I  Made a Mistake

JetSetCitizen is not a very good name for this website. The idea of jet setting to exotic locales, while exciting and romantic, is definitely not the message I want to promote. My idea of a JetSetCitizen is more about being a global citizen and the personal responsibility that requires. Really experiencing foreign cultures and connecting with people around the world can be transformative and enlightening, if you let it.

Travel is Not a Competition

Travelling for the sake of getting passport stamps or crossing items off a bucket list are just other manifestations of our rampant consumerism. Some travellers compete by how many countries they have been to or attempt to regale in tales of how authentic or exotic their experiences are. How different is that from trying to one-up your neighbor’s latest purchase? Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, many of us are keeping up with the Indiana Joneses.

Maximize Profit or Maximize Good

We have been sold the idea that we have to produce and consume more to ‘advance.’ The strength of an economy is measured by growth in total production, whereas other measures like happiness, health, social relationships, clean air, wildlife, access to water and countless other factors that make life worth living, are ignored.

So much of what we do seems focused on making as much money as possible. Look at the late night commercials for ab machines, fake antique coins, replica jewelry and countless other falsely advertised products. Sure it is possible to profit by selling get rich quick schemes, promising easy weight loss, or marketing over-priced affiliate programs, but is that really how we want to spend our lives?

All of us on this planet, particularly those of us fortunate enough to come from developed countries, are a cost to the planet. We consume, waste and destroy to live and entertain ourselves. The impact of our individual environmental and societal footprint varies by our life choices, but definitely all of us are a drain to the ecosystem in some form or another. We can choose to live a self-centered life and take as much as we can for ourselves, or we can find ways to give back.

An Excellent Life

I have been thinking about these issues for a long time. The search for more meaning is a big reason why my wife and I sold everything to live a nomadic lifestyle, but the real inspiration for this post is this video of Dwight Turner and his work helping urban refugees in Bangkok, Thailand. I am not going to summarize the video, just watch it. It is only a few minutes of your time. Better yet, visit his website and watch it there. You might just be inspired to click the donate button on that page to give a few dollars and have a major impact on the lives of a family you will never meet.

Food for Thought

At the end of every single day ask your self this question:

Did I give more than I took today?

If you are answering”no” for too many days in a row, maybe it is time to change what you are doing?

Related posts:

1. What is Jet Set Citizen About?
2. JetSetCitizen Interview 1: Trevor Stefiuk- Musician in Australia
3. How Do You Measure Success?

The Secret to Finding Your Passion

Most of us are searching for a life calling that is financially, spiritually, and emotionally rewarding. Wouldn’t it be great to get paid to do what you love? Imagine being excited to get started on Monday morning, rather than dreading the start of another soul killing week. Here is the solution, but first we need some background information.

The Problem with Passion

There are some problems with the popular views of finding your passion, that likely get in the way of finding an occupation you truly enjoy:

1. Not every passion will earn you a great salary.

You might have a passion for watching movies, reading, eating potato chips, shopping, or even drinking coffee. While it is not impossible to earn an income doing those things, it is unlikely. You might be able to find related work, but it definitely won’t be doing the enjoyable part of those activities all day long.

 2. Passion is not enough.

Really enjoying an activity is not enough. For example, you may have a passion for playing guitar, but that doesn’t mean you will automatically become a rock star. You also need the image, charisma, distribution, marketing and luck, among other things. Being a brilliant guitarist is the price of admission, all the hard work comes after that.

3. Passion is a small fraction of the work.

Imagine being a world class rock star earning millions playing a couple of 90 minute shows a week. What that ignores is all the photo shoots, interviews, travel, rehearsals, individual practice, set up, merchandising, travel, time away from home and family, life on a cramped tour bus, etc. The actual time playing music is very small relative to the total work required.

3. Are you world class?

There is a huge difference between enjoying an activity and being good enough that people will pay you for your passion. There are millions of good runners around the world, but probably only hundreds that can earn enough in sponsorships and prize money to fund their interest. Even Olympic champions find that success to be fleeting. Top athletes in the world only have a short window of opportunity to capitalize on that fame. Being good at something is not enough in many callings; you really need to be amazing. Will you put in your 10,000 hours?

