You know what? As an adult it’s not just hard to make friends, it’s hard to keep them.
It’s not that we all just get nasty and dump each other (I mean, hopefully not) but with jobs and families and how much our culture prioritizes productivity over relationships… it takes a real effort on both ends to keep up with each other.
Between Alaska with friends, and then a visit from friends to San Diego, not to mention a recent wedding, I feel like I’ve gotten a lot of quality time with my people lately, and my cup is full.
It takes time, energy, effort, plus mutual investment to make these things happen, but they are so necessary and worth it. Wherever friends rank on your list of priorities, think of how you want to look back on life twenty years from now, and consider sliding ‘em up a couple notches.
CreativeMornings Talk
If you’re not familiar with CreativeMornings - its a breakfast lecture series, and a whole lot of fun. Come hear from a different speaker (in this case, me!), snag some free donuts and coffee, and meet people. I’ve seriously made a few pretty good friends just from hanging around.
I’ve been attending for the past five years, and now look… I’m this month’s featured speaker! I always thought that would be a lot of fun.
Theme for the month is depth. I’m gonna be talking about my storytelling work, and sharing some stories from my own life. Register online and let’s hang!
50 Million Trees
I’ve learned a ridiculous amount of things about trees over the past five years, but its still the simplest things that I’m most amazed by.
The way trees function, not so much as solitary living things, but as members of a whole community. Talking to each other, nursing each other, via fungi. Playing host to all kinds of bugs and birds and creatures.
The way trees’ lives greatly outlast our own, growing slowly, dying slowly, and being there for so much history as it unfolds.
The way trees replenish the Earth and make it more livable for people.
Proud to be part of the journey to 50 Million Trees for Plant With Purpose. From seeing a community reforestation day for the first time in Tanzania, to celebrating the milestone with Burundian friends beneath a waterfall, to planting the first of thousands of trees in Mexico in honor of a dear friend.
Huge accomplishment.
Convento de Santa Catalina
What if the thing that really makes a certain place or physical location great is how much you’d enjoy being lost there with no real agenda or plans?
If that’s the case, the ruins of temples and cathedrals in Antigua, Guatemala are great places, particularly the Convento de Santa Catalina. Spent a good afternoon just openly exploring.
World's Poorest Country
Burundi has a lot going on, but poverty dominates the narrative of the country.
Burundi's Fuel Crisis
I tried understanding the causes for this crisis, but to be honest, it seemed to be a complicated tangle of several factors coming together.
Three Meals a Day
One of my more memorable encounters in Burundi was with Enos and his family. Burundi was recently named the most food insecure country, and Enos’ experience was typical. He and his kids would eat one meal a day, usually maize or spinach without much variety. Pretty frequently, they would have to skip meals all together.
Now they eat three meals a day. As someone who has never had to skip meals, that is so easy to take for granted. And when you consider that he has a total of seven mouths to feed, this becomes even more impressive.
When you have an impression of poverty that’s based on stereotypes, it’s easy to start thinking of it as something inevitable. Inescapable. But Enos shows us that this isn’t the case. Things like this are happening every day.
Rethinking Poverty
A random pet peeve of mine is when people talk about middle income countries like the Philippines, India, or Dominican Republic as though they were one of the poorest countries in the world. In fact, they’re squarely in the middle when you map things out.
Why? I mean, yes, there are parts of those countries, especially in the rural areas, where you can still find pretty difficult living conditions and steep poverty, but when we make it seem like the entire country might as well be on par with one of the twenty lowest income countries in the world, we really flatten the story of a lot of good that has happened in the world.
(And yeah, I also don’t like the way we talk about lowest-income 20 countries, even where poverty is widespread and extreme, but that’s for another time.)
Over the course of my lifetime, the majority of the world has seen significant improvements to their living conditions. Most have moved from poverty into more of a middle state, and perhaps if more people saw the world through that lens, we’d be less tempted to think of poverty as an inevitability.
“I assure you, because I have met and talked with people who live on every level… the distinctions are crucial. People living in extreme poverty on Level 1 know very well how much better life would be if they could move from $1 a day to $4 a day, not to mention $16 a day. People who have to walk everywhere on bare feet know how a bicycle would save them tons of time and effort and speed them to the market in town, and to better health and wealth.”
–Hans Rosling
The Toronto Islands
I really thought the Toronto Islands would just be a big tourist trap. And they’re not not a tourist trap, I guess, but they’re also gorgeous and worth spending a day at. Especially when it’s perhaps the most ideal beach and park day Toronto might see all year.
My favorite thing about it here is that the ferry ride here starts from the tip of downtown Toronto. So one minute you’re kind of in the heart of the city, surrounded by skyscrapers, and then a short ride later, everything is very quiet and calm.
Burundi Road Trip
Burundi is a fairly small country, which allowed us to see a large portion of it by driving around. We worked our way from Bujumbura at the top of Lake Tanganyika down to the tip where it borders Tanzania, then back up to the new capital of Gitega, right in the heart of the heart of the country.
You can learn quite a bit just by staring out the window, and the streets of Burundi gave us quite a bit to take in. Life in Burundi is diverse! I love how having a traveler’s eyes can render one person’s sense of ordinary into extraordinary.
Field Hotels
Whenever I’m doing a trip somewhere like rural Burundi, my local partners arrange the on the ground accommodations unless otherwise noted. This often means I don’t know where I’m going to stay until I get there.
Cell signal, Wi-Fi, hot water, electricity are all question marks until I get there. Some places I’ve stayed at were basically camping. Others were surprisingly cozy.
