Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

A Day in Addis Ababa

Man, people have mixed feelings on Addis Ababa.

As one of Africa’s biggest cities it’s a hub of diversity and activity. But it can also be a bit crowded and chaotic and a fair amount of people suggest spending most of your time in Ethiopia outside the capital.

I had one full day in Addis Ababa to see for myself. Here’s how I spent it:

🇪🇹 Meandering the Shola Marketplace
🇪🇹 Visiting the Ethiopian National Museum
🇪🇹 Big ol’ Injera lunch
🇪🇹 Coffee, beer, and fried fish
🇪🇹 Checking out the church of St. Maryam and the park on Mount Entoto

Warm Heart of Addis Ababa

“You don’t need to spend that much time in Addis Ababa.”

“It’s too chaotic and crowded of a city.”

“People will be much nicer elsewhere.”

It’s true that going outside capital cities and major metros is usually a good move if you want to develop a more intimate experience with a country. It’s true that there’s a correlation between city life and being busy, which is often a precursor to less friendliness.

That said, I spent a day in Addis Ababa while passing through and it absolutely had a warm heart.

🇪🇹 Spent the morning exploring Shola Market, checking out the vendor’s crafts, and learning a ton about spices and grains.
🇪🇹 Went to the National Museum and got a deep dive into Ethiopia’s history. Two centuries of immersion in less than two hours. I also got to see Lucy, as in, the human ancestor! I probably forgot the part of 6th grade that mentioned she was found in Ethiopia, and she’s still there.
🇪🇹 A little walk up Mount Entoto for some incredible views over the whole city.
🇪🇹 Spent some time at Maryam Church for the first of many encounters with Ethiopian religious life
🇪🇹 A bit of a turbo food tour, including a proper injera spread, shiro, a fantastic fried tilapia, and a beer & beef pit stop.
🇪🇹 Some rich insight into how Ethiopia’s history sets the stage for its current struggles from our guide Bule.

We Don't Need Another Wake-up Call

Do we need a loud and clear wake up call to start actually worrying about climate change?

This might sound surprising, but I don’t think we do.

We don’t need a natural disaster of epic proportions to move the needle. We’ve had plenty. We’ll keep having plenty, year after year.

And people are worried, especially young people. But the goal isn’t to create worry. It’s to reduce emissions and protect the planet. As far as worry goes, I think it’s accomplished what it can accomplish. In some cases, it’s even backfired, making some people give up doing anything about climate change because ‘we’re already screwed.’

I think what we need more of are stories about solutions, and case studies of people adopting those solutions in their community.

An opinion like ‘it’s too late, why even try,’ just doesn’t cut it after you’ve spoken with a farmer in Thailand who’s convinced his whole community to stop monocropping and to plant hundreds of trees per person.

BC with Rhys

How to have an awesome weekend in British Columbia:

1) Have an incredible kid

2) Spend three years and eleven months raising him to be a great adventurer.

3) Take him on an epic father-son camping trip to Alice Lake.

Regarding number 2, you don’t need to do much to ~make~ him an adventurer. He comes that way upon delivery! Just keep that fire going!

Such a good time in British Columbia but my main takeaway was: Dang! I got a really awesome kid. He took to travel and camping more easily than most adults. My man became an expert on bear safety, the green line of the Vancouver rail, and noodle parties.

He’s a stellar big brother and I love our big wild family, but getting to toss in some special one-on-one adventures is really sweet.

Deanna's 34!

The best person I know is having a birthday today.

It feels like we’ve been through everything together, and I suppose that’s cause we really have. Tiny humans. Meaningful work. Loads of adventures.

There’s an endless amount of things I love and appreciate about Deanna but these days I get to see her emotional intellect on full display around the clock, whether it’s with kids or at work or with me. It instantly makes wherever she is a safer place where people can shine.

Most Fascinating Country

Ethiopia just might be the most fascinating country I’ve been to.

Of course one of the big reasons behind this has to be its history of having never been colonized. While there’s plenty of influence from interactions with the Arab peninsula, India beyond that, and Italy, Ethiopia’s traditions, language, and beliefs seem to have local roots that go back centuries without ambiguity.

This sense of culture and belonging is pervasive. It’s in everything, from the coffee to the churches to the communities. And I absolutely loved it. Ethiopia, I’m a big fan.

5,000 Photos

When I started my photo-a-day project, I had so many rules around it. Stuff like…

🌠 Only one selfie a year! Matter fact, let’s make my birthday selfie day.
🎇 I must personally be the one to click the shutter.
🌃 All shots should be landscape shots with the same 3:4 ratio.
🌅 It’s not a beauty contest. The photo that best tells the story of the day always beats the aesthetic one.