4. Too much of a good thing.

Hobbies you love part-time can easily turn into something you hate if done full-time. Doing yoga every morning can be very enjoyable and energizing. Teaching five yoga classes per day is likely to get very tiring and boring.

5. Multiple passions.

We are all multi-dimensional so cutting down to a single passion is difficult, if not impossible. Focus means excluding other enjoyable activities. What if you have passions for running, playing guitar and woodworking? How do you choose what to focus on and what to eliminate? Why not do all three if they all bring you happiness? They can all be fun hobbies. It doesn’t mean that all will bring you riches. You can enjoy them in your free time.

6. Passions change.

The hobbies and interests you have now are not likely to last for the rest of your life. We all change our minds. That is normal. Searching for one passion that will keep you engaged and excited for the long term will only lead to disappointment.

False Expectations

Career advisers and personal development authors have sold us this belief that if we find our single passion then our work will become enjoyable and rewarding. This false expectation keeps people constantly searching for some mythical passion that will suddenly make everything perfect. While that message might sell books and personal coaching, I don’t think it is an accurate reflection of realty.

Happiness and personal satisfaction are not intrinsic to particular occupations. Digging holes or scrubbing floors can be personally rewarding and fulfilling with the right attitude and motivation. I have previously said that “passion really is personal excellence.” Doing your best and over-coming obstacles is where real satisfaction comes from, not the activity itself.

The Secret to Finding your Passion

Cal Newport of StudyHacks has the best approach to finding work you love I have found. Newport quotes Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT) :

To be happy, your work must fulfill three universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

As Cal defines:

• Autonomy refers to control over how you fill your time. As Deci puts it, if you have a high degree of autonomy, then “you endorse [your] actions at the highest level of reflection.”
• Competence refers to mastering unambiguously useful things. As the psychologist Robert White opines, in the wonderfully formal speak of the 1950s academic, humans have a “propensity to have an effect on the environment as well as to attain valued outcomes within it.”
• Relatedness refers to a feeling of connection to others. As Deci pithily summarizes: “to love and care, and to be loved and cared for.”

This is closely related to Dan Pink’s autonomy, mastery and contribution from his book Drive.

Cal Newport’s strategy for loving what you do breaks down to two simple steps:

1. Master a skill that is rare and valuable.

2. Cash in the career capital this generates for the right rewards.

Newport goes on to say,

The world doesn’t owe you happiness. Your boss has no reason to let you choose your own projects, or spend one week out of every four writing a novel at your beach house. These rewards are valuable. To earn them, you must accumulate your own career capital by mastering a skill that’s equally rare and valuable.

It’s important, however, that you cash in this capital, once accumulated, for the right rewards. The word “right,” in this context, is defined by the traits of SDT. In other words, once you have something valuable to offer, use it to gain as much autonomy, competence, and relatedness as you can possibly cram into your life.

In a separate post, Newport summarizes his views on passion as:

On Study Hacks, I’ve been promoting the idea that you have to be good at what you do before you can expect your job to be good to you. This is why I push myself and others to stop worrying about their “passion” and day dreaming about courageously bucking the status quo. Navel-gazing and conformity-defiance, I argue, is not how people end up loving what they do. Instead, they start by getting good at something rare and valuable, and then leverage this “career capital” to construct — not discover — a fantastic career.

The secret to finding your passion, is to stop thinking about some idealistic single answer to your career conundrum and just get really good at something the world will pay you for. You won’t love every minute of it, and that is okay. Enjoy the process of doing your best and striving to get better. That is where enjoyment comes from. Use the money you earn to fund your hobbies and other activities that you are interested in. You might find that you gain the most satisfaction from spending time with family and friends, not working after all.

More Articles on Finding Your Passion

StudyHacks: Beyond Passion: The Science of Loving What You Do

StudyHacks: Are Passions Serendipitously Discovered or Painstakingly Constructed?

