not have wanted to admit this. Fast forward to standing beneath Namuli’s 2,000-foot southeast face. Sarah and I had promised each other that the climbing was not important in the grand scheme of it all. We were there on a recon mission: our goal was exploration, pure and simple. But then, in the visual space it took to see the towering, sloping rock, the singular passion driving us forward was undeniable. We were there to climb.

Exploring the cliff-side habitat of Mt. Namuli, Mozambique. Photo courtesy of the Lost Mountain Film team.

I went first. I won the rock-paper-scissors to do so. I shoved myself into the only crack we could find on the whole face, the one with a tree ten feet up, and proceeded to spend sixty-three minutes fighting branches that turned to powder from the dryness, wrestling soot-covered limbs left over from out-of-control crop fires, avoiding torso-sized loose granite spears, and wallowing in dirt, dirt, and more dirt.

Climbing—whether you are watching it or doing it—often seems to happen in slow motion. It was even slower for me that day. I had enough time to think about every one of my decisions that led to this point. I thought of the people living in the surrounding villages and what we’d tried to tell them about our plan. To climb or hike on Mt. Namuli you need permission from the local queen. We’d visited the queen two days before and she’d blessed our journey. Was this the blessing?, I wondered, as I fought to keep myself on the face. Then again, we hadn’t told the queen we needed a blessing for vertical grass, and she likely didn’t know that was what we’d be relying upon for our ascent. Namuli makes her own weather. On 360 degrees of her flanks people live and farm and watch the mountain hourly for a signal of what was to come. What we were doing was no different, really. I tried to tell myself the queen and I were in it together. That worked… until it didn’t anymore.

I went up until I could no longer fight the growing feeling that this was not possible, not worth it, not going to happen. And then I went down.

Majka climbing through the first crux: a tree. Photo by P. YooNon-climbers ask me all the time if I climb by myself, without ropes, without a safety system, without anything connecting me to the rock or ice. I usually explain to them that I’m afraid of bees and want a rope to catch me if I get stung. But in November, when I returned to the ground after doing vertical battle on Namuli and handed the gear to Sarah under our newly earned arc of shade from a 95-degree day, I realized that the real reason I don’t solo is that I need another attachment to the rock: my partner.

Sarah took a different approach to the face. She delicately moved across clumps of grass attached only to micro-pores in the unseen granite. She avoided the tree and the crack at the bottom, and earned a new crack, new tree, and more soot up top. She moved through the place I stopped, and she kept moving. And just like that, we, as a team, were climbing. Of course, it wasn’t just like that, really. Sarah’s lead took over an hour, and my next one would as well. It was not pretty. It was battle. But there were moments of finesse, and moreover, the moment of satisfaction—shared—that what we were doing was possible. It was happening.

SARAH

On every expedition, at least for me, there comes a point when I ask myself, What in the world am I doing here? In a way, I’ve come to love that moment. It’s the signal that things are happening, that wheels are in motion, for better or worse. In Mozambique, the moment arrived within the first 48 hours of the trip.

Sarah hiking... before it got dark.It was dark, I was jet-lagged, and I was struggling to keep our team of porters, guides, translators, climbers, and scientists—14 of us in all—at least reasonably together along a discontinuous trail. We’d reached a river crossing and the porters had stopped, waiting for someone to make the first move. To literally test the waters and find out how deep, and how swift. It took about a split second to realize it was going to be up to me to scout the river. Majka was ten minutes behind with Paul, our filmmaker, and the two scientists. So I grabbed Cotxane, our translator, as my spotter and I stepped into the river’s current: shoes, pants, backpack, and all. Cotxane and I were halfway across, the water swirling around the tops of our thighs, our headlamps providing zero visibility for what might be obstructing the bottom or lurking along the banks, and—wham!—the moment: What the #*!% am I doing in the middle of a river, at night, in Mozambique?

If you’re lucky, there comes a counterpoint to that moment: the stage at which the various pieces and players align, when the expedition hits a perfect sweet spot and you find yourself thinking, Yes…this is why we do what we do. Sometimes it’s an obvious climax, like the summit of a peak or the first cold beer after many days in the field. In Mozambique, we were blessed with many of these moments: the night we hunted chameleons in the rainforest, stalking the little alien-like reptiles for our scientists to observe and record; and the evening of the moonrise, when the moon glowed a shocking red through the smoke of crop fires from the mountain’s surrounding villages. But one of the best was the moment we spotted the gecko.

