Unpacked In Santa Cruz
"Unpacked in Santa Cruz" is a homegrown podcast hosted by Michael Howard that dives into the lives, stories, and salty moments of people who call this coastal community home—or have been shaped by it in some way. Whether it's a deep conversation with local surfers opening up about mental health, or a peek behind the curtain of someone who started a one-of-a-kind food spot right here in town, every episode brings something real.
You’ll hear from folks who found healing behind the lens, built businesses from scratch, or chased massive waves thanks to a lifetime spent around our local waters. These aren’t just interviews—they’re conversations that reflect the heart and soul of Santa Cruz. Raw, reflective, and rooted in community, Unpacked in Santa Cruz brings local voices to the surface.
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
EPISODE 17: Brayden Coolidge: Bonds Across Borders - A Journey from Santa Cruz to Zimbabwe
Embark on a heartfelt journey with me, Michael Howard, as I reunite with Brayden Coolidge, my lifelong friend of 38 years, for a trip that transcends time and space. Together, we'll navigate the warm, nostalgic waters of our Santa Cruz roots, where the echoes of music provided a rhythm to our shared experiences. Brayden brings depth to our musings, as we consider the lessons of our youth, the resilience of community spirit, and the lasting impact of those early connections that helped define the courses of our lives.
As our conversation unfolds, Brayden and I step into the wider world, reflecting on my early adventures in Guatemala and the vibrant hues of Zimbabwean culture. These explorations are more than just stamps in a passport; they're chapters in the curriculum of life that taught me the value of friendship, education, and stepping up to play an active role in the global narrative. Our hometown's own complexities and contradictions serve as a backdrop for discussions on faith, the unexpected forays into criminal behavior, and the driving force behind personal evolution.
Finally, we pay homage to the Zimbabwean people's indomitable spirit, celebrating the artisans and educators who turn challenges into opportunities. Witness the story of a nonprofit's birth from a simple act of kindness, growing over 18 years into a beacon of hope for children's education. Brayden and I honor the dedication of Mr. and Mrs. Malwana and the community that rallied around them, proving that even amidst the harshness of economic strife, the human capacity for compassion and change knows no bounds.
The Unpacked and Naked Podcast is Michael Howard. I have the unique privilege of sitting with Brayden Coolidge today, a very good friend of mine. For how long, Brayden?
Speaker 2:Man, 40 years 40 years.
Speaker 1:yeah, Actually about 35 maybe. I think we're at 38.
Speaker 2:Yeah 38.
Speaker 1:But for all you listeners, this is a man sitting in front of me that I've been on a role here of talking to people who have been tethers in my life. As it is with being human, there are different kinds of tethers that we have, people that hold us in expose us to things that we might not have known. Brayden, to me, really represents a really unique space. That is the privilege of living in a small town, the way that we live in it, in a unique town that just has so much to offer both good and bad. But it is a very international town in its own unique way, even though it's a little whitey world spot, lots of blonde hair and blue eyes. Some of it is sitting across the table from me, but what were we listening to there? Brayden.
Speaker 2:That was Lucky Dubey, one of my all-time favorite musicians in the world. Incredible talent unfortunately was taken from us way too early, but spread a beautiful message of love and unity. He was a South African musician, came about at a time during apartheid and was able to sing and bridge people together with his music in a way that didn't get him incarcerated or jailed. He was very positive and he was one of the more influential artists that I found, even back in the 80s when we were going to high school.
Speaker 1:When did that song come out?
Speaker 2:That song is probably early 90s.
Speaker 1:Because I remember you I think it was like 94.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I may be off on 80s. It may have been early let's see what I've written right after we graduated, so early 90s but that's probably a 93, 94 album. Yeah, yeah, and he was amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just for a little history for our audience, we know each other from high school and you were one of the volleyball crew which, of course, all of us surfers were just shitty to you.
Speaker 2:You know, I surfed for a while I did. That was the first love. And then I found volleyball and, just you know, I was never that big of a high school kid and paddling out this skinny, lanky dude and just getting dominated by the attitude that was out in the water what are you talking about? They're? They were so nice, they were different now, right, tell me it's different.
Speaker 1:It is way different and it's a landscape I'm adjusting to that. There's a lot less bullying, I think is the term for it and really I just fell in love with Beach Volleyball.
Speaker 2:I mean, what's not to like? You get to, you know. Wear swim trunks, exercise, jump in the ocean, lay in the sand, exercise some more.
Speaker 1:Look at pretty things, jingle.
Speaker 2:You know, you said it, you said it.
Speaker 1:We're both very married but we're not blind. Anyways, yeah, well, let's rehearse a little bit about growing up here in Santa Cruz and what it was like back then and you know, kind of graduating. I think we should probably start with adulthood a little bit more. Are we there yet? No, I don't think so. I think you're more of an adult than I am. But you know, santa Cruz does present itself as a very unique town.
Speaker 1:You know there's just something so dynamic about this place and yet it's got its pitfalls in a way that you know, gosh. You know how many friends have you lost in the last few years? Too many, yeah, too many. It just you know the way that this town operates, just capturing people in various forms, and some of those forms are good and other forms are really bad.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things I've always admired about you is how you've really stayed above the fray.