CJ Scott: Why Finding Your Passion Might Not Be The Right Route To Riches

ZenHabits.net: The Short but Powerful Guide to Finding Your Passion

Kat Eden on DumbLittleMan: How to Find Your Passion

PassivePanda: How to Find Your Passion

Michael Hyatt: Find Your Passion in Three Steps

The Change Blog: Forget about finding your passion.

The Happiness Project: Why it might not be helpful to ask yourself, “What’s my passion?”

ScottHYoung: How to Discover What You’re Passionate About

Related posts:

1. Forget Finding Your Passion: Just Get to Work
2. The Key to Living your Passion
3. The Secret to Success: Commitment

Benny Lewis shared this great video recently that puts this in perspective.

Instead of looking for the next mountain to climb or goal to cross off your bucket list, how about just enjoying what you are doing now?

Related posts:

1. Interview with Location Independent Irish Polyglot, Benny Lewis
2. Guaranteed Success and Happiness
3. What do you NOT want to do with your life?

Neil Pasricha of 1000 Awesome Things gave a funny and motivational talk at TEDx in Toronto last fall. He talks about how he started his blog, his book deal and how many amazing things there are in the world to be thankful for.

It is a great presentation and message but I also love how simple his idea was for his blog. The simplest ideas are often the most well received. I talked about big ideas like this in previous posts: Get Rich Quick: Big Ideas for Big Money! and Big Ideas to Make Big Money. The problem is that simple can actually be quite difficult because people tend to be overly critical and dismiss the ideas too early.

It is very hard to do what everyone else is doing and succeed, a simple, yet novel idea is the only way.

No related posts.

We are in Istanbul!

It has been 8 months now that Motoko and I left Japan. We are having a great time with our lives but this is also not an idyllic lifestyle. It is great to be able to see the world and have complete freedom, but we are really starting to miss having a regular routine in our lives. Here is a short summary of our current situation.

We  are in Istanbul

We are currently in Istanbul and loving it here. The hospitality of Turkish people has been amazing. Turkey is very unique in that it is a bridge between European and Middle Eastern cultures.  It is so different then anywhere else we have been but I will write more about the country later.

Our Financial Situation

We haven’t been able to sell our house in Japan because of the terrible real estate market there, so we have been paying bills and a mortgage for an empty house. It would have been nice to get rid of that obligation, but such is life. We are now thinking of spending a few months every year in Japan. Unfortunately, we got rid of all of our furniture so it will be a little expensive to get set up again.

Purchasing a house was probably the worst decision we have made in our lives. If we didn’t buy our house we would probably have an extra $60,000 to $80,000 in the bank now. Again, such is life.

Our investments also haven’t done so well this year so we have lost a fair amount of money. We are not in a desperate situation but it has put more financial pressure on us. Mentally, it has been stressful. We really hate spending more money then we are earning. Watching your bank balance constantly go down is not a comfortable feeling. My wife and I have both been very good at saving in the past so these last 8 months without much income haven’t been easy. We definitely are not going to spend all of our money so earning a sustainable income is becoming a priority.

Traffic to my websites has been increasing slowly and we have started to earn a little money from a few of the sites but it will take some time to build them into sustainable businesses. I know there are still great opportunities to create real businesses online, but I don’t think blogging and selling expensive ebooks  are the way. Blogging is great to connect with like minded people and even earn a small amount of income, but it is a huge amount of effort for the small potential returns. I am starting to redirect my focus to some smaller wins.

JetSetCitizen.com Plans

I love connecting with other travellers and lifestyle designers, so I will continue the interviews I have been doing.  However, I don’t think I have much to contribute to travel blogging. The travel niche is very saturated and is not something I want to focus on.  I will start to decrease the number of personal posts like this and just focus on the interviews. I also have a couple of ebooks in the works that I plan to offer for free or at very low cost. They will have a somewhat contrarian message to what most other people are writing. I think personal excellence is more important than accomplishing goals or striving for more experiences. You will start to see more of that reflected in my writing.

Too Much Travelling

My attitude toward travelling has definitely changed since my twenties. Maybe this means I am getting old.  It is great to see many countries, meet new people and experience new cultures but we are also getting tired of the constant moving. We are trying to travel as slow as possible but it is still too fast. It is really hard to exercise, eat healthy, play music, maintain friendships, really experience new cultures and get work done when perpetually travelling. We love being in new countries but the constant change is getting to be too much. We are most likely going to start rotating between a couple of main home bases with shorter travelling in between.