I’ve abandoned a lot of the rules, and I’ve probably forgotten even more. I’ve done this for thirteen years, so technology has changed. The norms around photography have changed. The platforms for sharing has changed.

But the one rule that’s stayed the same… perhaps the only rule… is that last one.

2023 Reads, pt. 2

Not as bad as I used to be about buying books and letting them sit on the shelf forever, but still pretty bad at it.

Recently:
Khabaar
It’s What I Do
Fresh Banana Leaves
The Creative Act
Life in Five Senses
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Only one fiction book and it looks like I’ve been in a memoir-ish mood lately. Lynsey Addario’s stories of how she became one of the world’s most prolific war photojournalists was fascinating. I related to so many of the tensions of how to depict something horrific in a way that was still dignifying to the human in the photo while doing their situation justice.

Rick Rubin’s book is probably going to live on my nightstand for a good long while. It’s a book I can just pop open, read a couple pages from, and spend the rest of the day chewing on that particular insight. This is a must-read for creatives… which means everybody, according to both me and the book.

Curiosity is a Healthy Relationship with the Unknown

“I used to think hope meant being in a difficult moment like that and saying, but things will get better! Just wait and see! I know it! And I no longer think that. Maybe that’s optimism, but I’ve learned that this is different than hope. I think a lot of time hope is more like hanging on.”

A year ago, I got to take the stage at @creativemornings_sd , and I had the time of my life. Such a friendly crowd, and some of the most fun I’ve had on a stage!

What I loved about this talk is that I felt like I was passing the mic between different versions of myself. The storyteller. The film school misfit. The wannabe humanitarian. The new dad. I got to dive into climate science and share quotes from Brene Brown and Oscar Romero. The theme was depth… so I guess it fit! It also helped me see how all these fragments come together… which is an important thing to discover as a dad to littles.

I hope you’ve had a chance to watch this talk, but if not, now is a great time. It’s up!

Ethiopia!

The whole time I was in Ethiopia, I was like… how am I even here? This place contains multitudes!

History runs deep. Senses come alive. Nature amazes again and again.

I’m so thankful I had a chance to get to know this country through a variety of perspectives. To dance along with the ekista, to sip that smoky coffee, and eat endless injera. To plant trees. To roadtrip through some stunning rocky edges in order to reach that great open space. I appreciated getting a deeper look at the country’s challenges. Poverty. Climate. Patriarchy. Unrest. While all those things are disheartening, they also helped me further appreciate the resolve of the community spirit working to overcome.

Ethiopian Good

Hello from what might be the most fascinating country I’ve ever been to: Ethiopia 🇪🇹

Where do I even begin to describe everything I’ve encountered here? A rich, uncolonized history shaped by devotion, diversity, and sensations.

There really isn’t a way to put it all into words, because so much of the Ethiopian experience is received in smells. Tastes. Hugs. The air on your skin. But, I’ll have to do my best, because it was simply too rich to keep to myself.

Tiger Attacks

I visited the Sundarbans Forest in Bangaldesh, which is one of the places where you’re most likely to see a Bengal tiger. While I didn’t have any encounters with the very endangered species, almost all of the locals I met had stories. That would be cool, if their stories weren’t so sad. Most frequently, they were about losing loved ones to tiger attacks.

The Sundarbans is a threatened area. As sea level rise eats away at the mangrove forest, the tiger habitat shrinks each year. This puts human communities and the wildlife in the forest in closer proximity, which is bad for both. In addition to disease being more likely to jump from species to species, attacks like these also become more common.

There are so many strategic ways to do reforestation. Restoring spaces that have been natural buffers for human and animal communities is definitely one of them.

Climate Migration in Bangladesh

Climate migration is a serious challenge. I’ve heard so many farmers talk about facing the difficult decision of having to leave their homes to provide for their families once the harvests came up short.

Of course, having to leave your family is always difficult, however it occurs. But it was in Bangladesh, I saw firsthand how challenging it is when people actually have to follow through on this difficult decision.

In Dhaka, I witnessed some of the most difficult and demanding jobs I’ve ever seen. I tried just walking across a plank to one of the coal ships and that was difficult enough. But the workers had to do that two hundred times each day carrying heavy coal-filled baskets over their heads. While I watched the welders and mechanics in the alleyway just behind the shipyard, I saw so many close-calls and nearly-missed accidents. I was told by many people that it wouldn’t be too surprising if I actually witnessed one. They happen frequently.

One of the first issues that made me really care about human rights were abusive labor situations. I heard stories of physical jobs, not too unlike these, in South Asia where severe abuses took place. It occurred to me that creating a healthy climate where people don’t have to leave their homes greatly reduces their vulnerability to ending up in this sort of situation.