Speaker 1:You know that you, like me, have touched a lot of people that have very different struggles than we have had to have in our upbringing. And you know, I'm sure some of that's parenting, a lot of it's real personal choices, because you know, all that stuff is just sitting there, available to all of us. But one of the things that strikes me about growing up here is that you know I'm sure you feel this way that there are at least 20 or 30 people right now that you could call, that you went to high school with. That would be there to help you right now. And it's just a strange thing. You know that we haven't talked to them in 10 years, 20 years, but you know they'd be there and that that's weird. You know that we have that kind of linkage and I don't know it's just unique to us, but it is something special about this place and so if you could tell me a little bit more about your own you know connection that way, you know, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 2:Actually, in fact, my wife and I, we have conversations about how to sort of capture what going to school provided us in terms of that instant community, and we all develop these amazing close relationships. And I don't know if that's what it is for everyone during the high school, college years, but it's definitely more available to you. You go to class, you're all there, you got out of class, you're in the quad or whatever your general area is called, and I will say that it seems like we, as a very diverse and broad base of friends, developed very close knit, more so than I've ever been able to find later in life. And those relationships, you nailed it. I was just on the phone with Aaron Carmen for about an hour or the other day and I haven't seen the guy in forever. Right, and it doesn't seem any different than if I called him in, you know, in the nineties, when we were seeing each other all the time.
Speaker 1:Yes, commander, carmen Commander, Carmen Commander.
Speaker 2:Carmen. But I think those relationships that we form early on and the amount of time that we spent, you know, school forces you to go and be in proximity with people five days a week. You know and you talk about Santa Cruz and all of its ups and downs and you know, I love it here. I absolutely love it here and I travel enough to keep loving it here. I'll say that, because there are times when I just you know it drives me crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I keep telling everybody that Santa Cruz sucks until I go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know, it's a very strange paradox. I think we've you've traveled way more than I have, but I've traveled enough that you know I don't know where your triggers are. Like I go to San Diego, thinking I think I just want to move here, you know, and then I get there and I'm like no, no, no thanks, no thanks. I'm sure the rest of the audience is like who wouldn't want to live in San Diego? Well, go to Santa Cruz and you'll find out why you don't want to be there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You find we have found probably more down to earth. You can have conversations here that seem more rewarding, fulfilling and meaningful than in most places that we've been looking. And we have been looking, and you say, you know, when I told you, graciel, and I have been talking about this, it's because we, we've been looking around the world for a place where we could develop a new community, and where would that place be and what were, what would be our criteria? And having to meet people, because the social interaction is something, something that we would, we would want.
Speaker 2:We don't want to go in our later years, if you will, and just find comfort and then just be together and find comfort and live on until the final sunset, whatever, I want to still interact with people. I want community, you know, and, and I have traveled, like you've said, and looked for that, and I've been in places like Australia and thought I could live here yeah, absolutely. And then you realize well, you're just so far from everything and everyone that you know, yeah, there's a sacrifice to all of it, but I agree with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 20 hours on a plane, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've done that too many times. Yeah, A little bit right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, like where, where'd you get a university at, and just kind of a quick little landscape of of time?
Speaker 2:So yeah, I grew up here, born Dominican hospital. Yeah, I'm Brant's 40. Junior high did a year at Aptos and then ended up graduating from SoCal, tried the San Diego thing, like you said who's going to go to San Diego state and realized freshmen in the business school weren't getting any of the courses that they were petitioning for because it was so full up. But ended up coming back graduating from UCSC and that's where it's not really where my travels began, but it's where my current, I guess, focus began, because my second to last year as a UCSC student I did a year abroad in Zimbabwe and that, you know, changed my life.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll talk about that a little bit. So you went to Zimbabwe. What year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and before we get to Zimbabwe, let me just say that I had been traveling since I was seven years old, and so my desire to explore was that interest was peaked very young when my mom packed my brother and I onto a bus and bussed us, trained us and taxied us all the way to Guatemala by herself. At seven and nine years old, she was going to a language school, she was an English teacher and she wanted to teach Spanish. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1:I didn't know this. I saw a lot as a seven-year-old going all the way to Guatemala by bus and train and taxi, Because that was the 70s. Yes you were that age, yeah, and Guatemala was. That's all pre-all the Civil War issues that happened in South and Central America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was actually protests going on when we arrived.
Speaker 2:And we arrived in tear gas that was my first experience with tear gas, oh wow. And we weren't near it where we were staying but we had to drive through it to get to where we were going. But, needless to say, on that trip my eyes were wide open to how different the world is outside of Santa Cruz, how different culture is outside of Santa Cruz in California, and that's really where it started. And so back to Zimbabwe. I had been exposed, I knew, and why Zimbabwe? So I knew that I wanted to go as far away as I could, into a culture as different as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the opportunity through a mutual friend who guided me to where I ended up staying. He also did a year abroad the year before and he had this great family and he said I think they probably have you if you wanted to go live with them. And so I contacted them and I ended up staying with them and became great friends with them and they came to our wedding in Italy and we've gone back and forth with them several times. They've stayed with us and vice versa. Yeah, so great family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, okay, so, just for the sake of the audience, part of what I'm really kind of graduating into because you've heard 16 episodes before this along with getting my story out, I'm trying to create a landscape for what I've been exposed to and the types of people that I know that have been an influence in my life. You've heard so much about my depression, the things that I've struggled with, the things I'm walking out of now, and really I'm not really trying to provide a roadmap for anybody as to how to deal with whatever you know psycho, emotional issues. They're dealing with whatever spiritual issues. But you know really why I'm sharing.