I also feel that new cultures are appreciated more when you can reset in a stable place. When you work for 11 months you really build anticipation and excitement for that 1 month of travel per year. When you are always travelling you start getting bored of new experiences because they happen every day. How many amazing European churches do you need to see? After the first couple they all start looking the same.

Travelling is also getting in the way of accomplishing important things in life. I want to spend more time working on projects that have the potential to make a small dent in the universe. Most of what I am doing now is for my personal pleasure. I am not really contributing.

I have no sympathy with vagabonds and talkers who try to reform society by taking men away from their regular productive work and making vagabonds and talkers of them too. Bernard Shaw

Life is good

Overall we have absolutely no complaints about our life. There is not a single day when we don’t discuss how lucky we are to do exactly what we want in life. We are working on projects of our own choosing, living where we want and spending time with cool people. What else is there?

Related posts:

1. 16 months into Location Independence
2. Interview with Nomadic Day Trader, Marcello Arrambide
3. Interview with Location Independent Entrepreneur Brandon Pearce

Great Customer Service from EasyJet

My wife and I have recently taken three EasyJet flights in Europe and were quite impressed with the level of service despite the low cost. We have flown EasyJet and a couple of the other low cost European airlines in the past, but this time we got to see firsthand how the airline deals with customer service problems. To be honest, our expectations were extremely low because we tend to believe that ‘you get what you pay for’ however EasyJet managed to over-deliver.

Here is a list of our EasyJet flights;

• London to Amsterdam,
• Amsterdam to Geneva,
• Geneva to Budapest

The total cost for two of us including two checked in bags was 503 euros (Checked in luggage costs extra). So on average it works out to about 84 euros per flight per person.

What is EasyJet?

EasyJet is a bare bones airline. It can offer cheap flights because it operates extremely cheaply. This means no free drinks or snacks on board. EasyJet uses distant terminals far from the airport center without the connector arms that allow passengers to quickly enter the terminal. There is no assigned seating so passengers have to fight to find a seat.

EasyJet also charges for every little extra service. Want to enter the airplane first? 8 to 10 euro. Want to check in a bag? 8 to 10 euro. Food or drinks? You must pay. If your carry on is over weight, 10 euros per kilogram. With the low prices and all the extra charges, we definitely felt that we were going to be cheated somewhere along the way. We brought a lot of stuff with us and one of our check-in bags was slightly over-weight, but none of this was an issue.

Stranded in Amsterdam

The big problem was a canceled flight in Amsterdam. There is only one EasyJet flight out of Amsterdam to Geneva everyday and it was canceled because of a crew illness. All the passengers had to be rescheduled to later flights. Needless to say, passengers were angry. Some were yelling at the EasyJet staff. People were pushing and shoving trying to get ahead in line. It was an ugly site, yet the EasyJet staff remained calm and friendly. I really was impressed. I was joking with the staff a little because I definitely didn’t envy their jobs at that moment.

The thought of being stranded without a place to stay was enough to upset most passengers. However, EasyJet immediately offered to pay for tickets on a competing airline and/or hotel accommodations and meals for all stranded passengers. In fact, many people including myself were suspicious EasyJet would payout that much money for our 60 euro flight.

We went to KLM to try to find another flight to Geneva but found the staff unfriendly and unhelpful. One KLM employee didn’t believe that EasyJet would pay for the flights on a competing airline. To be honest, that gave me reason to further doubt that EasyJet would really pay 5 times or more the price of our airfare to get us out on a competing airline. Since all the flights were booked for the next couple of days we had to go back to the EasyJet counter, only to find out that the earliest available flight was in three more days. Fortunately, EasyJet really did pay for all meals and hotel for those extra days.

