What really Matters

Recently I asked my friend Amanda what really mattered for her: was she pursuing her PhD in hope of a job, or beyond that was there some greater meaning in her work? It's only fair to put the question to myself: Why am I doing what I'm doing, and what am I doing anyway?

A year ago I took retreat to consider this question, resulting in my last post. Since then I have been posting only in Facebook notes (FB id: daniel_f_berg). I resonate with a lot of what I wrote a year ago, but am ready to bring myself up to date so to speak. Back then I still focused on entrepreneurship and consulting as the practical ways to make a living and do good in the world, but in fact talked at some length about the insights and humanity of the my relationships of support with Jan and Marie. Since then I have been incredibly challenged by, and have increasingly focused on going deep with, those who are in need of transformation, so much so that now I call myself a spiritual healer/teacher rather than an entrepreneur/consultant. In fact the reason I am writing this at 6:30 am is because I awoke with a dream confronting me with my anxieties about being all washed up as a consultant/entrepreneur. While I did support two of my friends in creating a web presence (Annet Schaap and Robert's Hava Java), and I did work with quite a few people for quite some time on Ethiopian development and business possibilities, I'm no longer pursuing social media/web consulting or things Ethiopian (as much as I love Ethiopia and will still support my Ethiopian friends) but am instead develooping and teaching healing/transformation courses and planning a healing centre with my friend Claire. So what do I mean by spiritual healer/teacher?

Just as psychotherapists are the secular priests of today, those to whom suffering people outside and within religious communities look to for expert friend support, so too spiritual healer/teachers are the 21st century shamans/gurus for those who have no spiritual community or who have not found the transformational support they need within their religious communities. Psychotherapists represent the secular orthodoxy of today, being credentialed, and validated as part of modern day institutions whereas spiritual healer/teacher types tend to be those who have suffered and having found healing and transformation now share their enlightened gifts with others who suffer. I reached a turning point 3 years ago when I felt called to serve, to trust myself to our creator and walk with those who would walk with me, walk meaning pursuing healing/transformation in life. Now, three years later, I feel ready to identify myself as a spiritual healer/teacher as opposed to an entrepreneur/consultant. So how has this come about?

As one who walks with others, I have been walking the last year with those in sore need of transformation, those who at the same time are really gifted. In this walk, I have been incredibly challenged as I have lived full-time both with Jan and Marie with Jan's needs for full-time care, as well as with my friend Claire with her challenging needs for healing/transformation. I have also maintained several helping relationships throughout this time period, some of these efforts being brought together in the first of my courses last fall. It has been my great privilege to walk with people serious about their own need for healing/transformation, trusting me and the grace that flows through me, to guide them in their journey.

The course that I offered took my participants into an internal dialogue experienced through their dreams, waking visions (guided imagery) and body symptoms, all this grounded in breathwork I originally learned from my former teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The reality of who they are and what they experience has become clearer and stronger for each of them as a result, with some significant breakthroughs experienced along the way. I believe each sufferer has the potential to become "the gift" they were lovingly created to be, and it is my great joy to facilitate the transformation of suffering into that gift! :)

And so I walk now, not simply quietly focusing on my own healing/transformation and of those with whom I walk, but now, increasingly publicly.

Be blessed and a blessing so much as it is possible for you this day my friends! :)

What Really Matters

I am on retreat this week, retreat from business and NGO activity, from keeping all those irons in the fire warm, from pushing looking for the business break-through, from being so immersed in "doing" that sometimes I begin to forget what I'm doing and why.

I have companions on this journey of mine, the journey itself being what matters, not the goals: these companions are people like me who have sold out to God (whom/whatever they take God to be) who have left the world behind and pursue the vision they've been given, the guidance they receive. Through us grace flows, light shines, and yet we experience our journey as one of trials, complexities, difficulties mixed with blessings, ecstasy and transformation - as we are refined, transformed and changed, and have the honour of being present to others in their transformation. My companions include Karl, Karen, Joy, Martin, Don, Heather, Ray, Grace, Marie, Laura and others I recognize as being in early stages of this realization/transformation, who perhaps share with me a journey of increasing healing/integration/wholeness which will one day include the BIG PICTURE, and many others known only to God, but whom I will find some day.

Yesterday, after long conversations with Joy and Karl, after I realized I needed this retreat, then in my usual maintenance of my many Facebook relationships I came upon a couple of statuses that touched this renewed and growing quest for guidance:

♥ "Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined"♥ . Henry David Thoreau

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be." -- Abraham Maslow

Now that I'm not battling to keep my head above water of the many business and NGO activities I have been pushing forward, I now find myself being more, seeing more, and appreciating what really matters. For example, I've been with my very good friend Jan the last couple of days as I do every week, supporting him while Marie, his wife is off at the University doing her professorial thing. Jan is suffering from a degenerative brain disease called Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) that has left him needing 24/7 support from Marie, myself, other family members and paid care-givers.

As I was discussing his breakfast options with him this morning he said he'd like something. I commented, but your face doesn't seem to agree with the words you say, and his response was, "it slipped off my face." Well I broke up, and when I told Marie about it, she broke up!! He has the driest humour perfectly situated within his condition we all accept as his normal. His ambivalences manifest physically now unlike the rest of us "civilized" beings who have learned to mask our internal contradictions. The line of an old Genesis song from the Foxtrot album came to mind, "wearing feelings on our faces while our faces took a rest".

You see Jan has lost many capabilities, such as the ability to focus, the ability to separate dream from "reality", etc. and so is usually dealing with hallucinations (dream reality) at the same time as our shared reality. This leads me to the second joke he cracked today. We were engaged one of our favourite activities, eating together, and I was pointing out to him that he had dream objects in his hands, the beer was on the side table beside him. Looking me straight in the eye, he took his dream object to his lips, bit a piece off, brought it back out if front of himself for further consideration and then said with a perfectly straight face: "See, it's still here!" Well I just broke down laughing on the spot, and laughed for a very long time. It was a perfect joke told from within his lived reality as shared by Marie and I. I told her the joke later with Jan, and we all three had a good long laugh about it.

Being with my friend Jan really matters: I have and am learning so much about how we human beings construct reality, about our egos, our identities, about how strong feelings distort our perception, and on and on it goes. But mainly, I am living in love supporting my friends as they support me. This is what really matters, this is what makes life worth living. I am also getting the added gifts of reflection and insight as I started reading to Jan today from Rumi and from Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (thank you Lynn for giving them to me for this purpose!). And so I close with a few quotes that are still reverberating through me:

on life and the pursuit of meaning:

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

On joining a community of the spirit:

Be empty of worrying.

Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison

when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.

Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always

widening rings of being.

The Many Wines (Coleman Barks explains that wine is a symbol for ecstasy, a kind of wine being a kind of activity of the mind or soul that can lead to ecstasy)

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,

drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power

to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so

that it erases every thought.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies

are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,

not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,

and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,

or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it's been untied,

and is just ambling about.

From the Foreword to Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying written by the Dalai Lama:

No less significant than preparing for our own death is helping others to die well. As newborn babies each of us was helpless and, without the care and kindness we received then, we would not have survived. Because the dying also are unable to help themselves, we should relieve them of discomfort and anxiety, and assist them, as far as we can, to die with composure.

From his Preface:

Had I not met my master Jamyang Khyentse, I know I would have been an entirely different person. With his warmth and wisdom and compassion, he personified the sacred truth of the teachings and so made them practical and vibrant with life. Whenever I share that atmosphere of my master with others, they can sense the same profound feeling it aroused in me. What then did Jamyang Khyentse inspire in me? An unshakable confidence in the teachings, and a conviction in the central and dramatic importance of the master.

Likewise I Daniel can say that if I had not been baptized in the Holy Spirit, if I had not met my teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and if I had not been healed by Abba, our Creator--the loving parent revealed to us by Jesus, then I would have been an entirely different person. I am so grateful for these many realizations, particularly for the centrality of the master or saint is supporting others in breaking free from the fear that binds them so that they can wake up and realize who they really are, beloved children of the one in whom we live and move and have our being. We are each unique, we can each wake up and be free, we can each be transformed, one day we will know as we are known, but until then we have companions on the journey, brothers and sisters all! :)

So this is what really matters. The rest of the details will sort themselves out as time goes on . . . :)

grace and blessings,

your brother Daniel

suffering and celebrating on the path

A beautiful young female Malaysian friend of mine asked me "how it's going these days" which led me to reflect on how to answer: of course I could just say, "Fine, thank you" or could I get into how it's really going. I slipped into reverie (day-dreamy, meditative state) and realized that my answer had to do with the interplay between suffering and celebration.

As I was writing this I was asked that same question by a lovely, wise, spiritual Taiwanese friend, and answered: "At one level I'm tired - not quite exhausted, but low energy from being on the long road to freedom; at another level I'm encouraged here and there by this or that positive occurence, seeing grace flow through me, etc., but still really don't have a clue about what's really going on . . . just keep putting one faithful foot in front of the other." It doesn't take great perceptiveness to see that life is not easy for me these days.

My path of increasing transparency and honesty with myself and others has continued to result in the stripping away of this or that identity construct (these illusory but socially accepted ways of presenting yourself to the world from within which you can feel comfortable and good about yourself) leaving me more exposed to anxious and depressive moods which may be pretty fundamental to how I became myself from an early age. Of course, going through these moods instead of trying to medicate or distract myself from them is transformative; but because of them I'm remembering less often to celebrate the love that holds me, the gift that I have received and that I am to this world.

We know that Mother Theresa shone with grace according to those who were around her, and, yet we also know that she endured the blackest depression in the last few years of her life. For me, I know that in the darkness a light has shone, and the darkness cannot comprehend or overwhelm this light. So despite my  decade of rationalistic psychoanalytic training, I know that where I focus is the source of my strength or weakness. Holding myself, and knowing that I'm held as I walk through anxiety and depression, remembering when I can to celebrate the LOVE that powers this universe, this LOVE that has transformed and is transforming me, while being continually open to what's next is in fact where I live this interplay between suffering and celebration on the path.

grace and blessing be with you all! :)

Rumi, the master alchemist, making all things new

Our work in Ethiopia combines two visions: Joy's One Village and Carlo's Alchemy World. We are of course all from One Village, this our global village, and lifting a hand to help someone else stand up is a natural gesture of being in one family! We also are participating in fulfillment of Carlo's vision of the the transformation of the poorest of the poor into the entrepreneurs who will transform Ethiopia.

I opened "The Love Poems of Rumi" for the first time this year, and the page that presented itself was "The Alchemy of Love." Enjoy! :)

The Alchemy of Love

You come to us

from another world

From beyond the stars

and void of space.

Transcendent, Pure,

Of unimaginable beauty,

Bringing with you

the essence of love

You transform all

who are touched by you.

Mundane concerns,

troubles, and sorrows

dissolve in your presence,

Bringing Joy

to ruler and ruled

to peasant and king

You bewilder us

with your grace.

All evils

tranform into

goodness.

You are the master alchemist,

You light the fire of love

in earth and sky

in heart and soul

of every being.

Through your loving

existence and nonexistence merge.

All opposites unite.

All that is profane

becomes sacred again.

When we are confronted with the greater reality in which we are immersed, in which we live and move and have our being, all man-made structures dissolve, and we are left immersed in love, together with all that is! :)

May 2010 be the year in which you wake up to this reality, and, on the path, may you find yourself increasingly blessed and blessing in all that you do! :o))

The red tones of Christmas

Coming into the holiday season, I, like many with less than perfect family situations, was very aware of the greys of Christmas, the shadows, the experience of lacking what the culture is celebrating. Walking through this holiday season with those who chose my company, I was surprised and bemused at the intensity of RED experiences erupting all around me.

First, let's look at the red associated with something to celebrate. somebody said somewhere that a lot of relationships start in this holiday season, and in fact three of my Facebook friends have happily changed their status to "in a relationship" with something close to an announcement tone. At the same time I was aware of the pull myself, not the dark pull of depressive thinking and feeling, but the red pull of chemistry suddenly manifesting in relationships where things had been pleasantly quiet for quite some time. Of course these two subconscious or unconscious influences are quite related, since the red chemistry of attraction brings to life new social status, the desire for which is most keenly felt at this time of year: "See, I have a significant other, isn't s/he wonderful;" and life is magically transformed at least for a while! Gone or at least more deeply submerged is that implacable dark pull.

But at the same time as these red under-currents are here and there resulting in new celebrations; there are also red outbursts of a different variety. All around me couples are showing the strain, or actually bursting out into unrestrained conflict: there is anger, wounding, damage and destruction. I remember my first wife left me on Valentine's day; there is something about the pressures of these socially constructed rituals and expectations. Relationships are being positively or negatively transformed under the pressure of this socially constructed vice: change is bursting out.

Well, for better or for worse, another holiday season has passed: perhaps you fit the stereotype, and you had a enjoyable, warm holiday season with memories to cherish. For those for whom the red tones of Christmas have blessed you with a new start, a new relationship, be grateful and take good care of each other. For those for whom the pressure was inexorable and the reds of damage are mingling with the dark greys and black of hurt, loss, and despair, remember that this too will pass, that everything is always changing; and that new life awaits whether it is the restoration of a transformed relationship, or the blessings our creator/universe is always showering on us, giving us resources to heal and build anew with hope and courage.