Speaker 1:Most of what I'm sharing at this point is really to show people, you know how important friendships are, how important you know some education is. You know what it has taken for me to walk out of the things that I've walked into, and most of the things that I've walked into are actually pretty good, you know. But everything has a B side to a record. You know there's songs on that record that are put on the back of it because maybe it wasn't the best song that was going to be on the record. And you know, in doing the podcast this way, you know, along with getting to know me, you're getting to know people that have exposed me to things I would not have otherwise to experience, except that I got to experience some of it through them.
Speaker 1:And so you know, on the spiritual side, not to expose Braden so much as being outside or anything like that, but in our friendship circles, you know, we have some really good friends in common. You probably weren't the closest as pertain to any kind of church world or any of that sort of thing, and so I kind of want to venture into that before we actually talk about what you are doing now, what you did, you know, in contrast to what I've been talking about in the previous podcast and what I'll be venturing into, which is the going and doing, the being, the thing that you wish was happening, and you really embody that out of our friendship group that you know, one of the biggest things that I admire about you, who you are as a person, is that you were always interested in doers you know people who just talked about stuff, who, you know, looked at the news and were so sad about things but never really did anything, or maybe just gave a couple hundred bucks or you know, whatever it is, just kept their distance from problems.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, bringing you on here was really important to me because you were the first out of our group to go and do something that seemed very, very radical, but it was in the context of a particular situation, a particular dichotomy that you saw within our group. You know, which is really. It's a lot of people. It's not. We're not talking about two people, we're talking about, you know, dozens of people who lived in the. You know hypocrisy is the easy word you know of. You know, growing up here, you know seeing a lot of Christian households. You know that were. Saying one thing, you know, to the kids around them, you know, with the parents you know, who inevitably got divorced, like everybody else, you know had the same problems, maybe worse. You know I'm sure there's names passing through your head as they're passing through mine who ended up being gun dealers and coke dealers and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean we have had some heavy hitters in the, in the, in the criminal world. You know, kind of come from our friendship group. In some strange way. We've seen it all. Yeah, we have. We have seen some very, very hard, hard things that normally would happen in a big city or in a rural area, where there are genuine mobs that run those regions. In some way we have a very strong presence of criminal behavior, you know, apart from that though it's not not really a podcast about criminality, but but you know you did grow up amongst a lot of Christian kids and you know I, I, I, you know we knew each other when we were young I wasn't really in the church at the time that we first, you know you've sent saw me get very involved at a very early age. You know, becoming a pastor, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I, you know we can get to other questions about what you saw with me as I kind of, kind of made my 25 year run as pastor. But you know, how was it for you living with the judgment, that kind of? I mean, I knew that we were living our lifestyle, apart from you, but I don't know that it was really different, you know, than how you were living. But you weren't identifying with church at the time and as we get more into your story, you, you all, are going to realize that what I think about church is what Braden has done. So it's it lives in a really big contrast to to the things I was shooting for through church, you know, trying to reach people that were really deeply in need, and but on the front end of that, there's this idea about spirituality, this idea about God, this idea about making life matter. How was that for you being in that dynamic of ideas that never really came to surface and living just outside on the skirts of church?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably a topic for three more podcasts, but in context of how it affected me or how it came to be for me.
Speaker 2:And again, I would say I'm very appreciative of my parents, who made a decided choice to not introduce religion to us in any one fashion and to let us explore that and find it on our own. And I've had this conversation with my mom and I'm like was really blown away by how she felt that way and said well, I believe this is something everyone should find on their own. There's many different denominations, many different beliefs, and it wasn't, it wasn't something we grew up with, but we weren't taught to look down on it. We weren't taught that it was right or wrong. We were just. We would just talk about it when we would explore different religions. And, of course, through friends that mutual friends that we have, and through my friendship with you, I've been to church. I was exploring during those years and certainly I knew that there was a lot of my friends that were going to church and I thought, well, why don't my family go to church and what does that mean?
Speaker 1:And all those questions that you ask when you're still young, yeah, and this notion of there actually being a kind God that was a benefactor to people, like he was trying to do good by the people that he made that contrast point like that stick out to you and that.
Speaker 2:I could just say that I explored and I would visit and I would try and find my own attachment to the message and how it made me feel and where I related to it, and I was never drawn to anyone church or any consistent participation. And I've seen it all. I mean, I've traveled all over the world and I've seen religion through many different eyes and many different beliefs and it's a beautiful thing in many, many ways and it's abused and turned into a divisive tool in many, many ways as well. And of course, that's just society, right, yeah, you leave it to humans and they're going to turn anything into something.
Speaker 1:The fashion into something they want it to be.