The hotel was quite nice as well. It was the four star NH Hotel Schipol near the airport. The rooms were clean and spacious and the food was good. The only problem was the staff at the hotel. Perhaps because we were stranded passengers, we were definitely treated as second rate guests. I was going to write a long rant about how terribly we were treated but I hate being that negative. To briefly summarize, we were locked out of our room twice, threatened to be forced to ‘sleep on the street’ and blatantly lied to by the front desk manager who wouldn’t even come out to talk to us even though she was less than 5 meters away in the front desk office. (If you every happen to be walking past an NH Hotel please give it the finger and keep on walking.)

Despite my pleading the NH Schipol hotel front desk clerk and front desk night manager refused to verify our stay with EasyJet. The hotel manager said it was my responsibility and said if I wanted access to the room I would have to pay the full rate immediately.  Finally after about 30 minutes of the front desk clerk going back and forth to talk to the hidden manager, they allowed me to call EasyJet from the hotel phone. (30 minutes later!) A friendly EasyJet customer service representative quickly answered, apologized for the problem and said she would fix it immediately.

Of course, we still had to wait another 15 minutes for the hotel to verify that the EasyJet representative was legitimate but once again EasyJet delivered. They gave me the benefit of the doubt when I called on the phone. The phone representative didn’t ask for flight details, passport numbers or any nonsense like that. EasyJet just assumed I was telling the truth and quickly worked to solve my problem. Despite already staying two nights in the hotel, NH Schipol assumed my wife and I were criminals out to cheat them. They were unwilling to make a simple phone call that would have immediately solved all the misunderstanding.

I truly was amazed that low budget airline like EasyJet can deliver great customer service , but a large high quality hotel chain can’t offer basic levels of human decency and respect. Thank you EasyJet! NH Hotels… @%#^$&*().

Related posts:

1. How to Travel for Free
2. Frequent Flyer Miles Hacking: Tips and Tricks to Fly for Free
3. Photos of Beautiful Amsterdam

Biking in Calgary, Canada

I have been back in my home country of Canada for about four months, now I have two more weeks to go before I leave again. It has been great to be back home, but I think I enjoyed it more because I know it is not permanent. My wife and I have not made any roots and have not anchored ourselves to a lifestyle we don’t want. The greatest insight I have discovered is that life is fantastic.

Sometimes it is easy to forget just how good we have it. Several friends and relatives have recently undergone major medical surgeries. I have heard many complaints about how far they had to drive to get to the hospital, how long the waiting lists were to get a hospital bed, how many times their surgeries had been postponed, how late the doctor was, etc.

I understand people under-going life threatening operations are under huge amounts of stress and want to get out the hospital as soon as possible, however I think they may be over-looking how lucky they are to be in a rich developed country with amazing technological advances and medical knowledge. Canadians in particular should be ecstatic to have universal and affordable health care. In the cases of my family and friends, the patients went home after only a few days in the hospital.

Consider how amazing this is for a moment. People I know, probably you too, have gone into a hospital and had their bodies cut open. Some have had cancerous tumors cut of of their bodies, others have had hip and knee replacements. Think about how advanced a civilization has to be to cut into human tissue and fix what is wrong. Imagine how you would go about doing brain surgery on a loved one. Think about shaving a head, cutting into the scalp and sawing the skull to get access to the brain. Imagine the sound of sawing a skull. I personally don’t want to be doing any brain surgeries anytime soon, although I am pretty damn thankful that there are doctors out there with the skills and knowledge to help people now.

My wife and I are healthy and are able to live the life we choose. Nothing else is lacking from our lives. Sure lots of money, fame and things would be nice but they certainly aren’t necessary for a happy life.

When traffic is slow, think about how lucky you are to have a car. When you hate your job, think how easy it is compared to what your grandparents endured. When your body aches, remember that it is a sign that you are still alive and are fortunate enough to experience these great times. Life is good and we truly do live in amazing times.

Here is a great related video that has made its rounds but is worth watching again. It is Louis C.K. on Conan O’brien.

Louis C.K. talks on Conan O’brien about technology from Nathan Lunde-Berry on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. How to Find Happiness in Life
2. What do you NOT want to do with your life?
3. We Did It! One Year to a New Country, Career and Life.