We’d put this whole journey together on a biologist’s hypothesis that the granite cliff face of Mt. Namuli was the perfect habitat for a certain gecko, and given Namuli’s isolation, if we found this gecko, it’d likely be a new species. Majka and I had spent hours scouting the face, establishing a fixed rope along the most probable habitat: a four-hundred-foot arcing corner system choked with grass, bushes, and dirt. The problem was, we didn’t see signs of any critters. No bugs, no creepy-crawlies, no gecko.

Werner on the gecko hunt. Photo by P. Yoo

I was at the base of the wall with Werner, the South African biologist on the expedition, and I was teaching him how to ascend a fixed line. I felt like I was just going through the motions. We’d hauled all this equipment halfway around the world and battled sketchy vertical vegetation to establish the safety systems, we might as well get Werner up there like we set out to do. Just as I clipped Werner’s top jumar onto the line, his eyes caught a flash of motion near the base of the corner system—his powers of observation clearly more attuned than ours. He said he knew it was the gecko in an instant, the flick of its movement gave it away. In a frenzy we unclipped and detangled him from the rope so he could try to catch the specimen as it scurried toward the tree Majka’d grappled with during our ascent. And then, like the story had been scripted from the beginning, the dark-bodied reptile sprinted up the smooth granite face out of sight. Werner turned back to me, his eyes wild, yelling Get me on that rope!

Expedition Stats:

• Successful exploration of southeast face of Mt. Namuli, Mozambique’s second-highest mountain (7,936 ft) and surrounding rainforest
• Climbed ~650 ft of granite slab and corner systems, accessing previously unexplored cliff-face habitat
• Expedition resulted in the discovery of at least three candidate new species, awaiting confirmation: a frog, a skink, and a gecko
• Identified numerous important species of reptiles, amphibians, insects, and plants
• Anticipated results, beyond the description of new life, include new biogeographical links among the northern Mozambican and southern Malawian inselbergs, and extended ranges for East African species

See the slideshow of images on www.thelostmountainfilm.com

Mt. Namuli

In Conjunction with Engelhorn Sports

I feel bad for my seatmate on the plane the other day. I’d like to issue an apology but I never got their name. The woman had harmlessly asked me where I was coming from and where I was going. I tried to keep it simple at the start. I told her Malawi and Cape Town. But then she asked me why I’d been in Malawi.

I should have said I was in Malawi for work and opened my book. Instead I told her I’d been stranded in Malawi but was on a trip to Mozambique, that I’d been in Ethiopia and was en route to Cape Town, and that ultimately I was heading home to Boulder, Colorado. When her why came again, I told her about the vertical grass.
 
Anchor in Vertical Grass, MozambiqueIt is not easy to explain to anyone why a person would be in Mozambique trying to climb vertical grass. My reasons are solid (it’s for science, for the conservation to come, and yes, in part because it seemed like a good idea at the time) but perhaps not best suited for planeside chit chat. I’m reasonably sure my protracted story of origin and destination were the reason behind my seatmates move to the seat two rows back. That, or the fact that I had not done laundry in two weeks. Either way, we parted.

In the past five weeks I have climbed Ethiopia’s soft sandstone and Mozambique’s hidden granite. Today it’s quartzite in South Africa. The actual number of days climbing are as inconsequential as that number. The vertical thread is always there. I’ve taken eleven plane rides, lived in a tent, a lodge, a hotel, and a place I’d never tell my mother about. I’ve eaten re-hydrated dried fish, stewed cow stomach, and enough goat to be one myself. My consistency has been gained only from the familiarity of the contents of my luggage. My same climbing gear, rope, harness, helmet, clothes, yoga matt and one pair of high heels are the familiar. I didn’t realize just how much I’d been counting on them until half of them did not join me on that plane ride to Cape Town.
 
Anchoring to the Abune Yemata Church, Tigray EthiopiaAs last night’s summer sun set over the Atlantic Ocean my missing bag made its way to my friend Tristin’s house in Cape Town. It – and remarkably all of its contents – is back creating my sense of home on the Africa road. It’s just in time. I have Table Mountain on my agenda today. Here is to another foray into the vertical and an ongoing extension of home.
 
Read more and see a video from my trip to Mozambique here.

DAY 1

MB: I say goodbye to Ethiopia (intentionally), and to my new ultralight Thermarest (unintentionally). My first-ever spotting of the Congo appears initially out of a plane window, and soon through a propped-open plane door during a re-supply. Malawi and Mozambique bound.

SG: It’s 5:30 a.m. at Boston’s Logan Airport. I have a bad reaction to my anti-malaria meds and vomit into a trashcan at the airline check-in desk. I can feel the stares of the hundred or so early morning passengers in line behind me. Please let this not be a sign for what’s to come.