May 2010 be a year in which increasingly you find yourself blessed and a blessing in all that you do! :)

The Grey Tones of the Holiday Season

The Grey Tones of the Holiday Season

Not having any artistic talent to speak of, I nonetheless am learning something of the “design” world. When I say grey tones of Christmas, from a design perspective you don’t just have the bright reds, whites and greens, but you have the shadows, the contrasts, what makes the bright stuff stand out and shine. The same is true in our lives of course: we don’t always surround ourselves with the joy of extended family and holiday traditions, nor immerse ourselves in the nativity, the story of just how much we are each loved by our Abba, creator that he gave us Jesus, the first of many brothers and sisters. And so many in this world celebrate with bright colours this joyous, family time of year.

But for many people, these bright colours do not manifest in their lives, but rather as a sort of negative contrast, highlight the greys with their absence. There are people who have experienced these joys in the past, but can only now mourn their passing; others for whom trauma impairs their ability to access the joy of this season. For those who cannot celebrate these bright colours, their greys are darkened as they try to find ways to endure this time: some will succeed of course more than others, but they all feel the same dark pull, each in their unique way.

For those feeling this dark pull, whether you have completely admitted it to yourself or not, let me say something of my intentions for this time. For those who find themselves outside of the mainstream, there is an opportunity not available to those caught up in the busyness of career, families and social obligations. At some level we all know that we are one human family, all connected to each other in ways we don’t even understand, one of them being that we are all children of the creator: at some level we know this, but for many of us it does not come into our sense of self, who we are in our own eyes. Instead of being God’s/Gaia’s/the Universe’s children, special and gifted each in our own unique way; instead of such a consciousness we get entrapped in feeling less than, reduced or victimized, caught perhaps in a downward spiral dragged deeper by this dark pull. The opportunity I speak of is to simply change our focus: to be grateful for what we have (for we all have a LOT), and to take every opportunity to bless another. Do this as a simple decision, a choice of on what to focus, and whether it happens dramatically or gradually, your experience of yourself and this season will become different. This is my intention then for this period: to be grateful, to remember who I AM, and to bless others as I find the opportunity to do so! J

May you be blessed and a blessing! J

Your brother Dan J

feeling blue . . .

I am feeling a bit blue today, it's that time of year and there is a major blizzard blowing. I'm cooped up alone in the house with my internet friends for company as I work away on business development and getting our new charity going. I am tired and a bit disheartened. . . but I know better than to BE this mood, rather this mood will change just like the weather outside will change - who I AM is more than this mood. From my eastern teacher I learned that there are four sources of energy, and that when our energy is low, we tend to feel depressed even hopeless. By simply taking care of ourselves, by providing ourselves with enough energy, we feel very different about the same circumstances. The four sources of energy then are sleep, fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh air, and meditation or a quiet mind. All of these contribute to increasing or lowering our "life force" or prana: the higher our prana, the better we feel, the lower, the more depressed. There is much more that can be said about this, but I guess my main point is - don't worry too much about feeling blue today, don't get over-impressed by how bad your situation seems when you feel like this. Rather, get more sleep, eat fresh fruit and vegetables, get out in nature (near water is good) and breathe deeply some fresh air, and, practice focusing on something that makes you feel more peaceful, more tranquil. Doing so increases your energy levels, which in turn positively affect your mood. But, remember, your moods and feelings are always changing, for reasons often beyond your conscious awareness or control: as such they are best treated like the weather, something you experience but something that does not define you. Thus you do not have to medicate them, or worry about them, but rather accept your present moment, accept yourself, and in this acceptance, the conditions for a deeper knowledge of yourself are born.


In the end, "feeling blue . . ." without panic or need to medicate, but rather with full self-acceptance, can in the end be a gift, as who you really are becomes more and more available to you; for in the end, your life is a gift, and, you are a gift given to many. Feeling blue can in the end be the wake up call to who you really are . . . :)

Why I will invite Canadian Companies to set up a branch in Ethiopia

Okay, let's get the obvious objections out of the way before we even start. Everyone knows that Ethiopia is subject to intermittent drought, famine and ongoing security concerns (sharing borders with Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia), so why would any Canadian company be interested in setting up business there? The fact is that most of Ethiopia is green, relatively prosperous and secure, and in fact construction is booming, both in infrastructure and buildings.

There are many buildings under construction, but on many of them work has ceased as power, concrete shortages and land speculation are slowing down the pace at which construction can proceed. However, by next year, greatly increased hydro electricity supply will alleviate many of these issues, creating more of the conditions sustained, rapid growth.

Buildings are often constructed of a rough concrete, iron window and door frames with poor quality glass – perhaps like inexpensive building construction from the early in the last century in Canada. When better quality materials are used for more elaborate designs, finishing is often poor because the workers don't have the required skills or tools to work with them.

There is a crying need (and thus a great opportunity) for more concrete production, more sophisticated steel and aluminum production, plumbing pipes manufacturing of all kinds, PVC extrusion, doors and windows technologies, etc.

The problem is that purchasing western materials is prohibitively expensive as the Birr is worth approximately .10 of a Canadian $, but, materials manufactured in Ethiopia could do very well not only in Ethiopia but in the rest of Africa. Africa needs to increase its own manufacturing capability, and mature its construction industries; and in this lies a huge opportunity for Canadian businesses.

My emphasis on Canadian businesses is in part because of a CIDA (Canadian Government) program which pays for the feasibility study for a Canadian company looking into whether it could work to set up business in a country such as Ethiopia; and, there also is money to support the training of the new work force. Total support can be as high as $500 - $600,000CDN.

CIDA itself describes Ethiopia as:

Heir to an ancient civilization going back over 2,500 years . . . a prominent and strategically located country in the Horn of Africa. With a population of 77 million, the country has a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Agriculture is the economy's mainstay. Ethiopia plays a major role in African affairs as home to the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and in its pivotal role in other regional development organizations.

I also have formed good working relationships with construction developers, businessmen who can partner with a Canadian company, assisting with land acquisition, building development, and of course with a detailed understanding of the construction industry and opportunities for growth.

Finally, there are as well clothing manufacturing opportunities as Ethiopia produces very good quality cloth and a lot of leather. So far however, they have not made much of a foray into manufacturing clothing or shoes, and in fact a good tannery is needed, as is training in animal husbandry so that the raw hides are in better shape for leather goods.