Speaker 2:But I never looked at it like that. I felt that at times because, like you're saying, I was a little bit on the outside, but whenever I was with my friends that went to church, I was always invited, or we would pick right back up, or you know, it was really just. You know we do this on Sundays and I go okay, well, I'm going to play volleyball, I'm going to look at girls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, well, that's fantastic. So let's talk about Zimbabwe, and your degree is in.
Speaker 2:Well, the degree I don't think it exists anymore, but it was more of an umbrella degree called Community Studies at UCSE and really what it was. It was an umbrella in the sense that you could be with any focus you could be law, you could be medicine, you could be whatever. But in the Community Studies major you had to apply your field of focus towards social change and that was the only element about it. But it required a six month internship regionally and a one year internship internationally.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's what exposed you to Zimbabwe in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I wanted to go as far away as possible. That's right, I was successful.
Speaker 1:But that is far away.
Speaker 2:This funny story. I'll just real quickly. When I contacted the family Now this would have been 1993, contact the family in Zimbabwe I didn't know if they were white or black. Turns out they were both so mixed family, and at the time there was no email, so I faxed them my passport and the facts as you know, the quality is terrible and they received that. They came to meet me at the airport and they didn't know if I was white or black because I was so black in the printout.
Speaker 1:Brady is as white as you.
Speaker 2:True that. So we waited in the airport until everybody had left, and I was the last one there and they were the last ones and we just sort of looked at each other like, oh, are you, that's you, and they're dear people, and we ended up becoming very close.
Speaker 1:So you have traveled to Zimbabwe since then.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about what you have been doing. It's been 20 years now. It's been 30. 30, yeah, so we're old. That was sad.
Speaker 2:It's actually 30 years last year. Oh wow, yeah, OK.
Speaker 1:So let's kind of venture into this space that you're in and you are starting to stick your finger into art, correct? Back then? You mean, yes, well, the way back when. So let's get a little bit of traction of you. Know we're not into modern now and we'll close out a little bit more. You know on that leg. But tell me about Braden showing up to Zimbabwe open raw. You've been there before, but you're looking for something different this time. You're dabbling. If I remember right could be completely wrong. You are starting to work with artists here.
Speaker 2:Like, remind me no, so it happened organically there. In that first year I was there, okay, and that first year I was there as a student had nothing to do with artwork, okay, I was there doing a field study at a government run Rehabilitation center so they called it for street kids, orphans and delinquents and so and it was a mess it was. It was really a tough but valuable lesson to learn because I was all in, right, I was gonna help this place and I was gonna make a difference and I was gonna do whatever it took to improve this organization. And it was corrupt and it had ties all the way up into the minister of education in the government and my report, which highlighted some of the ways that they were abusing the kids, some of the ways they were taking the funds that were meant for the kids and taking them for themselves. And I don't convert all this, which, of course, didn't put me in good books with People I was working with or evaluating.
Speaker 2:but Long story short, I took that report all the way to the government and the government the minister of education, things, education and support back then happened to be the uncle of the headmaster of the school and they just buried it. And so I came home or wreck, I came home depressed. I came home disillusioned. I thought the world is terrible. This is wrong. But while I was there, I was also meeting artists in my free time and I was going into the city to the galleries and museums and it was really a thriving, incredible city. So what kind of art are we talking about? Well, specifically, we're talking about hand carved stone sculpture, which is something that evolved there out of nothing in the late fifties, early sixties and had been fostered and encouraged and had grown and was thriving in the nineties when I was there, absolutely thriving. It could be Six, seven, eight galleries in herari, which is the capital of Zimbabwe, numerous others outside of herari. There was a national gallery. There was imports, exports, people flying in from all the European countries, australia, asia, america was.
Speaker 2:You know, I'd hit the ground running to go meet an artist and I wouldn't waste any time, even though I just traveled for 40 hours. You want to get there before someone else. This is before. They could just text you a picture and you could say, yes, I'd like that.
Speaker 2:And so I, in my free time, was making friends with a peer group of artists, okay, and those relationships added a dramatic impact on me and I was in love with what they were creating to this day still blows my mind. I still feel like I'm Shopping for Christmas when I'm curating these collections. I'm still super excited with the new work and the new artist and obviously you know I made a career out of Importing art and representing artists and I don't just buy and sell. So these, these relationships I'm building, these people are some of the closest people to me on the planet earth. The several of them will come out every year and we'll go on tour and we'll have exhibitions featuring their work. And I just realized by looking at you that I've gone to the modern and you wanted to go all the way back to the beginning.
Speaker 1:No, that's okay, yeah, yeah, no, that's totally okay. Well, let's, let's get a good context on this. So your twenty two years old, is that correct at this moment? You have written a report To the government in Zimbabwe, to the minister of education.
Speaker 2:Yes, about the wrong, the wrong doings of this corrupt rehabilitation school. Yeah, so there's a fire in you.
Speaker 1:Yeah that that is very deep. And but you know, looking back, you know we're now thirty five. No, we're not. Like that's a heavy thought to me that you know you're twenty two, like the innocence and the naivety of that report. You know how much jeopardy you might have been in in that moment Of just saying something in a corrupt country. You know that that's. You know, I'm rehearsing this mostly because, like you know, this cross generational feeling of that there is, you know, pain that we all see we want to do something about it. You reached out at twenty two to do something about it and that wave of just like no.
