That's My Life: Interviews with Accelerate Ethiopia

On March 2nd over 150 runners will compete in Ethiopia's first ever trail race-- a half marathon in the country's northern mountain highlands. The race is a culmination of a week of shared contribution to the eye health and educational strength of Ethiopia with Himalayan Cataract Project and imagine1day. In the days leading up to the race I will be bringing you profiles of Accelerate Ethiopia--runners (including local superstars, up and coming pros, and our international team of runners who have made Accelerate Ethiopia possible), educators, doctors, and change makers.

Alem Kahsay

Coach Alem is the Accelerate Ethiopia Race Director. Alem grew up in northern Tigray-- not far from the site of the March 2nd race.  He was a member of the Ethiopian National Team in the early 90's and competed in the marathon, for 5 years. These days Alem lives in New York City and works for the New York Road Runners. We spoke this mornign before a training run...

MB: What do you love about running?

AK: "That's my life." He laughs. "That's the easiest question-- it's what I love."

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The 6 Degrees Of Ethiopian Bacon

Photo by imagine1dayLast week I stood up on a stage by myself in a giant room and told strangers I liked when things were difficult. I was giving a speech at an event with Wright State University and Five Rivers Metro Parks in Dayton, Ohio and I told everyone that complexity was addictive and that I think it makes a life more interesting. And then I was given the gift of a complicated journey back to New England in a major snowstorm.

My travel day doubled in time and I had to chart a course through five states to get home. This would normally be a bummer. But this time I had an email with interview questions in my inbox. The first question: Why do you keep going back to Ethiopia? My answer: Because it’s like Kevin Bacon.

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Global Dialog Via the Culture of Coffee

Coffee in Addis Ababa, Photo by Travis HornCoffee can erase a famine.

Agree? Disagree? Wonder just how literally I mean for that statement to be? How about this one:

Coffee can create greater global understanding.

If you’re reading this, you’re involved with coffee. If more than one billion cups of coffee are consumed every day in our world, then it is virtually impossible to avoid an association with the beverage. I’d wager we’d all like to see that association go even deeper. I’d like it to change the world. Let’s do it together, and let’s start with Ethiopia.

(Read Majka's call to action to the coffee community in the Specitaly Coffee Association of America's Chronicle below, or via the PDF)

If you ask 10 people who walk into a café for three words to describe Ethiopia, drought famine and poverty will inevitably come up immediately.  Inside the coffee world we know a different side of Ethiopia. So how do we better share it? 

Six years ago, I went to Ethiopia on a lark due to a free latte. I never meant for coffee to be anything profound in my life. But Ethiopia had other plans. What I have discovered in researching, writing, and speaking about my recent book, Coffee Story Ethiopia (Ninety Plus Press/Shama Books) is Ethiopia’s incredible hold on global imagination—and the power of coffee to enrich that perception. 

It was an eight-year-old girl who started me on the path to understanding this power.

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Home on the African Road

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.

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Setting Off For The Lost Mountain

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.

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