So why, outside of sensible business reasons, am I inviting Canadian companies to consider setting up a branch in Ethiopia? Well, for one thing, I believe that good business involves also making a positive contribution to one's society and the world. I'm also in love with Ethiopia and intend to spend more and more of my time there. As an entrepreneur committed to doing good, helping such businesses get established is good for them, good for the people who will work in them and buy their products, and good for Africa in general.

So join in with me and spread the word!! :o))

When we suffer . . .

When we suffer, we are experiencing the effects of frustrated desire, expectations and conditioning, but we are also on the verge of breaking out into the light. Let me explain . . .

I remember when I did my first intro course in Buddhism on the way to my PhD in Religion: I heard Buddha saying Desire causes Suffering, and to me from a very Christian background this made no sense at all. I could quote it and get 100% in the course, but there was absolutely no resonance in me to this sacred truth. More than a decade later, when due to being tired of too much suffering in my life, and yet again finding myself full of peace, love and joy after one of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's advanced silence courses, I decided that I needed the knowledge, I needed to understand why I always ended up emeshed in suffering after the effects of the course wore off.

As I opened to the knowledge and pursued it with all my heart, with my full attention, it opened to me like a lovely flower, bit by bit revealing the sweetness and perfection of these sacred truths. Guruji's style of teaching was so simple: I got one basic principle through his example of coffee and a gulubjamon (a favourite Indian sweet): He gave us the example of sipping a sweetened coffee, then taking a bite of the gulubjamon and then taking another sip of the coffee. On the 2nd sip it tastes quite bitter, but it is the same coffee. The light came on for me. Our reality, what we experience in life is constructed: our perceptual abilities have been conditioned by cultural judgements and personal experiences. We don't see things as they are, but as we expect them to be. Any student of human perception knows that this is the case: that we don't see things that are there because we don't expect to see them, and we see things that are not there, because we expect to see them. This is a fundamental truth about the human condition, our experience of reality is illusory; we live in a world built of illusions.

So it is the illusory world we individually and collectively construct that gets us all mixed up with desire: because we are taught what is desirable and what is repulsive. In our consumerist world, where we are fed lies by advertizers all day long about what we need to be happy, this web of illusions has certain predictable if unfortunate results, such as young girls and women suffering from Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia because of having been seduced by false or illusory visions of what it is to be an attractive female. The point is that one of the ways that desire causes suffering is by the fact that what we desire hurts or kills us like tobacco and yet theses desires seem inescapable for many.

Desire also causes suffering when what we desire is harmful for others, either directly or indirectly. Men's desire for young females is a case in point, as is our desire for personal comfort and wealth that is satisfied off of the backs of very poor, even starving people. Desire also causes suffering when our way of providing for our needs and wants leads us to damage and destroy the environment that sustains us: witness that increasing industrialization in 3rd world countries that is resulting in so much air pollution that lung and heart diseases are on their way to being the leading causes of death. Despite how obvious this pollution is they have nothing on us asa the first world's contributions to degrading the planet on which we live is so much greater than theirs. A wise friend of mine, who has witnessed the relentless onslaught against the Congo River Basin Rainforest said to me, perhaps we really do deserve to be annilahated, or at least, that's likely what we're going to do to ourselves.

Finally desire causes suffering when we can't have what we desire with responses ranging from fear and anxiety that we won't get it or we'll lose it to unhappy disappointment to bitterness and anger or despondency and despair. All of this is caused by inappropriate ways of constructing our reality, of deciding what is important and what it is that we must have or else. But I have good news: the good news is that suffering opens the possibiity of escaping these illusory constructions, these empty promises of fulfillment and happiness, because all human contructions are flawed, are imperfect, are incomplete versions of reality and human nature. As Leonard Cohen, my favourite musician and poet, famously says, "there is a crack, there is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in!"

People "broken" by suffering, often end up being healthier, stronger and freer than those still caught in their illusions, still running the rat race, feeding the beast, trying to stay happy, when at heart they know they are as fragile as anyone else, that disaster can strike anyone, anytime, no matter how strong your illusions are. You see suffering often knocks people out of the mainstream, at least for a while, and in that time, reality can break through one's illusory defences.

All this to say, that if you're suffering, I want to encourage you by saying this is not all bad: stop to consider just how your desires, expectations, and related fears are at the root of your suffering, or are greatly amplifying the effect. I can tell you from my own personal experience that you are in fact, in the natural/spiritual centre of your being, peace and joy and love. If you can remember how infants and little children experience the world, you still have that capacity, that child-like way of being within you if only you can drop the fear, the desire for control and abandon yourself to the care of the Universe, to God, to whatever you can call that in which we live and move and have our being. I know that each of us is loved and precious and a channel of joy and peace and love for others if only we can awake. The ones who can hear me now are the ones who have already suffered, and who have already realized that there must be something more than career, possessions and family: to you I say, don't be discouraged by your suffering but surrender and find the meaning of this suffering, the liberating truth of who you are. To those of you so caught up in the pursuit of happiness, of wealth, of being somebody, I wish you the blessing of suffering when you are ready to benefit from it!

grace and peace to you all

your brother Daniel

Everything is always changing and Some things never change!

My former teacher, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, once had all the people on a course go through the following process: we were to pair up and take turns complaining to each other about the biggest problems we had in life. The person listening was instructed to give one of two responses: "Everything is always Changing," and "Some things never change!" Well as first I sat and listened to my partner complain it was amazing how well one or the other response suited what I was being told. The same happened when it was my turn. You see my teacher was a subtle user of paradox. No system of thought and belief no matter how well elaborated and defined can cover all of our human experience: but contrasting truths go a lot further in that direction.

What brought this memory to mind for me in the last few days was just how much my life keeps on changing. As I wander from person to person, from place to place, simply being with people, supporting them, and then moving on, my chosen path is one of transience, of fleeting moments of insight, times of grace and love which then have tranformative impacts both on myself and those I'm with. And yet, increasingly I find myself being drawn back into business activity, albeit business activity that not only is good for those involved, but that contributes to worthy causes at the same time. I am finding more and more like-minded people, people wanting to build businesses that mean something as well as earning an income. So I have quite a balancing act now with this will-o-the-wisp style of being in the world with my friends which clashes some with the different demands of being in the business world.

Now Ethiopia, Ethiopia was a wonderful, challenging, transformative experience. I watched one person almost come apart because of the stress of the culture shock; I experienced a lot of really bad customer service in hotels built to be real estate investments rather than client service establishments; I experienced the joys and hazards of a "working girl" culture where the bar us white guys were patronizing would suddenly fill up will all manner of attractive, hungry women, and in one case they found out where we were staying and tried to get to us through the front desk; I experience the joys of a new cuisine (the raw meat was wonderful!) and the pain in my guts as new bacteria caused havoc; I found generous friendly people, but also on all sides people with their hands out, even people with good jobs looking at us as a cash grab opportunity.