Speaker 1:Not gonna have not gonna happen, don't care, see you later. And yet there was still this relationship in there that you develop, that that has led to something beautiful that you probably could have never imagined. So You're, you are now somehow venturing into the art world. You're with the sculpture artists that are now world class. Amazing, like, trust me, if you guys have seen African sculpture, you have seen the artist that he represents. Like it's amazing to look back, because I see this stuff coming through architectural digest, like, oh, there's Brady's guy, oh, there's Brady's guy. You know, you see, this stuff is like I know the guy who helps that happen. And so let's talk a little bit about the beginnings of that. Like what you recognized when you got there, how maybe the artists were not being properly represented To the broader Western audience. Who was, I think? For I think it's pretty easy to say they were just using them. You know that these artists were not, were barely making it At the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there were certainly some that were big time and those ones, because they had been celebrated internationally, knew and they could command top dollar, which they did, which was great. But the vast majority of them and this was a time when the Zimbabwean dollar was a thing and there was an exchange rate and a lot of the artists would be paid in Zimbabwean dollars because if you came in with foreign currency, you could come in and exchange at a very favorable rate, favorable to the one holding the foreign currency, you know. That's why one of the first things we did was open bank accounts for the artists here, and so all my artists get paid in US dollar and, if they wanted it, it goes into their own account which we have set up here for them in the US. If they don't didn't want that, which several of them they just want me to send them the money. I can wire it to them and they can receive it in US dollar.
Speaker 1:So it was really important for you that you saw in these transactions that the nature of the way that the country's currency was at was not benefiting them, and so you got to help them acclimate to, you know, a more capitalist version of what they were participating in.
Speaker 2:Certainly considering the beauty and the dedication that they exude through their work, and it is a process, if you can imagine, taking a huge stone out of the ground a hammer and a chisel, essentially and sculpting into these beautiful forms. It is a lot of work, absolutely a lot of work, and these are some of the finest stone sculptors on the planet. Hands down, put them in any circle of stone sculptors. You want to go to Germany? You want to go to Italy? You put them anywhere. These guys will excel anywhere, in any stone you put in front of them, with just their hands. Yeah, and the vast majority of them never had access to the power tools, you know the pneumatics that a lot of people use when they're sculpting in stone. It's all just hammer and chisel.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. It is amazing. Yeah, just pulling the heart out of the stone is just. You know, I remember the first time that you know, the little shop I was working at back in the early 90s, when he first brought, you know, a group of sculptures over, didn't quite have a place to host all of it yet. I think you had a couple shows but there wasn't a gallery yet. Things had not manifested that way and you know, I think I sold a couple out of my shop.
Speaker 1:You know, like, just, it's hard, you know, in modern day markets to imagine the legwork, the, you know the amounts of work that went into, you know, not just making the art but actually getting it here, getting it somewhere where people could see it, and that dynamic was somehow good for you. I mean, it's still. You know, I look back on those times, go, wow, that is so long ago. But like, that was something you know, and it seems so small in a way, but it's a start. It was the tiny step it took to begin to get to. You know where we're at.
Speaker 2:And I couldn't even tell you other than just blind conviction. I couldn't even tell you why I stuck with it. It's pure insanity to think about the whole process of what happens, you know, from quarrying the stones to sculpting it, to packing it, to shipping it, to receiving it, to repairing it, to repolishing it, to delivering it, to marketing a show and bringing the artist out, and the whole thing to when you see a piece on display in a gallery. The journey that it went to be there is mind-boggling really, and it's to me.
Speaker 2:I still deal with some pretty major snafu's along the way because it's you're dealing in a foreign country on the other side of the world. There's many moving targets and things are always in shifting fashion. So I couldn't tell you why I stuck with it, other than to say that the people I was working with, these artists that are now my dearest friends, are truly incredible people and truly incredible artists. I would say they're insane in terms of their ability, and I like them more as human beings than I love their work, and that just speaks volumes about what type of people they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. But just you know, again I have a lot of emotion, a lot of thoughts thinking back to that thing, which is now, it's just normal, right, it's just what we're doing, right? You know, it's just a piece of commerce now in its own strange way, but the art in the art in itself is, to me, amazing. You know, I remember capturing a little bit of this feeling when I first heard you talking about these processes and now that we have more information, understand what it takes, like, how many, like, give us a little visual picture, like how many people are surviving, on whether that artist makes it or not.
Speaker 2:Oh, you mean like extended family?
Speaker 1:I'm just talking human beings, like if you're thinking about an average with an artist. You know, let's say they're in the mid-range, just not on the top shelf you know how many people fed or don't get fed, based on how many sculptures are selling.
Speaker 2:If you're talking about all the sculptors in Zimbabwe, that number would be vast. Yeah, it would be. You know, it would be hard for me to even reach that. I deal with 12 to 14 different artists exclusively and I don't, which means I don't just go and buy. If I like something, I buy it. I'm promoting artists and I look for new talent and I try and incorporate new styles, and we've done that over the years and ultimately, those 12 artists that I work with probably are responsible for 50 people Got you, yeah, and just getting food into their mouth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I mean, it's a. I think when we think about art here in America, we think about the artist you know, about all the money that they're making or whatever else, how they get paraded around, you know. But we don't imagine how many you know bodies there are that would start to death.