I definitely don't have the Marathon Gene

On a recent post on Untemplater.com, I wrote about how I think talent is created, not born. I called the post, You are a Monkey so Stop Thinking You are so Special. I learned a couple of things from the comments, apparently people don’t like being called monkeys and some people place a lot of emphasis on the genetic side of the debate.

Of course genes are important in many circumstances. It is difficult to be a professional basketball player if you are short. It helps to have big hands and feet if you want to be a world class swimmer. Good eyesight is necessary to be a pilot. So yes, genes do shape our future to a degree, but how often does genetic makeup really limit what we can accomplish?

The purpose of the monkey post was to show that since humans have 99.9% of the same genes as chimpanzees, maybe we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on our genetic makeup. The worst part of an over-reliance on nature over nurture is that it causes many people to give up before they even try. “I am tone-deaf so I can’t play musical instruments.” “I not good at math.” “I can’t draw.” “I can’t understand computers.” “I was never good at sports.” When we see others excelling we often say things, like “He is a natural.” “She is so smart.” They have so much talent.” Our language seems biased towards a belief of naturally born talent.

In the article, The Making of an Expert in Harvard Business Review, authors K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely say,

Popular lore is full of stories about unknown athletes, writers, and artists who become famous overnight, seemingly because of innate talent—they’re “naturals,” people say. However, when examining the developmental histories of experts, we unfailingly discover that they spent a lot of time in training and preparation. Sam Snead, who’d been called “the best natural player ever,” told Golf Digest, “People always said I had a natural swing. They thought I wasn’t a hard worker. But when I was young, I’d play and practice all day, then practice more at night by my car’s headlights. My hands bled. Nobody worked harder at golf than I did.”

Even personality traits can be learned, the authors go on to say,

A surprising number of executives believe that charisma is innate and cannot be learned. Yet if they were acting in a play with the help of a director and a coach, most of them would be able to come across as considerably more charismatic, especially over time.

In fact, working with a leading drama school, we have developed a set of acting exercises for managers and leaders that are designed to increase their powers of charm and persuasion. Executives who do these exercises have shown remarkable improvement. So charisma can be learned through deliberate practice.

Do you have the Running Gene?

I ran another marathon last week. I am still painfully slow, but I have managed to drop my time by more than half an hour over my last race in December. I am mentioning this because when I did my first few marathons, I was terrified the night before. Running 42 kilometers is scary if you have never done it before. It sounds like an impossible task. In some of my earlier races, I couldn’t sleep the night before and got incredibly anxious about what I was going to eat, whether or not I could make it to the toilet before the start, what was the weather going to be like, what was I going to wear. I was worried about everything. I always felt that my body isn’t designed for sports.

Now that I have completed many marathons and shorter races I have no anxiety at all. The last 10 kilometers are always a killer but I know I can finish. Like anything in life, the more I train, the better I get. My wife also runs with me and despite the fact that she only runs a few times a month, she is still managing to consistently improve as well.

This same nurture versus nature argument has played out in many different aspects of my life. I never thought I had any artistic skills. However, daily practice with some basic drawing books and Internet tutorials has improved my skills phenomenally. I only wish I started 30 years ago, then maybe I would be a ‘naturally gifted’ artist now. I have found similar results with guitar, business and blogging.

There is no Substitute for Hard Work

It is highly unlikely that people who are better than you have some genetic advantage. The most likely cause of the their success is focused practice with good coaching and other environmental conditions. Blogging is no different. Starting off on the Internet can seem daunting. Everyone appears to have beautifully designed blogs, great technical skills and an innate understanding of social media platforms. How can you possibly catch up? You do it the same way everyone else did, you learn one thing at a time. The more deliberate practice you put in, the more you will learn and the better you will get. Online, everyone is making it up as they go. The difference between the self-proclaimed experts and you is only the hours of time invested.

Sure some may have some genetic advantages, but for most of us trying to earn a living, stay in shape or find our calling in life, our own personal drive is far more important. Giving up on art, blogging or a business idea before you have had an opportunity to develop some competence is not a genetic problem. I have often used the genetic inferiority excuse to justify my lack of effort. Not anymore, for everything I want to accomplish in life I know that any lack of success in my endeavors can only be attributable to lack of practice or quality coaching. Those two factors are definitely within my control. As I often say, we all can do ANYTHING we want, we just can’t do EVERYTHING we want. I just need to focus on what is most important and put in the quantity and quality of practice to excel. Deciding on what to focus on is the difficult part of course, but I am pretty damn fortunate to have excessive choice as my biggest life problem.