A Begging Culture
On the last point, while in Dese, there was an old woman outside our restaurant begging: now when you've just had scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, it's natural to want to give something to those who apparently are in need. So after avoiding her eyes for some time so that she wouldn't be all over us, when our car was approaching I went over and gave her a couple of Birr - a generous enough gift when most people give them  much less than a Birr. She was at first really grateful and talking to us about the little ritual she wanted me to go through with her in accepting her thanksgiving as an instrument of God, etc. But then it shifted suddenly as she shifted into greed; she even grabbed my arm, digging her nails in as my companions intervened and steered her away with a vigorous scolding. I'm sure they were saying something like get a hold of yourself, you should be ashamed, etc. This small event is a microcosm of what has gripped many in this way from very young children who instead of waving, yell "money" as they run after us. Where there is a clear need, generosity is likely appropriate although in reality the beggars are putting in a full day's work like anyone else, except their work is to try to attract enough sympathy and money rather than sell enough of this or that. But it is really sad to have children, adults, and older people who clearly have a life, clothes on their backs, are healthy enough and food to eat, to have them chasing tourists hoping to get money. They are in fact driving many tourists away, as are the speculators who happen to have chosen a hotel as their way to make money in real estate, but allow them to fall into disrepair, and have not a clue about good client service.

This is the country that we plan to build a tourist business in; where we will give nature lovers, those who wish to experience different cultures and cuisines, where we will give them the wonderful experience that Ethiopia is, while working to eliminate the more aggressive, greedy pursuit of tourists. Our plan is to build up the tourism infrastructure in the Woldiya region by both writing up the sights and sites so that people know what they're looking at, what the human and/or geological history is what they're looking at; as well as training communities in how to welcome tourists into their village so to speak so that they have self-respect as they peform their cultural rituals such as the coffee ceremony. With this arranged provision of services will also come the opportunity to purchase cultural arts and crafts from a local outlet rather than from the crowd of artists and vendors hoping to score a sale from this or that hapless tourist.

As you can see, Ethiopia is calling me back, because white guys like me with 3 decades of experience in all things western, business, etc. are needed there to build their emerging economy. So I went to Ethiopia knowing that I needed to experience and understand what was there in order to build the kind of business that would be good for Ethiopia and good for us white guys who wanted to contribute meaningfully somewhere. I mean, in my case for example, who wants to keep on producing shelfware (reports that get shelved) no matter how much you get paid to write it. I'd rather go and work with teams of Ethiopian developers who've been trained but don't have much experience, and help them set up their governments computer systems.

The founder of Alchemy World Projects, http://alchemyworld.org/, told me that in his estimation 85% of people in Ethiopia, all hard-working people, work either in subsistence agriculture or subsistence trading. We will work together (One Village Foundation Canada and Alchemy World Projects) to train local people in internet, English and business so that they can become 21st century entrepreneurs. If I can add a recent discovery of interest, Canada in the original aboriginal language meant "Big Village" and our hotels, touring business and web development businesses are all going operate under variations of One Village Ethiopia. The genius of our Hotel and Tour approach is to ensure that tourists always feel like they're being welcomed into a new village, their new home for a day or two. For we all despite our differences are part of our one global village! :)


But I digress from my main theme of how everything is always changing and yet some things are always the same. I now have many Canadian and Ethiopian irons in the business fire, and more and more of my waking hours is consumed with the many activities required to keep things heating up on all fronts. Yet, I continue to experience the synchronicities of apparent happenstance which opens this door, pauses this effort, moves my focus here for a bit, and so everything is getting done, but in a flow, rather than by a well-organized project plan. As it says in Proverbs, and I requote colloquially, "Man proposes but God disposes" or even better, if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans!! :o))

So what remains the same is a certain uncertainty as to what is next, and yet the certainty that meaningful and significant events will continue to occur with transformative impacts on myself and those around me; what never remains the same is "the plan" what in fact exactly is going to get done!! It's really quite entertaining if one can maintain a certain level of detachment as one continues on towards the goal, whatever that goal might be. Returning to my former teacher again, it is so Guru and disciple for the teacher to tell their disciple to do so and so, not so much because they want it done,but because of the impact of trying to do so on the disciple!! :)

For those on the path, whose life is being guided, turn upside down, and transformed, may you be swift to see and slow to fear; for those are still stuck in the traces, still caught in the rat traps and chains of work with the pitiful inducements of more comfort, more stuff, more prestige keeping you there; well, may you have the grace to wake up some day soon!! :o))

your brother Daniel

Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change has to be Addressed NOW

As my readers know, I'm just back from Ethiopia. As much as I love Ethiopia, and for that matter, Ghana, China and India, I found the same pressing problem in each of these countries, and that is air pollution. These countries are often blanketed with a permanent haze, and being on the streets is dangerous to your health because of the diesel and other fumes that choke the roadways. People are of course dying, some slowly, some quickly as a result of this unchecked air pollution. However, we are also changing our planet, changing it in ways that will render it uninhabitable for humans.

Now it's not that I'm worried about Gaia, the name many call her when thinking of our planet as alive, as an organism, as goddess; Gaia has not always been habitable by us, and is not likely to always be habitable by us. No, the problem is what we're doing to our own environment and to that of our children and our grand-children.

We have to stop using petroleum for everything-- it is so dirty and it has been fouling up our planet and our bodies for a long time. We also have to stop consuming way more than we need. We have to stop designing campaigns to get people to buy things they don't need! Whoever dreamt up the expansion of the economy as some sort of inalienable good has left way too many things off the balance sheet. The cost of cleaning up our messes now has to added to this balance sheet in govenment and international policies, and, we need to aggressively invest in changing how we do things: the status quo of expanding consumption and our use of petroleum has to stop.

So I leave you with a citation from David Berman, who in is presentation "Weapon of Mass Deception" and his book "Do Good Design" (with Design Struck out) very effectively makes this point:
". . . global branding strategies are the most powerful tools used today to encourage over-consumption amongst growing Developing World populations, resulting in the largest long-term threat to global harmony and the environment. Communications professionals have more conspicuous power than they realize, and play a core role in helping some corporations mislead audiences in order to invent unfulfilled "needs" in larger and larger markets. In a World where design has become a recognized corporate asset, creative people have the opportunity to use their persuasive skills responsibly and to accelerate awareness of the messages the World really needs shared. Recent developments regarding professionalism and ethics offer hope. Designers and other professionals need to choose what their still-young professions will be about: creating visual lies to help sell stuff, or helping repair the World by bridging knowledge and understanding. http://davidberman.com/seminars/howlogo.php#description

grace and blessings

your brother Daniel

What has happened here?