Speaker 1:Right you know, if this talent didn't live in this human being and they weren't willing to put the work in.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I always admired about you is you saw that. You know it wasn't, it wasn't just about the art, it was about the humans that were behind it. You know what they were carrying, the empathy that you had for that situation, because that leads to more things that you've been involved in. And you know the problems that come up with artists are not dissimilar to other problems that you've encountered in other dealings. You know, and you bring it here to America and you're, you know, so you get this thing going. You know, let's fast forward this a little bit. You open a small gallery here on River Street, if I remember correctly, and and that was a good experience, a bad experience, tell us a little bit about that to Carmel and how it kind of got you to where you're at now and we can kind of tie a bow on on you know, we all know that you're representing these artists now and that you know you help them sell.
Speaker 2:So post graduating from UCSC, which took a year longer than normal because I started, I started this business concurrently and then there was traveling that I was doing, and so I extended that before I graduated. But I opened in Santa Cruz a humble gallery and had it for two years, two and a half years I think, 1995, 1996, into 1997. And then realized quickly that as much as Santa Cruz is an artist town, it is not an art gallery town. But I loved my gallery. I loved that I built something from my own creation, my own vision, and it was beautiful. You know it was voted best gallery in the Good Times awards but I think there was like one other gallery, that's right.
Speaker 1:Till the county opened one up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was such a great experience, but it wasn't something that I could live off of. Yeah. You know, and especially you know going towards. You know having a relationship with my wife and having family. And you know dreams yeah, a house and all those types of things. I could do it as a college kid and pay the bills and make ends meet and go long periods of time without income and bartending at the shadowbrook and supplement with some bartending and lots of top ramen, yeah, but I shifted to Carmel because that was if I was going to make it in the gallery business.
Speaker 2:that's where I needed to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so did Carmel provide you with some traction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was definitely a jump up. Yeah, also came with considerably more overhead, a lot more expenses. If you want to, you know, play in that game, you've got to throw some money at it, and there's marketing and there's higher rents. We're in Carmel, of all places, and I did that for a couple of years and then realized pretty quickly, as much as I love that, it was a tremendous amount of work, commuting every day also, and it was also a limited form of exposure for the artists that I represented. So I had one space and if you know Carmel, carmel's beautiful, but Carmel's it's very quiet from November to May. Yeah, and it's pretty old, it is very old. Well, it turns out, older people are generally the ones with money buying art.
Speaker 2:Yes, maybe less so today than it was back then, and so I decided to get out of the gallery business and do to curate for other galleries, so more of a wholesale model which I have today with five different galleries, and so I was better, better prepared, or I was in a better position to give greater exposure to my artists by having them in different communities, which also allowed me to buffer the swings, shall we say, in the seasonal economies of some of these places.
Speaker 2:So branching out was one of the best things that I ever did. And now when the artists come out and we go on tour that's the reason we go on tour. We don't just go to Carmel, which we used, to do a Carmel show, and then hope for the best. Now we go to five different galleries and do receptions and meet all the collectors right, and they love meeting the artists and not having a gallery. That's the part that I miss my interaction with the people that are actually collecting the work. So we get a taste of that and doing these receptions when the artist comes out.
Speaker 1:Which is nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great. And then for the audience, most of you have probably heard of Carmel. Carmel is one of the wealthiest, if not in California. Very old community always been the way it's been as long as it's existed. It's really only a pretty 50 minutes down and Monterey is its own little dichotomy to itself, a former military town, and it's the paradox of the Monterey Bay. You've got Santa Cruz sitting at the top and it was full of hippies when we grew up, and you got Carmel at the other end of the bay and it is exact opposite of everything Santa Cruz and really has its own beauty, though I mean, once you start getting past Carmel and the Big Sur and all that, it's just a beautiful piece of coastline in the world. I mean absolutely stunning. But I do want to lead in to a little bit more of where your heart really is. I want to talk about that first trip where you found something out and remind me of that story, because I think you needed a ride or you were just just oh, we're talking about the orphan school.
Speaker 1:The orphan school. Yes, you know that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so that's the way, that's the way it goes over there, you don't. You can do all the planning and preparation and have an itinerary, and you have your book, your to-do list, and you land in Zimbabwe and you pretty much just you're in the wind. You just you go with whatever is happening that day. I used to tell people I would come in and I was so organized I was going to go to the store and I was going to go to the post office, and I'm going to go see this artist, and I'm going to go to the bank and I'm going to come back, and I'm going and you get to the post office and there's a hundred people in line and you're like, oh, this is the one thing that I'm going to do today, and you're there for hours, and so you have to let that go, and so to tie that in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's set this up. So you have flown to Zimbabwe, flown to Zimbabwe. When we're going to meet with your artist, you're going to be there a month, I'm presuming, or possibly two months. Yeah, you're going to collect sculptures to have them shipped here a month or two later. Correct All the stuff. You own a gallery at this point, right, or are you?
