Today I’m starting a new feature on the Joy Trip Project Blog to generate some discussion on the news of the week. In a quick perusal the morning headlines here are a few items that stood out for me. What’s on your list of top news items you feel socially aware, environmentally conscious people show know about?
Eight thousand miles is a long way to travel just to set up a top rope. That’s especially true when there’s a guy with a machine gun blocking your way on the approach. But here on the sandstone cliffs of the Gheralta Massif was a unique opportunity to help writer and mountain guide Majka Burhardt establish some of the very first sport climbing routes in the nation of Ethiopia. The risk of automatic weapons fire notwithstanding it didn’t take long to convince me that it was still a good idea.
My morning coffee will never taste the same. After three weeks in Ethiopia the standard breakfast blend is desperately lacking that unique flavor of hospitality and culture steeped in a thousand years of tradition. With the rich fresh scent of roasted bunna still wafting through my imagination my thoughts drift back to the highlands of Africa as the sun raises slowly on a crisp autumn morning in Wisconsin.
The Ethiopia Joy Trip is slowly winding down. Today we’ll drive from Hawzen to Mekele where we’ll stay overnight. In the morning we’ll fly back to Addis Ababa. From there I’ll say goodbye to the staff and participants of Imagine 1 Day and head back home to Wisconsin.
This has been a truly transformational experience for me. Apart from the wonderful culture and scenery, I have also learned a great deal about a unique expression of community investment. In combining tourism with philanthropy through Imagine 1 Day I have been handed a rare gift, to see the direct impact of a non-governmental organization as it does the good work of creating a sustainable solution to the cycle of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.On first encounter locals here address me like one of their own. The color of my skin, the texture of my hair, the cast of my eyes, are all familiar to them. But upon second reckoning of my clothing, the camera bag on my shoulder, my manner of speaking they realize. I am a foreigner, a “forengee.” Yet still I am welcome. It’s up to me to impress upon those I meet that I have come to love their homeland, my motherland, and that I want to stay a bit longer.
I turned 44 today. And while I write this I'm sitting on a toilet with my laptop in the lavatory of a dark hotel room in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Don't draw any salacious implications from my current predicament. I needed a quiet place to work so as not to wake my roommate, climber and writer Majka Burhardt. She’s asleep in the next room. And don’t get any funny ideas about that either. I’m on the roll away. For the next several days she’s my friend, guide and traveling companion through not only the wild outback of Ethiopia, but the convoluted path toward fulfilling my wayward dream of becoming a professional adventure journalist.
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