Traveling through Africa with Border Jumpers

A very cool blog contacted me last week. It's called Border Jumpers and it's pretty much what it says on the tin. Bernard Pollack and Danielle Nierenberg are on a mission to visit nearly every country in Africa, writing about their experiences with a special focus on community groups, NGOs, and local people. Sounds a bit like the Africa Heartbeat project I've covered here before.

They started in Addis Ababa last year and so far have made it to an impressive list of nations. They've talked with conservationist farmers in Ghana and written about using traditional crops to fight climate change in Zimbabwe. These are just two of the dozens of projects they've covered.

As I discovered on my recent trip through Ethiopia and Somaliland, Africa thrusts beauty and poverty at you simultaneously. Just look at the above photo, courtesy of Border Jumpers, of a palm oil processing center. It's little more than a bunch of grotty drums and a lot of hot steam in an already hot climate. Yet the woman standing in front radiates grace, beauty, and pride.

Border Jumpers, Africa Heartbeat, and I are headed the same direction with our writing. We're experienced travelers who have learned that the world is not the big, scary place TV tells us it is. It's big alright, but filled with intelligent, kind people doing all sorts of interesting things. The single most important thing a travel writer can do is communicate that simple truth to as many people as possible. So check out those sites for some uplifting reading, and some facts about Africa the mainstream media don't bother to cover.

Passing through Oxford

I'm finally back in Madrid after more than two months on the road. I spent most of that time in Ethiopia and Somaliland working on a book on the Battle of Adowa. My series of articles about travel in Ethiopia has already started on Gadling and at the end of the month I'll start one on Somaliland.

Before settling back in Madrid the family and I spent ten days in Oxford. Almudena was collaborating with the astronomy department while I did research at the Bodleian library for my book. Julián got to see his English friends and go to camp over the Easter break. We visited the Pitt-Rivers and Natural History museums (his favorites, especially the dinosaurs) and climbed trees but sadly he didn't reacquire the English accent he had last year.

We love Oxford and spent six months here last year. There's always so much going on here and we have a good circle of friends. We had a whirlwind social schedule, including a stroll with friends through Magdalen College gardens to take these photos, and managed to pack in a fair amount of work too, plus a traditional Sunday roast at our local pub. I even managed to go to the Odyssey 2010 f/sf/h convention.

Sadly, our trip was all too short, but we'll be back in the summer for a couple of months. In the meantime I'm planning on hiking in the mountains near Madrid, remembering my Spanish as I forget my Amharic, writing lots, and spending a week in Rome at the national archives.

The travel bug that just won't die

Sorry for the long silence, but if you're a regular reader of this blog or any of my other social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter, you know I've been in Ethiopia and Somaliland for the past two months. Besides writing, my greatest love is travel. I previously posted about my travel year of 2009, which included a lot of shuttling back and forth between Spain, England, and Missouri, plus a hike across England along Hadrian's Wall and a short trip to Holland. Fun stuff, but nothing truly adventurous.

This year started well with some adventure travel. Thanks to two of my publishers, I had the money to go to the Horn of Africa, a place I've always dreamed of visiting. When I was ten I read a National Geographic article about the monastery at Debre Damo, a medieval Ethiopian monastery on top of a cliff. The only way to get there is to climb up a dodgy-looking leather rope. I thought that was the coolest thing ever and thirty years later I finally got to do it!

Almudena joined me for the first three weeks and we celebrated our tenth anniversary in Ethiopia. We did the popular historic northern loop, taking in ancient sites such as the monasteries on Lake Tana, Gondar, Axum, and Lalibela. Then she went home and I headed east to the medieval walled city of Harar and further on to Somaliland, an unrecognized state that comprises the northern third of what used to be Somalia. It was cool to visit "Somalia" and find it peaceful and friendly, but my favorite place by far was Harar. There's a special feel to walled cities that I've noticed in Damascus, Jerusalem, and Segovia. They comprise their own separate worlds, and their inhabitants are very aware of their history and culture.

So is my travel bug satiated? On the contrary, it's just woken up! I'm off to Italy in May, and hopefully The Gambia this autumn. Also, I'm going to try to convince my publishers to send me back to Ethiopia next year. I made lots of friends in Harar and I'd like to visit soon.

I'm writing a series of travel articles about Ethiopia for Gadling, and when that's done in about a month I'll do a series on Somaliland. Plus I intend to get back to blogging here on a regular basis. The Internet connection in Ethiopia was terrible. Most of the country was on dialup! Stay tuned.