Werner and Frog. Photo by Majka BurhardtDAY 4

MB: We hike the wide side of a long arcing bend in the trail to see Mt. Namuli on its other side. I requisition a flask of whiskey from an already drunk porter. Herpetologist Werner Conradie confirms the presence of crocodiles in the Malema River while we are hip deep, midstream.

SG: It’s dark. We’ve been hiking for 6 hours already and there’s nowhere to stop until we get to the Queen’s hut at the base of the mountain. Our guide Cotxane (pronounced co-chan-ee) says it’s only 30 more minutes, but I don’t believe him. We are a group of thirteen—climbers, scientists, guides, and porters—hiking single-file through the bush, illuminated by the narrow light of four headlamps. I can’t help but think about lions and spitting cobras, the former apparently hunted out from this area, the latter we’ve already seen, but with any luck not active at night?

Porters on the flanks of Mt Namuli. Photo by Majka BurhardtDAY 5

SG: My skin, thinned by the malarial meds (the bane of my existence), feels like fire under the equatorial sun. I hike behind a young woman named Katarine who we’ve hired, with a few other locals, to help carry our equipment from the Queen’s village up to a grassy plain near the base of the mountain’s southeast wall. She is slender and strong, balancing the 40-pound duffel seemingly without effort on her head as she hikes barefoot along the dusty red path.

Majka mid-pitch 1. Photo by Sarah GarlickDAY 7 (See Video Above)

MB: Today I finally meet Namuli’s granite face, face-to-face.  It turns out that a 50-degree granite slab is the threshold for reasonable “hiking.” 53-degrees means we start climbing. I watch Sarah levitate up vertical grass. We swing leads leads. The high point of my lead? Feeling like I was one with the vertical grass. Low point? Slinging clump of said grass for protection. Gave up any semblance of cleanliness under my fingernails.

SG: Paul has dubbed this our “Chia Mountain” and it’s an apt description. Who knew grass could grow on vertical rock? But it’s surprisingly solid to climb. Meter by meter, move by move, I make my way up the first pitch. It feels good to open this face, despite the absurdity of the vegetated terrain. A difficult move around a non-solid bush gets me into a squeeze chimney. I realize the black coating on the rock is not dirt here, but soot, which instantly coats my face, my arms, everything. I keep going until I run low on gear, then build an anchor. The thought of wildfire reaching this high up Namuli’s rock face occupies the back of my mind.
 

DAY 8

MB: Watched from 100-feet up the face as Werner, Sarah, and Paul celebrate spotting a gecko running up the granite face. I convince Werner to trust a rope and let go. We eat dinner as a blood moon—dark orange from the smoke from dozens of burning fields—rises over Namuli’s eastern hills.

SG: I am so dirty. I’ve tried to wash the soot and dirt away down at the river in the rainforest, but I can’t seem to get clean. My fingernails are rimmed with black grime and I’ve seen Majka’s sidelong glances. How does she stay so clean? Will she ever want to travel with me again?

Majka and Sarah. Photo by Werner ConradieDAY 10

MB: I don my gaiters at dawn. Eight hours later I learn that one of the most deadly snakes in the world is as skinny as my thumb. Today we leave Namuli; memories full of what we need to know to come back in 2012.  

Tomorrow I head to Mozambique. Actually, that is a lie. Tomorrow I fly from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia via the Congo to Lilongwe Malawi and then to Blantyre Malawi. It’s Tuesday I head overland in Mozambique itself. I’m ready.

Mozambique. We're going to Zambezia in the middleOver two years ago I came across photos of granite faces in Mozambique. I had no idea that those photos would lead me to today, November 6^th 2011, packing for one of them in room 108 in the Jupiter Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is fitting that Ethiopia—the place that has given me so much unexpected adventure and even more of life from adventure—is my staging ground for this next journey.

I’m lucky on this trip to be joined by Sarah Garlick and Paul Yoo. Sarah and I have been climbing partners and friends for years but this will be our first big trip together. Paul is a filmmaker base in LA and this is the first project for the three of us as a team. We really have no idea what we’re in for. None of us would want it differently. We have the basics—an unclimbed granite face, a landscape in Mozambique that is a hotbed of biodiversity, a group of local stakeholders who care about that landscape and need it to live off of to survive and flourish.  And we have the intent to find all that we can in ourselves and in the journey.

