Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

Reintroducing Myself

Seems like a good time for a little reintroduction for any new faces around here!

🇵🇭 I’m Philippe, I was born in Illinois and grew up in Philadelphia and San Diego, the latter of which is currently home. But! I have also been shaped by Filipino ancestry and other places I’ve lived, including: Argentina, Oregon, South Africa, and Italy.

🌳 I married my best friend from college, Deanna, and somehow it’s been 7 years already! We’re raising three kids under the age of three, so things are always pretty wild.

🏕 I absolutely love nature and travel. Basically, I love people and places. I’ve found that efforts to protect nature and preserve culture are deeply intertwined.

🌍 I’m passionate about ethical storytelling, especially for climate and social justice organizations. I’ve worked in that space for ten years.

🥭 A lot of the work I do is tied to serious and heavy topics but I honestly prefer to not take myself too seriously. I think that’s why one person I’ve really looked up to is Desmond Tutu. Dude took on apartheid while subversively giggling.

🎥 When I travel I love to make videos investigating things that have deeper origins or stories than we often realize, like mezcal, recycling, or moss! Did you know zombies originate from Haiti? I would love to make a whole docuseries on stuff like that someday.

✏️ You’ll probably see a lot of my visual art on here. I started using digital drawing as a form of wordless prayer for some of the heavy things going on in the world. I also use it to celebrate bits of culture and life.

🏔 I’m pretty motivated by how life is a pretty miraculous gift but also by how quickly it goes. I enjoy pushing myself and so at least once a year I try and do 1-2 big bucket list level things. This year I checked off visiting my 50th state: Alaska. Soon? Maybe a food-focused visit to India or getting a traditional Filipino tattoo.

🗺 I also try to ‘always be a rookie’ by always having something in my life I’m a total beginner at. Recent rookie year projects have included: boxing, Japanese cooking, and making animated maps on AfterEffects.

The Vibiest Taco Bell

This felt like an old Spanish monastery mish-mashed with a day spa.

But actually… it was a Taco Bell!

A bit before going to Antigua, I did my usual thing of pre-exploring via Google Maps and letting my little street view avatar guy do some walking around for me. He walked me into this rustic alleyway that I couldn’t believe was actually a Taco Bell. But sure enough, I was able to get in there and snag a chalupa.

I know there’s the fancy ocean-view Taco Bell out in Pacifica, and then there’s the one that’s also a luxury hotel in Vegas… but this is probably my favorite of the weird Taco Bells.

Friends in Town

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.

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.