(Yesterday's post – accidentally appearing after today's! J

I came, I saw, I experienced, I fell in love! J This has happened to me so many times now! I'm this Canadian who keeps falling in love with very un-Canadian countries, peoples and ways of life. First it was India, back when I was a follower of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who I still respect more than any other person in this world. Being in India, immersed in the mystery and wisdom, yet poverty and disease, I was attracted and repulsed, but in the end very in love. More recently I spent time in China, again being impacted by the mystery and ancient wisdom, yet the poverty, disease and spiritual hunger of a people raised during the cultural revolution. In the end I was very much in love and happily would go there again for a protracted period of time. Last winter when I got to Ghana, it was again the same thing – in fact I thought I was back in India, it was so familiar to me what I was seeing: the air pollution, the dirt, poverty and disease, yet a vibrant, strong, virile people whose drive towards life is an expression of the ancient life force that emanates from the land. Three lands, three civilizations, three ways of being quite foreign to a Canadian and yet I felt so at home. Now here in Ethiopia it is starting all over again. But first let me tell you a bit about Ethiopia itself.

Ethiopia shares quite a bit with Ghana but has some very distinct differences as well. They are both very Christian with a sizeable Moslem minority, but Ethiopia is an ancient civilization, and both its Christian and Moslem roots go deeper and further back than in Ghana. In fact The Prophet Mohammed declared that Jihad would never be declared against Ethiopia, because the Ethiopian Christian king protected his family members when the rulers of the pagan city which he had offended with his new teaching and path, came with gifts asking for them. The king on listening to what they believed (the Mohammedites and the Pagans) said that the Mohammedites were closer to his beliefs, they were his guests, and that they were welcome to stay with him. So Ethiopia ever since has had a certain level of tolerance between their Christians, Moslems and traditional religionists. Although Ethiopia like Afghanistan has been conquered, it has never been colonized; Ethiopia like China went through a communist period (only 17 years), but it has shaken it off as a dark chapter in its history, not having suffered the same dislocation from its traditions and spirituality as happened in China. So today, Ethiopia is modernizing rapidly, and while much of the infrastructure has been delivered through international aid and development channels, today business is taking off in many sectors. But as it modernizes, the government is also working hard to support its poor, creating jobs like Street Parking Payment workers, and building thousands of low-cost, basic multi-story condominiums as it flattens one story slums. Ethiopia today is a multi-faith society that is opening up increasingly to investment and the modernization of its agriculturally-based economy. It is a place of opportunity for those with business skills and capital, a relatively stable society in which corruption is not such a feature of life as it is in so many other developing countries.

Whatever the case, again, I have seen, I have been repulsed by the air pollution, dirt and disease and yet I am deeply attracted to this place, to these people, to their food, to what it means to live and work here. So do come over here sometime and see for yourself about why it is that so many people like me, once they've been here, are bitten, changed, and never the same.

It’s a long road to freedom

It's a long road to freedom, a-winding steep and high. But when you walk in love with the wind on your wings and cover the earth with the songs you sing, the miles fly by. I love this old chorus from my charismatic renewal days: it is so easy to soar into ecstasy, or at least savour the memory and potential of ecstasy in the words and music. These days I am more likely to remember who I am, to soar into ecstasy with Rumi:

I am Life itself

You have been a prisoner

of a little pond

I am the ocean

and its turbulent flood

Come merge with me

leave this world of ignorance

 

Be with me

I will open

The gate to your love

 

And again . . .

 

Defeated by Love

The sky was lit

by the splendour of the moon

so powerful

I fell to the ground

 

I am ready to

forsake this worldly life

and surrender

to the magnificence

of your being.

I have tasted the joy, the ecstasy that flows from this knowing who I am, knowing the great I AM, knowing who I AM. And yet I continue to walk in this world, in this world but not of it; and as such I find myself increasingly immersed in business, in human frailties (including of course my own) rather than simply leaving it all behind me.

Today I am tired, today, my last day in Ethiopia for now I find myself already grieving this place, somehow wishing I was staying, and yet knowing there is much work to be done in Ottawa and other places before I can return. It is indeed a long road to freedom, when it winds through the valleys of this worldly existence rather than across the mountain tops of the sublime joy of merging with our creator, our lover, our mother, our Abba. Yet this is my path, learning as I go, dropping attachments as quickly as I can and yet finding myself tired this day . . .

It is of course all good, my arms are open wide as I walk and as I remember to sing. There are no easy answers, no quick solutions, I cannot give money to every beggar I see, not even to every seemingly deserving beggar I see. Even when meals cost a dollar or two, when bus fares are 15 to 35 cents, even with such a low cost of living, still I cannot give money to everyone who wants it from me. No, I have to harden myself, so against my nature, although yesterday I started telling little children to stop begging and they listened! J

On the path as it leads from Ethiopia back to Ottawa . . .

Your brother Daniel

Feeling at Home in Ethiopia

Ottawa, Canada is such a crowded place, crowded with well-educated, professional people. I have been part of that society, a top IT management consultant to the Federal Government, but now I find myself feeling more at home in Ethiopia or Ghana than I do in Canada. In the developing world, there is such a need for senior people of good will to participate with them in the building up of their society. But in the past, people like myself have mainly been present through religious charities and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), it has been a trying to help out or rescue people in trouble. Now, the way I and my colleagues are participating is through doing business, but business oriented not only to being profitable, not only a good ethical business, but also one that purely does good. Gone for us are the days of making money being some kind of virtue in and of itself, the means that justifies any ends. Now instead we are purposefully choosing ways of engaging in business that benefit the wider society, not just in terms of jobs, but in building capacity in a society based largely on subsistence farming and trading to one that participates meaningfully in the 21^st century internet economy.

So, when we plan to bring tourists trekking across mountains and plateaus, we do not go through community backyards so to speak (almost everywhere in Ethiopia is inhabited or grazed by someone) as we see fit so that our tourists get a view of this or that. Rather we will work with each community, organizing them so that they are able to appropriately welcome tourists into their communities, so that both they and the tourists end up with a good experience, and, income for the community. When we build a hotel or a resort, we will share the land with Alchemy World Projects and the One Village Foundation who respectively provide an entrepreneurship centre for young adults and an internet-connected community center for those lacking accessibility, resources and skills. Thus, the communities in which we situate a hotel will benefit in many ways from the many and diverse impacts of our partnerships in the region.