Photo of Mt Namuli Courtesy of Renata JagustovicWhen I was a kid what I wanted most was to be an adventurer. I have just spent the past two weeks in Ethiopia leading a trip with imagine1day where we have been in and out of communities with new schools and schools about to be built. These kids here are no different. Adventure crosses cultural boarders. The anticipation of the unknown is part of it, but I think that adventure also gives us a chance to be our full selves with all of our great traits and flaws jumbled together on one path. That collage of self is intoxicating. It’s further more so when it’s an “additive adventure” -- when that adventure goes beyond exploration to cultural and environmental connections that create a larger conversation of singular and collective human meaning. At eight I just wanted to go be outside and explore. Now, at 35, I want to be outside and explore and have it matter. And it is not just want anymore because I know it does matter.

I have to finish packing (see the video). I have to get all of my gear into two 50-lb bags and practice my wink to get the rest of it through the airline weight check. I have a team to meet in Malawi and a ride to catch to Mozambique. I have the unknown to find.

Check out http://thelostmountainfilm.com/ and follow the journey over the next weeks as we report back.

Packing for Africa 2011.

Almost six years ago I saw a photo of a cluster of sandstone towers in the north of Ethiopia. Those towers started a trip, a book, and a life where now I have come back for this, my fifth time, to this land to which I never thought I’d return. But here is a confession. Those towers that started the trip? I have not seen them in five years. I’ve been close—last year the closest, two bends in the road away, merely four kilometers from the first moment when you glimpse their proud profiles—but I have not ventured closer. I didn’t realize I was saving them until last week when I finally stood before them.

The Kentaro Towers, Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo By Majka Burhardt
I’d spent the two days previous hiking cross-country in the mountains surrounding the towers. I maneuvered up micro slot-canyons, through cactus tunnels, over a fifteen-foot vertical step of an ancient path worn with scalloped holds for your feet and hands exactly—an only—when you need them, into sandy washes, over giant boulders, and around the largest massif of the Gheralta range. I’d seen the land from all sides during those days. There is more rock in this landscape than any other place I have ever seen or been. It tricks you with its sheer volume and makes you think it is good. Because, after all, it might be. Somewhere.  But I know better by now. I have pulled off chunks and blocks and whole corner systems. I did not know better in 2006 when I came here for the first time with a quadruple set of cams, three other climbers, and the power of hope in the unknown. (Read the full story in the book Vertical Ethiopia.)

It seems fitting that it was a day of completion that led me back to the towers. My 13.5-mile negotiation had resulted in a return to the valley with success as represented by a body coated with scratches and clothes still covered in grasses and thorns. I’d just set a course for what will be the international trail run in Ethiopia. It was time to pay homage to what brought me here first.

My partner Helen Dudley on the First Ascent of Learning the Hard Way, Kentaro Towers, Ethiopia 2006. Photo by Gabe RogelMemory knows no rule of accuracy. The moment the largest tower—over 600 feet of sheer mass pushing into the Ethiopian sky—came into view, I knew that I’ve spent the last years in apprehension of the truth of this reality.  But here they were. Five fingers of monolithic beauty that reveal themselves in new ways from each direction. I saw them, and they took my breath away. Again. I knew in that moment I’d been afraid they might be small and uninspiring and that the truth of them would sadden me.  But instead I felt a kernel of excitement and trepidation build in my throat. My breath grew shallow and fiery with the excitement of exploration. Again. I got out of the car, walked to a high hill where I could see the towers without obstruction and I looked straight at them and said thank you. 

Really, out loud. By myself in the Ethiopian highlands. I said thank you to that land. I shouted it. I cried it out. And I am not prone to solo outbursts, religion, or homage. But I looked at those beautiful abutting chunks of stone that I know are magnificently horrible to climb, and thanked them again. 

It is rare to be alone in Ethiopia. This land of over 80 million guarantees you companionship, eventually. I stayed on that hill as the wind blew and coated the dust onto my tear-soaked cheeks, as the afternoon sun blazed thick and hot on my shoulders, and as children from a nearby home spotted me and began to run to greet me. No one asked me why I was standing in the middle of a hill staring at a cluster of towers, and if they had the only answer I could have given was that somehow, without my knowing it, these masses of stone changed my life.

I doubt I will ever try to climb another of the Kentaro Towers. I know better. All in all trying to climb them was one of the best worst ideas I have ever had.  In the days since I've realized that the best worst ideas might just be what create the true allure of adventure. 

Salem from Ethiopia. I am here for another two weeks and I'm now starting phase two, leading a trip for imagine1day. There will be more stories. There might even be more best worst ideas that start here. Why not? I'm packed and ready for them.  And moreover, I now know what it feels like to go back to their origins and offer the deepest gratitude I've ever felt in my life.

Jonathan Ledgard, the Africa correspondent for The Economist magazine, released an article on September 5^th that asked how much further we’d come as a global society since the famine of the 1980’s. He interviewed me for the piece, and what follows are my extended answers about the response to the famine, the pattern of media, and patience.