What do you think, is nature or nurture more important to to success? What percent is attributable to each? For most life choices I would say that it is 90% nurture, only in certain elite level sports would it shift more towards nature.

Related posts:

1. What it Takes to be Great!
2. What Does it Take to Make You Happy?
3. Lifestyle Design Jimi Hendrix Style

Zimbabwe- HIV:AIDS Orphanage Project Visit with the Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Associations in Harare

Please tell us  a little about your backgrounds.

B: Danielle currently serves as Co-Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute , a Washington, DC-based environmental research organization. Her background is in sustainable agriculture; impacts of meat, egg, and dairy production on the environment, primarily climate change; animal welfare, and farmers; greenhouse gas emissions and the food system; biofuels; urban agriculture; and food safety.  She also worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic and volunteers at farmers’ markets, the Earth Sangha (an urban reforestation organization), and 1Well (an NGO focused on sustainable development projects all over the world).

D: Bernard’s background is as an expert on political campaigning and communications. His expertise in organizing state and national campaigns for the AFL-CIO has resulted in the election of major pro-worker candidates and laws in California, Kentucky, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon and Pennsylvania. He has developed communication programs for labor organizing all over the U.S. and has worked extensively with media reporting on workers’ issues. He is currently traveling across Africa with me, meeting with labor unions and workers across Africa, and blogging everyday from Africa on our personal site called BorderJumpers.

Are you both full-time journalists?

D: Last year the Worldwatch Institute received a two-year grant to evaluate environmentally sustainable solutions to alleviating hunger and poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The grant is enabling us to expand our research and writing on food and hunger issues, do more on-the-ground research, and develop a comparative analysis of different agricultural innovations and technologies to help policy-makers, farmers, NGOs, agribusiness, and development agencies make more informed decisions regarding food production and food security goals.

The major outcome of this project will be State of the World 2011, our flagship publication, focused on hunger. Over the next two years, we will also publish research on this topic in Worldwatch’s other print and digital publications. I am traveling throughout sub-Saharan Africa to highlight stories of hope and success in environmentally sustainable food production.

Bernie and Dani in Zambia

Where are you now?

D: Africa is the epicenter of hunger and poverty, so it seemed logical to focus our research for the project here. We are currently in Dakar, Senegal, headed across Western Africa all summer to Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Cameroon. Countries we’ve traveled so far include: Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Since we left in October 2009 we’ve visited approximately 130 projects in those countries.

Uganda- Visiting Schools with Project Disc (Slow Food International)

Please tell us about your work in Africa?

B: We are tired with all the misconceptions about Africa. All we hear in the media is about conflict, HIV/AIDS, famine and disease. You almost never hear anything positive, and as a result people think the situation is hopeless. That’s why everywhere we go we are looking at African-led innovations and sharing those stories, in hopes of reaching the funding and policy making community so they can get scaled up or replicated, but also to challenge misconceptions that things in Africa are “beyond repair.” After sixteen countries, we’ve really seen firsthand how much incredible work is happening on the ground here and I’ve never felt so much hope.

D: The project is a two year grant to evaluate environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger and poverty with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.  We hope to build a roadmap for the funding and donor communities of projects that either need to be scaled up or replicated across the continent. Hundreds of millions of dollars are poured into funding agricultural projects every year in Sub-Saharan Africa. The reality is that so much of that money is misused, or misplaced and never reaches the hands of the farmers, workers, and people who need it the most.

We want to paint a new picture of Africa, one far different from the infomercials and images we’ve become accustom to. We are meeting with Africans on the ground, who are using their vast knowledge, and developing innovative ways of reducing hunger and improving food security in their communities. We want them to be the face of our project, putting their stories front and center, sharing their hopes and dreams to audiences they’ve never reached before.