So now as my time here in Ethiopia winds down and I prepare to return to Ottawa, we already have a plan for my return for a much longer time the next time, as I find my place supporting the growth and development of this economy and these people with the many close friends and colleagues I am being blessed with. One of my many agenda items while back in Ottawa will be to prepare the way for friends and colleagues from around the world who may want to join in with us in supporting a dynamically growing economy with the experience, expertise and capital they have acquired in our lives to this point. Those who do choose to join in with us will share our common vision of not only seeking out profitable investments, but meaningful ones. I happily anticipate being able to look back with the community of friends who have joined in over the next decade or two with us, looking back and seeing just how many people have benefitted in so many ways from our choosing to join in with them in their life here in Ethiopia.

Counting down in Addis

Your brother Daniel

Ethiopian night life & sex trade workers

There is no such thing as a singles bar in Ethiopian society: what they have instead are bars where sex trade workers get friendly with patrons, perhaps getting drinks bought for them, perhaps a little something more like dancing together at the bar, or perhaps going "home for coffee" and an all night gig for the equivalent of $20 - $30. I found myself into the world when sitting in a bar with my friends, wanting to start something I invited an attractive young woman I took to be our server to come over and chat. So she sat down beside me and with translation assistance from my friends we chatted. Our driver, Ziguy (we often affectionately called him ``the guy``) was VERY good at chatting up the women and could easily make them comfortable and so was soon engaged with her teasing and joking with both of us. After a while I realized that she was in fact a sex trade worker and why there were so many good looking young women taking turns standing on the other side of the room waiting for something to do.

So the three of us had an enjoyable time as we continued the teasing, joking, interplay with her of course trying to warm me up for something else having already invited me to her house for coffee. J I asked her through Ziguy what it was she had planned for her life, and she said she would like to get married someday. Finally I told her that I really was not into getting laid tonight, but that I would be coming back in 4 months, that she should work on her English, and that will look her up when I get back to Woldiya. I also tipped her the equivalent of $10 for her time with us, my generosity bemusing my friends.

Afterwards in discussing the sex trade with my friend Derebew, (he has been an international development researcher and project manager in his own country for 14 years) he explained that these girls work for themselves, and that there is not the same stigma to being a sex trade worker, neither is it criminalized. As such these women represent an available pool of talent for a hotel which will want to provide western levels of service to their clients as they are more client-centred than the staff in the hotels we visited in small town Ethiopia, where levels of service are often nowhere near where they need to be. The hotel likewise can be for them a way of transitioning into a less risky line of work that can still give decent remuneration.

A couple of nights later in Bahir-Dar, we were again in a bar that soon filled with over a dozen attractive women, focused on the prospect provided by a couple of white guys. On my last night there I invited over the most attractive of the women and ended up with an amazingly wonderful evening of dancing, joking, talking with this mature, intelligent, gracious, gorgeous and oh, so sexy young woman. We both really like singing and dancing and so had a wonderful evening enjoying the music together, with me being absolutely blown away by her dancing, and telling her so often. She told me that she planned to continue in the business for another couple of years until she had saved up enough money to open her own business. I promised her I would look her up when I got back to Ethiopia, she said she would be happy to come and see our new hotel in Woldiya, and like with the first woman I ended up with her phone number, real name and working name. She also got tipped, the equivalent of $18. J

 

The Proposal

Doing good business, doing good is taking form for us here in Ethiopia as the One Village Ethiopia project: it combines developing a hotel, a tour service, a school for poor young high-school drop outs that produces young entrepreneurs and our very own Digital Village – a community internet center that provides access, training and consulting to the surrounding community. Woldiya has tourist potential that is as yet largely undeveloped, yet with the tourist business worldwide predicted to peak and plateau in the next decade it is one of Woldiya's most sustainable ways of gaining income as well as emerging into the 21^st century internet economy.

My original plans for Woldiya involved a drilling business or NGO, because ½ of the countries 70 million or so inhabitants still don't have reliable access to fresh water, but in fact our expertise and "guidance" has ended up bringing us to support Woldiya's emergence as a modern town, still well rooted in their rich and diverse cultural traditions. Thus we have submitted a proposal to both the Town and Region received with resounding support (including the gift of land!)

This proposal is intended to support Woldiya's successful emergence into the 21^st century internet economy. We will be working with local communities to who will welcome and host our tourists on their hiking trips up or across mountains, or trekking across highland plateaus to the breath-taking vistas that await them at cliff's edge. We have forests with monkeys, baboons, gorillas and tigers, lakes with hippopotami, camels all over the place in the lowlands, donkeys in the highlands, most of this within a few hours drive from Woldiya depending on which direction you head out. These communities will welcome our tourists as members of their families, all of us being One Village, giving themselves and the tourists a lovely sense of belonging as they share their food and cultural dances, songs and crafts with their guests. At the same time we will be connecting many sectors of the Woldiya region with the internet, giving them lessons in English, computer skills, and entrepreneurship so that they can with our support build Woldiya's new relationship to the world.

We have one more week here, a week that will be spent setting up the new Ethiopian company that will develop this hotel and touring business, that will host these charities. But tonight, we are off to have some fun, as it is Greg's birthday and so we will be having a good time with our Ethiopian friends, as only they can have fun!! J

Ethiopia Day 7

We are now in Woldiya a little past Dese heading North but not as far as Lalibela. We have surveyed the potential sites for our new hotel, which will include our Digital Village and an Alchemy World school as well as a bar and restaurant, having chosen a nice one on the road between Woldia and Bahiothr-Dar; but far enough from the traffic that a nice fresh breeze sweeps across the land as it slopes gently down towards the river bed (during the rainy season there is water but it's mostly mud and stones now).

As you can see the setting is spectacular, Africa at its finest!! The grain is Teff, an ancient grain endemic to Ethiopia, the first grain to be cultivated, the grain that is used in making Enjera.

This evening I sat down to write the proposal to present to the mayor of Woldia, a really nice, wise 40ish man who is really pleased at what we want to do: in his words, "he will not let this opportunity pass him by." This sitting ended up being on a white plastic patio chair I pulled out of the Internet Café to sit on the Marble walkway alongside the Hotel and Café, tapping away at the laptop in my lap. Within minutes an enterprising 10 year old boy had me agreeing to let him shine my shoes for 10 Birr ($1 CDN). As he worked away others walked by, stopped to stand behind me and watch for a bit, or tried to find some way to engage me beyond the smile and nod I'd give. Then a large truck carrying a load of sheep pulled up and 20 or so were loaded off the top section of this truck into the waiting hands of the a catcher who then passed them along a chain of people into the bowels of the restaurant. They believe in fresh meat! Later as I was sitting with some of my colleagues and new associates in the quadrangle restaurant of this 2 year old hotel, (2 years going on 50) they were released from where they had been penned up and ended up pouring into the restaurant section before they were finally herded outside. In Ethiopia there is a marked tendency to do everything yourself from scratch and so just as this hotel restaurant clearly butchers its own meat, so too, the building contractor we visited today has his own cement blocks made on site, his own gravel crushed, etc.