JL Question: How has the media/politicians/UN/NGO’s responded to the famine? Are they exacerbating the situation? Why the need for exaggeration? Do the television images support fundraising or undermine it?

Coffee Seedlings, Amaro Mountains, Ethiopia. By Travis HornMB Answer: I believe that we (the media and the global public) are patterned in our responses to the Horn of Africa famine as a result of the collective media fatigue leftover from the 1980's.  Therefore we are not seeing these images with fresh eyes, but rather with exhausted eyes. The details are very real and very important, but rather than help the situation I would argue they make it worse by playing the same note of devastation that no one really wants to keep hearing. The images of starving and dead women and children are easy to come by and are accurate renditions of the famine, but who really wants to see another one?  This might seem very crass but it is meant to be very honest. What would happen if an image of a lush coffee forest was flashed on the screen instead? Of a lake? Of a healthcare facility that is working? Of an eye health initiative where 1,000 people are cured from blindness in one week?  I don't think any of these would take away from the famine but they might just allow hope to come into the conversation and thus inspire action instead of further deaden the response. 

Much of the current media exaggerates the situation by claiming that the entire Horn of Africa is starving. This rallying cry is meant to make us all pay attention, but I think it makes us want to look away. How can you help the entire Horn, after all, and haven't we been trying for years? (more on this intentionally tongue in cheek comment in my next blog). We could push this line of reasoning and say that humans should be able to take a great deal of bad news and still care and still act. We should have that patience. But I don't know if we really do, or if we really should. In the past five years I've given over sixty lectures around North America about Ethiopia. People hang onto the good I share and not in a naive way, but in a way that makes them more motivated to pay attention to the bad. In short, I think we can understand more complicated reporting that shows both. 

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The conversation is continuing; it needs to. Please join it.

• Read Ledgard’s piece in the Economist.com.  
• Want to get involved? Several people at my recent speech at Town Hall Seattle asked for a list of organizations doing compelling and sustainable work in the Horn right now. Here is a start:
  • Himalayan Cataract Project: Working to reach the greatest number of unserved blind people, with the highest quality care, at the lowest possible cost. Leaders in Ethiopian eye care intervention.
  • Fistula Foundation: Working to raise awareness and funding for fistula treatment, prevention and educational programs worldwide.
  • Imagine1day: Working to ensure that all Ethiopians have access to quality education funded free of foreign aid by 2030.
• Join the conversation in person with me at my next events:
  • October 11th, Boulder, CO. Ozo Coffee House, Downtown, 7:00 PM
  • October 13th, Malibu, CA. Five Point Yoga, 7:00 PM 
    
     

Earlier this year, Vancouver-based charitable organization, imagine1day, launched their second annual Imagine Ethiopia trip: a two-week adventure that takes participants on a daily exploration of the best that Ethiopia has to offer.

imagine1day is a growing global community of people making passionate contributions to ensure that all Ethiopians have access to quality education funded free of foreign aid by 2030. They ran their first trip to Ethiopia last year to great success.

This year’s trip is fast approaching. The Imagine Ethiopia team is set to arrive in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital) on October 23 and they are busy. Not busy packing bags – busy with Creatribution. In the lead up to the trip, this year’s participants have chosen to take on raising $100 000 (the funds required to finance a three-year, self-generating education project with imagine1day) before they depart. You can support them here and US donors can support them through GO Campaign, our stateside partner, here.

What is Creatribution? Rather than bore you with an explanation of the concept, here is a glimpse at some of Imagine Ethiopia 2011’s participants and what they are doing to ensure that $100K is in the suitcase bound for Addis this October:

Katie Thurmes
Creatribution: Give Good
Leveraging her strengths as a photographer, lover of people, and all round positive person, Katie did a special Mother’s Day event in Denver, shot a fab wedding in Vegas, and used her blog to ensure that her community was more than excited to get involved.

Mary Anna Noveck
Creatribution: The First Grader, Wine, and Tennis
At first glance, Mary Anna’s ideas of fundraising would seem to border on barely legal. All part of the plan, as Mary Anna has found support through her local school (they cut her a check for being so amazing), by setting up a wine tasting at a local cinema (Shiraz meets a screening of The First Grader), and by getting her Santa Monica tennis community involved in a benefit tournament. Ace.

Andi McLeish
Creatribution: Climbing and Shooting
Don’t get nervous, Andi McLeish is not the lone gunman on the seventh floor. She is the hardcore, rock climbing, photo-snapping lady your mother warned you about. From a series of photography gigs to a community-wide climb-a-thon, everyone knows that Andi is going to Ethiopia in October and that she expects some warm up climbs in Squamish in the mean time.

