For the past three months, Steve and I have been working remotely from a small house on a dirt road, perched halfway up a very steep hill in Central Vermont. On one of the last warm afternoons of the year, we sat outdoors with two well-traveled neighbors – Elise and Justin, and their newborn daughter Isabelle. Elise is a conflict management specialist; Justin has a fair trade coffee importing business. When COVID broke out, she was working in Ghana, while he was scouting coffee growers in Ethiopia. They made it back to the US just before the borders closed.
A year and a half ago, Steve and I were also in Ethiopia, recording interviews for this week's show. Now the four of us sat in the fading light and wondered how and when any of us would be able to travel again.
How strange and ironic that this global pandemic – one of the first genuinely planet-wide experiences in history – has also isolated us from each other. Like Elise and Justin, all of us at TTBOOK believe in seeing the world through the lens of different cultures. For Elise, it's about helping to solve conflicts; for Justin, it's about bringing small farmers and customers together to help the planet; for TTBOOK, it's about cultivating a wider range of ideas about possible futures. Now the world is on lockdown and travel is impossible – and yet for once, we can truly say that we're all in this together. Will we remember that when things reopen? It would be a nice birthday gift for Isabelle and all the other babies who first opened their eyes in this pandemic year.
–Anne