Speaker 2:No, this would be 2006. Okay, by 2006, I was heavy into the wholesale model and what I was doing is because I get two bags most international flights you get two bags of luggage as part of your ticket, and so those two bags could carry 50 pounds. So what I would do is I would fill a bag just to give away and so I would save clothing that might go to the Goodwill or we would collect things for our friends and family over there. But I saw from my internship that first year in 93 that the street kid population was large in the city. This is a major city, right, there's, I think, 12 million in the country, maybe 5 million in Harari, I can't remember exactly what it was. It was a big city and so I'd always bring one bag specifically to give away.
Speaker 2:And so this year was 2006. I'd done it every year, but I knew that the street kid population had grown because of some economic downturn that they had in the country and I saw that, okay, the normal place that I would go and just pull over and start handing out clothes would have caused sort of a scene. Too many people would have rushed over there, would have been fighting to get something and I didn't want that. So I just drove out of the city. I didn't know where I was going, I had never been there before and just kept driving and ended up on some dirt road and just felt I'm going to find a community that I can just leisurely get out and say can I donate all of this clothing?
Speaker 1:to you? Okay, so let's paint a clear picture. You left a city of 5 million people, started driving down a dirt road in middle of nowhere in Zimbabwe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, about 30 minutes away, 25.
Speaker 1:Seeing that you might run into somebody to give away a bag of clothes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because there's all kinds of little villages as you get further out into the rural area.
Speaker 1:And so you're driving on that road, or someone's driving you.
Speaker 2:I'm driving. I had borrowed a car from my featured artist at that time, whose house I was staying at. He had an extra car that I could use. He was tremendously successful as an artist at this point, having made his claim in America and now Europe. He was doing very well. So I stayed with him and he was the primary reason I was there, was collecting probably 30 pieces from him that he had been sculpting all year long, and then I would go out and supplement with three or four or five, six different artists as well, and he'd let me borrow a car. So I was alone in the car, I had the 50 pounds of clothing and I was just driving and I was on a dirt road and I got flagged over by someone. No, I didn't get flagged, I apologize.
Speaker 2:I saw an elderly man with a walking stick walking down this long dirt road and if you will try and picture a road where you don't see any buildings for a long, so long straight dirt road, so you can see pretty far down and I'm thinking this guy's got a long ways to go. And so I pulled over and asked him hey, do you need a ride? And he just looked at me quizzically like, well, where are you going? And I said, well, I actually I don't know, I'm just I'm going this way. And he goes well, where, but where are you going? So I don't know.
Speaker 2:And this went back and forth, which is sort of common with Shona people when you, when the greetings, the greetings can go back and forth the same way two or three or four times. Suddenly I just said I'm going, where you're going, can I give you a ride? And he jumped it and he and we didn't drive that far as maybe five minutes. And then we pulled off the dirt road onto another dirt off shooting road and we pulled into a dead end and and there was really nothing there.
Speaker 2:And he said, oh, I'm going down into that field to to meet with my church group and have services. And, wow, just saved him, you know, a few minutes. And I thought, wow, I reached in the back and I grabbed a shirt out of the bag and we said, well, have a shirt. And as he walked away, someone else saw my car and came running up to me from down below and he was in this tattered blue suit. And I say it's a suit, I mean it was a collared suit with buttons and slacks, and but tattered as can be, it must have been 30 years old.
Speaker 2:And he ran up and he was all proud. And he said he introduced himself and said I'm Mr Malmanna and this is my school. What has brought you here to my school? And the whole time I'm like greeting him and looking over his shoulder and there's nothing there. There's rocks and trees and then vast landscape. And I said, oh, I'd love to see your school.
Speaker 2:And so we parked and he walked me around and he took me over to this is where grade seven sits, and it's dirt, next to a big granite rock face that they used as a blackboard. And then he took me to another classroom and then out to this structure that they built out of stone and dirt not a structure, but just earth and they had designed it as a elevated platform for the performing arts class and it was all in nature, there was no buildings. And I was just mesmerized like, wow, what kind of school is this? He goes oh well, we, we as community members, realized that there was a AIDS epidemic and there was too many children without parents, and so we started a school for those kids with no parents and no money. And I said, wow, of course, how do you not feel that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and so I said well, you know, I I work with some Zimbabweans who are fantastic people and they're world renowned artists. Now I think that they would like to come and see your school and talk to these kids as to give them hope as you can pursue your dreams and be anything you want to be, because here we are, zimbabweans, traveling the world as artists, living our passion, and Mr Mountlunis said that would be great. Can you come on Tuesday? And we did so. We came back on Tuesday and I brought two artists with me and there were 800 kids there.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:Yeah 800.
Speaker 1:Yep From grade kindergarten all the way through to high school or.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more. I would say elementary to junior high, okay yeah, Just non-working age. Yeah, all the more younger students, all orphans yeah, 800. This was when you know AIDS was wiping out. Yeah, just whole villages.
Speaker 1:Thousands of people, yeah.
Speaker 2:We were just blown away by the sheer volume and thinking how do these people in this rural community find the means to care for and provide education to 800 kids? Yeah, without. I mean, what about feeding them? Yeah, about clothing and all that. What about books? And they were just doing the best they could. They were teaching traditional culture and English and Shona and performing arts and dance and drumming, and it's pretty amazing. And then we later found out that this was the morning session and that 800 kids the older kids were coming in the afternoon. Oh my gosh, they had 1600 orphans and not one building. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's how it started, yeah, so there you are, the gringo, yeah, and you came back with your artist friends.