Nancy Herb
Creatribution: Summertime Big Easy
Nancy is not your typical educator. Sure, she knows her way around a school, and perhaps that’s what originally peaked her interest in Imagine Ethiopia 2011. She also happens to be friends with some of the hottest Soul/R&B talent in Vancouver and is throwing a good, old-fashioned summertime fling to heat up an otherwise chilly summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Michelle Lazar
Creatribution: In Lieu
As one of those people who sees opportunity everywhere, when it came time for Michelle to devise of a Creatribution project, she didn’t see what she wanted to do, she saw what she wanted to do instead. In Lieu challenges participants to choose a luxury in their life – Starbucks coffee every morning, television – and reallocate the funds they would normally spend on life’s little indulgences to imagine1day’s work in Ethiopia. Who’s up for a double deep water well and a spritz of quality education?

Brittany Wood
Creatribution: Goals for Good
Date night is important and Brittany has got something for parents who may be looking for a little latitude when it comes to balancing time together and with the kids this summer. Goals for Good is a workshop that Brittany will be offering to school-aged children this summer in her home state of Washington. Kids will learn how to create a vision for what they want their life to look like in the future and will learn how to set goals that get them there. Drop off the kids, have a romantic evening out, pick up the kids, manifest destiny.

Michael Millard
Creatribution: How Do You Do TV
At first, Michael just wanted to get out of his apartment near Vancouver’s Kitsilano beach to meet the people in his neighborhood. Then inspiration struck. How Do You Do TV invites people to submit videos that they make about the people in their neighborhood. The rules for submission are simple: your neighbor can’t be related to you and can’t be someone you’ve ever met before asking them to make the video. Michael is also available for hire to website sponsors to feature the businesses, products and services available in each neighborhood.

Co-leading this year’s trip is Sapna Dayal, imagine1day’s Executive Director, her colleague Adam Millard, imagine1day’s Development Director, Majka Burhardt, a legendary rock climber, guide, author, and coffee expert, and Ted McDonald, owner of Adventure Yoga Retreats and lululemon ambassador.

And so the race is on: 7 Creatributors – $100K – 66 days. Inspired? Thought so. There is space on this team for one more participant: you. Please support our team through our fundraising goal page or click on the names of each participant to donate directly to their project. US donors: please visit our US partner GO Campaign to make a tax-deductible contribution.

Creatribution is imagine1day’s innovative fund-raising model that exponentially leverages the strengths and passions of its contributors. The model challenges Creatributors to identify what they love (or what they feel they are best at), what they are passionate about (or what gets them out of bed in the morning) to discover their own unique contribution to the world. Then, each contributor creates a project that seeks to fulfill a unique contribution to the world in the most fun way possible.

There is famine in the Horn of Africa. Of course. Isn’t there always?

Are you cringing yet? Good. Here are three things we can do now to help the Horn of Africa, beyond just sending famine relief: (1) Change the conversation. (2) Invest in the positive. (3) Tackle the uncomfortable.

(1) Change the conversation.

The news from the Horn of Africa today is horrific: Drought and famine are spreading throughout the region, exacerbated by the derailment of aid shipments by the militant group al-Shabab, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths with little resolution in sight. As global citizens we need to know this. But I’m worried about the way we are learning it—from reports with the news truncated the same way I just presented it. Though the facts may be accurate, their wholly negative and abbreviated presentation unwittingly creates a future for the region that is overly linked with its past. Let’s change the conversation and help create a new future.

Talking to people afflicted by drought. Image by DFID - UK Department for International Development via Flickr

What I discovered in researching my recent book about coffee was Ethiopia’s incredible biodiversity in terms of what is the second most valuable commodity in the developing world. With that biodiversity come cultural stories that connect consumers to their daily coffee in ways that create emotional and economic buy-in. Companies of every kind can turn up the volume on these stories and create direct change.  Those in the beverage industry can tell stories about their products and increase their support for Ethiopia’s most valued crop. Companies that use coffee (and who doesn’t?) can use their buying power to demand those stories and that support.

There is enormous opportunity here to rewrite the long, sad story of famine and turn it into something much more promising and much more accurate for the Ethiopia of today as it becomes the Ethiopia of tomorrow—using Ethiopia’s own resources. Ethiopia is not Somalia, but all of the countries in the Horn of Africa are being lumped together in the current headlines in a devastating manner, in part by association and in part because the very real drought does cut across national lines. The Horn is a region of more or less than a million square miles with between 100 million and 200 million people, depending on how you define it. The region’s entire story is much more complex and ultimately hopeful than just the famine. Focusing on only the famine is like saying that all of Europe is financially and morally bankrupt just because of the recent doomsday chatter about Italy.