From what you have seen, are African countries progressing and improving the quality of life of their citizens?

B: There is a lot of news that is not being reported on from the continent — we are seeing dozens of examples of stories of hope and success in agriculture from NGOs, policymakers, farmers groups, workers, unions, etc, that are helping to further not only food security in Africa but general quality of live. For example, in Uganda, a young team of volunteers is working with kids, parents, and teachers to reignite an interest and appreciation for indigenous food. In Rwanda, Heifer international is working with very poor farmers to improve their qualities of life through smallscale livestock projects. In Ghana, NGOs are working to improve access to processing facilities for palm oil so that farm workers can earn more money.

What have been your least and most favorite countries so far?

B: There is no least favorite because every country is different with positive and negative aspects which you could also say about the United States. We didn’t like aspects of Nairobi, but we loved traveling deep into rural parts of Kenya like Samburu. Johannesburg at times was stressful for us, but we’d definitely be up for living in Pretoria, Durban or Cape Town. Within countries there is so much diversity that it all is a valuable learning expierience for us.

Is Africa safe to travel?

D: I would say that Africa is like anywhere else, you have to be careful, obviously political conflict is more an issue than in the United States but we either have been very lucky or everything you’ve heard about Africa being dangerous is wrong. With that said, big cities like Nairobi and Johannesburg are not safe to be by yourself at night, you need to take a taxi, etc.

B: We’ve also been lucky and blessed. We watch each other’s backs as we travel together. People warned us about places that have had recent political upsets like Zimbabwe and Madagascar but we are really glad we went to those places because they turned out to be some of our favorite countries. We are avoiding Libya and the Sudan, just because we feel uneasy about our safety.

What African countries do you recommend for other travelers?

B: It depends on why you are traveling to Africa, we like to go off the beaten track a little bit. If your looking for a vacation, go to Mauritius. If your looking for something off the track, head to Zimbabwe and Madagascar. If you want to see a lot of wildlife, then head to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. If you are looking for great live music, then check out Ghana and Senegal. Africa has every adventure you could ever dream of.

Have you encountered any major problems or dangerous situations?

D: No (knock on wood), we’ve been very lucky.

What are your travel expenses?

B: On average we spend we spend $50 a day which includes a budget hotel or hostel, local meals, travel by taxi, and entertainment. VISA fees vary greatly and can be very expensive for Americans – but it ranges from free (Senegal, Botswana, South Africa, Rwanda) to over $100USD (Nigeria, Mozambique, Cote D’Ivoire). It all depends on what you want to do, plan several hundred a day if you plan to hike Kilimanjaro in Arusha, Tanzania; Lemur trek in Madagascar; whitewater raft at the source of the Nile in Kampala, Uganda; or Gorilla trek in Rwanda.

Africa can be very expensive depending on what you want to do and it is worth splurging for safety – private taxis at night, long haul-buses instead of shared taxis for international travel, making sure you are staying in a good location, etc. We also benefit by the fact that projects we visit go out of their way to make us feel at home, from airport pickups, to driving us between projects, to feeding us in their homes, it really helps cut down costs.

Traveling in Africa is totally not what you expect. People are often afraid to take a risk here, so they plan very packaged vacations for things like the World Cup or a safari. We couldn’t imagine a more friendly, or welcoming place to travel.

Are you able to get good Internet access and other modern conveniences?

D: We are really surprised how connected Africa is in terms of hi-speed wifi (these are mostly in cities). Also Skype allows us to keep in touch with the United States for free, SIM cards in each country make local calls incredibly cheap, and email is accessible nearly everywhere. In terms of what we miss — it is mainly different foods — like fresh salads, bagels with cream cheese, vegetables like broccoli, cranberry juice, a good latte, etc… Stuff that we totally took for granted in the United States but are hard to find here.

Do you see yourselves ever permanently relocating to Africa?

B: Yes, definitely a possibility. We love the people, energy, the diverse cultures. Our choice would be Senegal so far (with that said we have 25 more countries to see). In reality we’ve talked about how we could live in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Madagascar, and Senegal. Since that list will only grow, it’s hard to imagine ever leaving.

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