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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The Best Worst Idea

Packing for Africa 2011.I’m in Africa, again. And on this trip, Africa x 3. My bags are loaded with what I need to find the course for a trail race in Ethiopia’s high sandstone escarpments, to lead a trip where I and fourteen others will rock climb, mountain bike, and do yoga from Lake Langano’s western shore to Tigray’s northern fields, and to journey to a new mountain in Mozambique for something still very unknown. In five weeks, I will live out a year’s preparation in three phases.  I have enough things—six ropes, two sets of full raingear, nine different types of antibiotics, high heels and sticky rubber approach shoes, yoga tops and bug shirts, gaiters and flip flops, down shirts and shorts, a GPS, camera, back-up camera, audio recorder, two external hard drives, tent, cook sets, titanium pots—to stay here for longer. And I might. After all, I’ve already done the hardest part: I’ve gotten ready. The moment I manipulated that last zipper closed on my last bag I breathed a sigh of relief and submitted to the journey.

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....

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The Middle Ground: Telling a Better Story about the Famine in the Horn of Africa

It’s been two months since global officials have officially deemed the famine in the Horn of Africa as the worst to hit the world in a century. During those same two months, I’ve released Coffee Story: Ethiopia and have been speaking to audiences about a broader landscape of possibility in Ethiopia that includes coffee. Coffee Story is the result of five years of work, during which time I never imagined the book would be released to this crisis. But now, eight weeks into speaking, writing, and thinking about the reality of the Ethiopia situation—one with massive problems, massive potential, and massive changes happening daily, I can tell you that this dialog might just have been what this book was made from since the beginning.

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.

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Imagine Ethiopia 2011: You Can “Go” From Home

As one of the leaders of Imagine Ethiopia 2011 I wanted to share a progress update to inspire and potentially involve you in our next steps. Read on for more.

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:

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