This hotel is as good an example of developing world as compared with what I'm used to. It is cheap we've got rooms for 5 of us averaging out to $4 each per evening. It has a nice design with an open quadrangle and three stories, but despite being only two years old, well designed and built with nice materials, everywhere you look the actual construction, finishing and maintenance are very poor. The stairs are not all the same size and have a slope downwards so that slipping is easy; the water is not working in much of the building and in my room where there is supposed to be a wall outlet there are only wires protruding. The window to the outside in the bathroom is permanently open with the result I killed 4 mosquitoes, three of whom got me first. There is a TV running permanently in the open quadrangle which resounds effectively into all the rooms whether the door is open or not, which has been going since 6 am this morning! J

Day 8

Having finished the letter of intent, in the late morning we headed up one of Woldiya's mountains to see the Church on top. These drives up the mountains in a good strong 4x4 are nonetheless often hair-raising as we repeatedly seem to come within inches of the edge, and even just looking out my passenger front seat window, I experience some vertigo looking down the sheer drop into the valley below. We went past many subsistence farms where they've managed to create a plot of corn or teff and/or keep a few head of goats or cattle. These are certainly highland peasants: according to Zinabu highlanders share more cultural commonalities across the tribes with other highlanders than they do with the lowlanders of their own tribe. So we made it to the top without incident, were greeted by a couple of young men in their early teens who at Zinabu's request brought us leafy twigs (Olive tree) with which to brush our teeth. We simply peeled back the bark, crushed the wood with our teeth and ended up with a nice set of bristles for brushing: very effective! We were not allowed into the Church because it turns out that western visitors used to talk their guides into selling them the holy hardware so to speak, so that valuable ancient cultural items of great significance to the local community ended up gracing someone's wall or desk with the guide pocketing the equivalent of perhaps $100.00! We each did the available obeisance, respectfully leaving a 10 Birr note in the collection box.

Zinabu then suggested we walk down the mountain rather than driving back down!! What a great suggestion that turned out to be as Greg, Zinabu, our young guide and myself took the next 2 hours walking down the mountain in the bright early afternoon sunshine (no sun-stroke or sun-burn to speak of and I was not wearing sun glasses a hat or any other special protection. We enjoyed the most spectacular views and increasingly were convinced of what a wonderful tourist experience hiking in these mountains could be. Oh, and part way down we shared the path with a small herd of 15 goats ably managed by a 10 or 11 year old boy. He had a makeshift bullwhip – a wooden handle about a foot long to which a 2 metre length of rope had been attached. Could he ever make that thing crack. Zinabu cracked it not far from my head almost deafening me with the gun shot! Greg got pretty close to a good snapping sound but I gave it up realizing I was to used to snapping towels, which it turns out is a different motion. I also made friends with one of the goats who started nibbling on my olive branch, in the end, he got the whole thing but there were first several familiar, comfortable interactions as we made our way down the mountain together. We said goodbye to our guide sending him off with 30 Birr and the encouragement to pick up his schooling again – he had yet to finish grade 10 but was not in school. He is a potential student for our Alchemy World Projects school – but more about that in another post.

We then headed over to meet with the mayor, handed him our letter of intent and were sent back to make a detailed proposal, and that's what I'll be doing all afternoon and evening of Day 8. Over and out for now!

Ethiopia Day 5

We have made several important discoveries about Ethiopia, each of which are shaping our experiences here to date. First they are behind most countries in the development of the internet. There are 351 broadband customers in all of Ethiopia, but this broadband is a stepped down broadband, and many internet applications are reputedly banned or unavailable. The form of dial-up that is more present in internet cafés I'm told can take 5 minutes to send an email. Using the dial-up available through our friends in the construction business is faster than that, but is very buggy, hard to get on, and you often need to hit "send" multiple times in order for an email to go. Thus our ability to be actively involved in our business has been extremely limited, meaning our fourth partner has got a lot to manage on his own. Construction is continuing on a fibre optic ring but there is no official date of completion or when broadband will become more widely available. However, when it does, (probably within the year) there will be significant opportunities for a company like ours who handles all aspects of communications, especially if partnered with a good local company like the one with whom we're already in discussions.

Second, the banking system is also significantly behind so that the only Visa transactions are at a bank for withdrawing cash. Thus we are doing our best to avoid needing to tap that particular reserve putting quite a bit of stress on our cash supply. The third impacted on the second as in we've found that many of the people we meet here, in the words of a Ghanaian friend of mine, "see us as their bank from which they can withdraw money," and so we've found our cash supply getting stressed by "friends" we are meeting, who as it turns out have their own assumptions and plans for us! J

Anyhow enough griping, these are really comments about differences in expectations and functionality, differences I'm adjusting to. However this trip South to Awasa had many highlights, three of which I've included in photos for this blog. Suffice it to say that Greg and I did the tourist thing and very much enjoyed our confrontation with the majesty and beauty that is Africa:

Our guides kept a respectful distance and so this pod of 11 Hippos – two of whom left as we were arriving, tolerated our presence occasionally lifting themselves out of the water or cracking one of their trademark yawns. On this boat trip on Lake Awasa we also saw a kingfisher, cormorants and an eagle all fishing and enjoying their meals.

 

We all very much enjoyed our encounter with this wild Columbus monkey that was coaxed down out of the trees by our guides, and who patiently sat with us eating a peanut at a time from our hands.

 

The storks were huge and not at all shy if there was food around. In fact a human could get stampeded if the fish scraps were thrown out with him in between the birds and the scraps. There were huge numbers of these huge birds: again I am so taken by the virility, the powerful life force that throbs throughout Africa!! This trek we took to Lake Awasa and later to Emporer Haile Selassi's resort, shower and hot springs was a trek through the Rift Valley, an amazing geological, cultural, and natural feast of diversity, all somehow co-existing and thriving, despite our sensationalist news generated opinions of the hazards and difficulty of life in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia by the way is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations dating its origins back to centuries before Christ. They have a remarkable religious and cultural tolerance sewn into the fabric of their daily life as they have been coexisting as Muslims, Christians and Traditional Religionists for more than 1500 years. More on that as we continue our quest to understand Ethiopia, to understand perhaps our place in Ethiopia, in contributing in some ways to the re-emergence an ancient civilization into the modern world.