Let’s enter the conversation and shift its direction by being specific and addressing the region’s potential while bearing witness to the horrific. Let’s make good business decisions that support growth and call attention to those actions, giving the countries, commodities, and organizations involved their due.

(2) Invest in the positive.

Famine relief is vital and important, but it addresses only famine. Every country in the Horn has dozens of cutting-edge programs that tackle education, health care, clean water, transportation, agriculture, and more. People need to survive the famine to take advantage of those programs, but the programs also have to be there to eradicate the ongoing cycle that created the famine. Companies have a unique opportunity to not just change the conversation, as mentioned above, but also financially and promotionally support the work that is already being done. Find an organization that fits your corporate mission and vision, such as imagine1day, the Fistula Foundation, or Partners in the Horn of Africa, and help it tell its story, with media and dollars.

Putting dollars and time into these programs does not diminish the importance of the famine; rather it increases our support of the region in a way that allows it to be a vibrant player in its own future. Together we can change the global profile of each of these countries and move away from aid and into a global conversation about opportunity.

(3) Tackle the uncomfortable.

None of this works unless we acknowledge what we are doing. Just starting a new corporate initiative or media campaign about what is great about the Horn of Africa will not cut it. We need to talk about the good along with the bad. The news has more power when the good and bad are intertwined than when they are held apart.

Businesses often focus on creating a solid stand or a single voice. That might seem safest. But it’s not. It’s far more engaging to be willing to have an uncomfortable discussion about what is working and what is not working. How we do this in business sets the model for how we do it in global identity building. In this case we must do so for the sake of the identity of a region that has already had it far too hard.

Be a leader in fighting off the stale conversation that leads to news fatigue about the famine. Create new possibilities and link people with the real facts. Some 29,000 Somali children have died from the famine in the past three months alone.  The bad needs the good. We can create the good.

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It's a big day for me today. It's the day Coffee Story Ethiopia comes out, and moreover it is the day I get to thank everyone who has helped support and create this amazing project. We've done it.

This morning a friend asked me to write her a note about why I wrote this book-- where did this passion come from? she asked. This is what I told her:

I was drawn to write about coffee because I saw the impact of writing about adventure and climbing in Ethiopia-- and moreover I saw people's responses to a thicker and more complicated way to understand Ethiopia. Climbing was something my team and I brought to Ethiopia in 2007 (ie the technical systems, difficulty, etc); coffee is something that is Ethiopia.

I believe all of us want to understand things more and feel more connected vis a vis an understanding that is not intellectual but is rather guttural-- we want to care. I saw these connections with writing and speaking about the adventure in Ethiopia and saw interest even further piqued when I would talk about coffee. And then I got it: One tenth more understanding about Ethiopia coffee could change the economic reality for a country that is trying its damnedest to no longer be one of the poorest in the world. How could I not create conversation to further that?

Announcing Coffee Story Ethiopia: A Tale From The Country Where Coffee Began.

Ato Sha'le Bokal in Sidamo

It’s the twenty-first century and Ethiopia, in the global consciousness, is fighting to shed its history of drought, famine, and war. It’s doing so by embracing the heritage and potential of its defining crop: coffee, a plant first accounted for in legend more than three thousand years ago that now ranks among the world’s ten most-valued commodities. Coffee Story: Ethiopia is the recounting of that process: a visual and narrative tale of opportunity, resources, education, and tradition.
 
Written by Majka Burhardt | Photography by Travis Horn and Helmut Horn | Published by Ninety Plus Press (USA) and Shama Books (Ethiopia) | 208 Pages | Full Color | Hardcover

We Need a Conversation Beyond Famine-- Right Now

Lake Tana, EthiopiaToday’s famine news is horrific: 3.6 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of starvation. What is even more horrific, however, is the impact of that news on the future identity of countries that make up the Horn. I've been privileged to be part of a different conversation about possibility in Ethiopia via my work in coffee. It does not stop here.  We need to increase our dialog today and address the reality of the drought and famine alongside a discussion about what is working in the region. It's not naive. It's necessary.  Join the conversation here on my blog: The Liminal Line.
 
 
 
*It's your choice how you buy Coffee Story Ethiopia. If you purchase the book directly, $3 of every purchase is donated to innovative non-profits and you have the option of signed and inscribed copies. An Amazon purchase supports our sales statistic there. Either way, it's up to you. Thank you for contributing to this amazing conversation of possibility in the Horn of Africa.
 