The Mothers of Mongla

In my head, I kept thinking of this trio of women I interviewed in the Sundarbans as the ‘Mothers of Mongla.’ While their kids played some customized mashup of football and cricket in the background, they told me that they had joined a weather club that gave them the chance to prepare their neighbors from pending cyclones.

Interestingly, they referred to the place where they lived as a mother. “In the Sundarbans, we feel like we are under the mother’s care. This is my birthplace, I will always feel emotionally connected. As I said, we are under the mother’s care in this area. We are proud to live in this beautiful place.”

Turns out, when you realize your dependence on the land around you, you respect it!

A Moment in Frankfurt

Flying from California to Africa takes forever! Thankfully the last few times I’ve had good routes that have let me get stretch my legs and breathe real outside air… like this afternoon I spent in Frankfurt.

Here’s my strategy for layovers:

🛂 One of my favorite credit card perks right now is having access to any Priority Pass Lounge, which can be found in nearly any airport. They’re not a bad spot to pass a few hours. Some even have pretty good places to take a shower between flights. (Whattup Manila??) Kids enter free, and I can bring a guest when I travel. Plus, most have snacks, some have meals, and a few have even had full service bars. This saves me a lot over airport food.

🛃 If I’ve got, say >6 hours, and it’s a layover somewhere that makes the city pretty accessible, I’ll try and leave the airport. Frankfurt was a great spot for that.

🛄 On my especially long flights (*cough* Africa) which require back-to-back double digit flights, I’ll try and book a route that actually lets me spend a night or two in an intermediary city, usually somewhere in Europe. It’s way less physically taxing, and I get somewhere new to check out.

🛄 My kids are a little too young for me to justify really stacking destinations, but as they get a bit older, I look forward to adding another destination that connects to one of my travel hubs whenever passing through somewhere. Once I’ve spent the time, money, energy, and emissions of getting over an ocean, I might as well get more out of that investment.

The Brick Kilns of Bangladesh

One of the first things people casually know about Dhaka is pollution. Unfortunately. It upstages the positive things Bangladesh’s capital has going for it, but how do you ignore the times when it feels like you’re breathing in a can of soup? Chunky soup.

The brick kilns in Dhaka are the main culprit making it the world’s most polluted city. And the people working there are on the front lines for all kinds of respiratory illness and physical injury. Recording interviews next to the incredibly loud thump of their machinery was practically impossible. However, what they had to say needed to be heard.

“It’s a very hard job, my brother.”

“Body pains, headaches, fevers… these are always with us.”

I always feel immense gratitude to the people that I get to interview, but especially so on this outing. These interviews were incredible and deep and they helped highlight the human faces of climate migration.

Don’t miss these eye-opening conversations on my newest video!

The Shipyard

If you knew people were performing the backbreaking labor of carrying coal from a ship to a dock only to be paid a few cents by each basketload, you wouldn’t really want to do anything that could delay them, right?

But when my guide let me know that several of the workers wanted me to come on board the coal ship to see what it looks like, I was worried I might have to be guilty of that. The only way to get on board was by walking the plank. A couple thin strips of wood formed the makeshift bridge from ship to shore.

The drop below was maybe 20-30 feet into the water… and who knows how deep or shallow that might be.

I tried unsuccessfully to use my camera gear as an excuse, but that only resulted in volunteer offers to carry the stuff for me. I bit the bullet and tried to think of myself as light and nimble like a gymnast while going fast. Speed helped resolve the guilt of delaying the workers and helped me not overthink the drop.

Big challenge for me, everyday life for the workers here. Dhaka, man. Home to many of the most difficult jobs I’ve seen.

Brickmakers in Bangladesh

“We feel like birds in a cage now. When we finally get to see the faces of our wives and our children, we will finally be flying free.”

Seriously could not believe the vulnerability, warmth, and openness of the brick layers in Dhaka as they shared with me their struggles working one of the most difficult jobs on earth. Working with the heavy machinery and toxic emissions of a brick kiln put these guys in harm’s way on a daily basis.

“I was injured just a few days ago,” one kind bricklayer told me with an incongruent smile on his face. “But I am still working. We are like robots.”

“Our hearts are affected at an early age,” filled in another worker. “When we use our shovels, we can feel it on both sides of our chest.”

It feels a little cliche to describe their spirits as unbroken in spite of the toil that work takes on their bodies, but no matter what words you use it’ll be impossible to do justice to how kind and warm they were. These guys epitomize how climate change is an injustice that comes for the most vulnerable among us. Add this encounter to the things that keep me moving when climate work doesn’t feel so encouraging.

If you haven’t seen my new Bangladesh video, it’s a personal fave. Check it out!