What I love about these field hotels, especially the ones I stayed at on this trip in Burundi, is that the people running them cared for them with such pride. Some places don’t see international visitors too often, but it was amazing- moving, even- to pull out every stop in trying to make you feel welcome.
Mariam's Convenience
Even the most ordinary roadside shop selling basic, everyday goods has a whole story behind it if you know how to look for it.
Mariam was a farmer. Well, she still is. But she needed another source of income for her family. So she thought about starting a business.
Starting a shop like this takes an up front investment, and most women in Burundi don’t have access to that capital, or even to a bank that could lend them the money to get started. But she found that support in her community through Village Savings activities in a Purpose Group.
Now her shop has a little bit of everything and she’s not done. She hopes to further expand her shop in the near future.
Jogging Not Allowed
Burundi has a complicated, but also kind of beautiful relationship with the sport of running.
In 2014 Burundi banned jogging.
The ban was a little surprising, since the president who passed it was a former PE teacher, a huge football fan, and a football buff.
That made me want to investigate more about Burundi’s jogging clubs. Turns out they’ve been pretty significant sources for solidarity and social support.
(Much of what I learned stems from Peter Frick Wright’s story in Outside Magazine several years ago. To my knowledge, the ban is no longer active.)
Village Savings Groups
Are you familiar with village savings groups?
In many rural villages, banks don’t operate. With nowhere to save money, borrow loans, or invest in a community, these villages can’t make strides against poverty. But village savings groups change that by equipping communities to become their own banks.
This is an increasingly common practice, especially around Africa and South Asia. Each organization runs them slightly differently, but I’m quite partial (and biased!) towards Plant With Purpose’s Purpose Group model that pairs these activities with land restoration and environmental education.
Things from Precolonial Burundi
I used to think I wasn’t a big museum guy… turns out I was just going to the wrong museums.
I loved the Gitega Royal Museum in Burundi’s capital. It’s small, but it felt good to see African artifacts on display in an actual African country, amirite, Killmonger?
It’s wild how many cultures have traditionally seen twins as bad luck. I’m not offended by Burundi’s solution to the hex, though: share a beer.
Burundi
Burundi is drumbeats, mosquito nets, and pineapples.
Burundi is plates of ugali, bananas, pomme frites, meaty chicken, and lengalenga.
Burundi is that baseball score that manages to find your phone after driving for days without reception.
Burundi is amahoro.
Burundi is horned cattle.
Burundi is walking with sensitivity towards its recent history of tumultuous events.
Burundi are bottles of Primus, yellow jerry cans, and plastic discs turned into kids’ toys.
Burundi is the curiosity of children, the bright pattern of women’s dresses.
Burundi is meeting a man who used to eat once a day now feeding all five of his kids three solid meals.
Burundi is families, friends, and new friends taking selfies at the foot of a waterfall.
Notes from Burundi
Whenever I tell people that I’ve been in Burundi the past couple of weeks, the most common reaction I get is this:
Cool. Where is that??
Here’s my geography lesson for ya. Go put on Black Panther. Play that opening scene with Sterling K. Brown reading the legend of Wakanda as a bedtime story. Take note of where in Africa they zoom in and out of. Small country, east of Lake Tanganyika.
Burundi.
I learned so much from spending two weeks in Burundi, and geography was only a small portion of it. It’s a gorgeous country, underestimated due to its struggles with hunger and conflict. But there are so many local leaders, women especially, who are driving the country forward while working to preserve its nature and culture.
This is Burundi
Burundi isn't a country that gets a whole lot of media attention. But it's a place with so many stories. After two weeks in Burundi, I have plenty of stories I'm excited to share, but they can best b appreciated with a little bit of background knowledge.
Burundi is a small country. French is the business language, but Kirundi, Swahili, and other tongues are the language of the people. Most people who know something about Burundi know about poverty, hunger, or conflict. But with that established, it's time to go deeper. There's so much more to the story than that.
Three Places
I’ve been away the past few weeks, both digitally and physically, because… it’s been quite the month! Such an eclectic set of adventures in such a short time: The African Heartland. A European city of dreams and music. An Arctic coastline
I deliberately kept off my devices for the most part, and kept my writing to physical ink and paper. I saw and learned so much, and just wanted to take it all in. Happy to have my adventure bucket running pretty full at the moment. Looking forward to taking some time over the next few weeks to keep processing it all.
🪘
A few things I’m really feeling right now:
Deeply grateful for @deanna.suzanna- during a two week work trip, she took care of the kids 3-on-1, and if that’s not enough, of course that’s when they all got sick! In spite of that, she somehow got everybody on an even better rhythm than we had when I left. In the words of Nate Dogg, ain’t nobody does it better!
🎻
Deeply appreciative of where I am in life right now. So much of life has felt like an unending state of transition the past couple years, but I feel like I did have a moment to recognize that I’m exactly where a younger me would’ve hoped.
❄️
Deeply introspective! Between walking European streets late at night and taking deep breaths in the woods… queue up those big thoughts. I still have so much to process and take in about the past few weeks. Looking forward to sharing some of the journey.
Guatemalan Errands
People love and romanticize the idea of living like a local when traveling, so here's a big tip on how to do that:
Do really ordinary boring stuff.
Errands.
Except when you're in a different setting, a lot of times it won't be boring at all. Some unfamiliar places.
In Guatemala, ordinary errands for us looked like grocery shopping and tracking down insulin.
But it's when you do these things that you realize the subtle (or occasionally unsubtle) ways these things differ from place to place and how that reflects deeper, underlying differences that make each place unique.