Learn More: Book Trailer | Lecture Tour | Excerpt | Reviews | Press

Majka Burhardt on a bit of decent rock in Ethiopia, 2007. Photo by Gabe Rogel

Five days ago I drove out of Eldorado Canyon after seven pitches of climbing with two professional women who live in Boulder. We’d spent the day climbing sandstone cracks freshly crisped by the proceeding evening storms. The river roared beneath us for the full day making communication difficult and creating isolation of judgment and choices for each of us while climbing. It was a day where climbing was climbing – the complete pairing of mental and physical connection dialed together by focus. As we drove away from the perfect day Tracy and Amy planned future objectives and talk circled to fall climbing plans. Tracy and Amy talked about Colorado; I brought up Ethiopia.

This fall I’m co-leading the second annual Imagine Ethiopia expedition. During the trip we will rock climb, mountain bike, do yoga, and further the path and possibility of Ethiopia’s education. And is if that was not enough we will also explore Ethiopia’s coffee heritage and help celebrate one of its greatest economic drivers. I’d like to say it will just be a standard 14 days in Ethiopia, but I’d be lying.

I first went to Ethiopia in 2006 to search for a rare coffee and stayed for the climbing. The climbing, it turned out, was horrifically soft and loose—two characteristics no climber ever wants to have separately or together. Still, I and four other climbers stuck out what we could, made it home, and then I was supposed to write a book about it.

The book had been commissioned before we found out about the rock quality. I’d set off on the trip thinking I would have glorious climbing experiences in Ethiopia. They’d be difficult, but it would be the good difficult—the kind where you triumph over risk. This sort of triumph was at that time what fueled my climbing—I loved the moment when I would commit to a route, extend further in the backcountry, push harder in some way to get to the place of the unknown. I fed off of the intoxicating moment of tipping into that unknown, and the corresponding sense of rightness when I could pull it off.

But then I was climbing in Ethiopia where it was hard to pull anything off except for the physical rock itself, and I was supposed to write about the success of it all. The project was doomed. Or it was until I started talking about it. I told friends, neighbors, and strangers about climbing in Ethiopia and soon realized that what I was really telling them about was Ethiopia. Climbing was a fraction of the conversation, and one becoming smaller by the moment when I realized what drew people’s interest. It didn’t take long to then realize that I’d been putting the emphasis on the wrong part of the story.

Majka Burhardt finding Rightness In Harar, Ethiopia. Photo by Travis HornIt’s five years later and I have another book about Ethiopia coming out on August 6^th. Coffee Story: Ethiopia is the first book ever to chronicle the culture behind the commodity of coffee in the country of coffee’s origin. I have small aspirations with it—such as changing the economy of Ethiopia.

Do I sound crazily optimistic? Good. Just as I believe a book on Ethiopia’s coffee culture can change Ethiopia’s economy I believe climbing can create massive impact in the world—via the climbers. Just like the boaters, the skiers, the runners, the paddlers and even the rollerbladers* can.

That feeling of triumphing over risk I spoke about is present daily for me when I create possibility in Ethiopia. And it’s contagious. My co-leaders and the participants of Imagine Ethiopia 2012 feel it too.  It’s why we are all together doing this fabulous trip and raising $100,000 to build a new primary school in a remote rural community in Tigray, Ethiopia.  We’re not doing it because it’s the right thing to do in some esoteric way. We’re doing it because it feels right with each step—just like the perfect climb.

If you adventure in any way chances are high that you would like to have that adventure feeling more in your every day life. Who wouldn’t? I used to think that this always meant I needed more outlandish adventures. But now I know there are other ways to create that elation. And I know when I find the right way when it feels just as good as that moment when you pull off a heady choice in the outdoors. It’s the click. The click of making it and of it making you feel more like you. I spent years thinking I could only find this outside, and now I find it was actually the thing I could use to know what was right in the rest of my life beyond the outdoors.

Tracy and Amy might not be able to join me in Ethiopia in body, but I bet they are going to join me in spirit. Most people want to. You can too. Or you can get fired up about another project and place that creates that click for you. I’d love to know about it.

*Rollerblading is making a comeback.

Coffee Story Ethiopia
What if a food crop could change a nation’s future?
Pre-order the book, watch the trailer, read an excerpt,
believe in changing the world.

Imagine Ethiopia 2011
Support the school, become on of the final participants on this year’s team, catch more inspiration.

Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa

The book that started it all.

Catch Coffee Story Ethiopia at the Summer Outdoor Retailer Show
Saturday August 6^th
Osprey Packs Booth
10am – 12pm
Book signing and tasting of Ethiopian Tchembe coffee.