Speaker 2:Marungu is how they say it in Zimbabwe. I was the marungu, the white man.
Speaker 1:So you came back on Tuesday. What was that?
Speaker 2:like that first moment of oh, it was overwhelming, overwhelming and heartwarming and jaw dropping, and we went through it Like we. The artists gave speeches and they talked and there was questions and answers, and then the school organized some traditional dancing and some ceremonies and some thank yous Very formal, yeah, expertise colony. And so they can go on and on and on with their procedures For now, they do say it, yes, it's true, but it is beautiful and I think, as we drove, nobody said anything.
Speaker 2:We were all just like speechless, like what? And this is 30 minutes away from where we were staying, where the artists lived, and it was on the far outskirts, on the back end of a large township as a feeder township to the capital city of Harari, and then behind that, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. To this day there's still, because there's so many boulders, it's like a forest of stone, it's all granite.
Speaker 1:So that ignited something in you, found the 22 year old again, who wants to make a difference Absolutely. And so what's the process? When you're in Zimbabwe, still heading home wondering what can I do? Like talk a little bit about the genesis of that you know, the. You saw it. Can I do something about it? You know what was that feeling like. Were you overwhelmed? Were you like? What is that like? To realize that there's potentially an impact you can make.
Speaker 2:Well, certainly in the beginning you think I have to do something. How can you not, right? You find something like that and you find the genuine need and you find it being executed in such a beautiful way by people who were so committed and caring that you felt compelled. I have to do something. And I'll be honest with you, I had no idea or intention of doing anything to the extent that we've actually ended up doing. I thought I'm going to go home, I'm going to tell the story, show these pictures my family friends, I'm going to try and raise some money and I'm going to send it back to them. Gotcha, yeah, little did I know that I would then turn that into a nonprofit. And what did we? Almost it was 18 years later. Yeah, yeah. And they have 10 classrooms, they have an ECE early childhood education block, they have kitchen, they have bathrooms, they have all kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, let's not rush through this part, because I think this is, it seems like filler, right, because the story is kind of told now. Right, it just is. You have these 10 buildings, you're thinking about whatever next two you have to do, but it started with rocks. Yeah, it's just this place where people are imagining something's there, they're living in something real and there's clearly a love and compassion from the people that are doing that. I remember right that he was a pastor in that region.
Speaker 2:Yes, Mr Ma'am, I was.
Speaker 1:And is he having church there too? Does he have a church that he actually passed to somewhere? Yes, he does. Yeah, so he's doing that on the weekends and probably raising a little bit of money from the church to come back to do this thing. I'm talking about pretty impoverished areas.
Speaker 2:It's not very complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're living in a way in the imagination of what could be right, because you're in the spot where something's happening, but there's nothing to necessarily demonstrate the existence, except for the people and the need and the realities that it is, whether it exists in a form that we wanted to, based on our culture. This is just the reality, and the reality doesn't have safety in a way it doesn't have covering.
Speaker 1:It just is meeting the people where they're at like for real. There's no way to nice it up, but what they're providing for is so real to these kids who have no parents.
Speaker 2:They're providing hope. Without education, what hope do you have of being fruitful in a functioning society?
Speaker 1:Again, it's so hard being in this country because we don't realize the privilege we all live in, in some strange way, of there are buildings to go to learn how to read and write, to do math. We don't realize how much hope there is in that simple prospect of knowing how to read, knowing how to write. Again, we're talking about kids who, in essence, anywhere else, would be doomed, the one that fall through the cracks. Yeah right, you're really bearing witness to the hope that lives in these people. That's what you're arriving to. You do your thing. You come home. What happens to your heart? What's the process of you going from? That was really strange and cool to you. Know what I need to help these people like truly do something.
Speaker 2:I think when we walked away from that first day, we realized that what these people were doing of their own drive would surpass anything that we could ever do, because every single day they get up and they prepare for all of these kids and they found volunteers in their community to be different teachers of different subjects. Maybe it's not 800 every time, maybe it's 650. You're talking about kids without parents In Zimbabwe. Even when you have parents, usually you find adulthood what we would call adulthood here much earlier, because you are leaned on to provide in some way. That's just the way it is, whether it's usually tilling the farm and collecting wood and things like that to help the family, because it's a very hand-to-mouth situation for a lot of families in rural Africa.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, but the people there Mr Malana, mrs Malwana, the family and the founders that decided to do this did it before anybody came with money, before anyone built them anything. That's honestly the reason it still exists today, this nonprofit organization. I've started this because we've invested in brilliant people who are more committed and do more than we could ever do, no matter how much we raise, and they're still there doing it. Anyone that's been in charity work will tell you one of the most crucial things is the people you find to support, the ones on the ground, the ones that you can trust. In our case, I've never been so blown away by someone having such conviction, even more deeper than mine. I can't tell you that I could get up every day and prepare for 800 orphans. They did not get paid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just grateful you have food when you go home, maybe Right.
Speaker 2:There's no electricity out here what we're talking about and it's a long walk. The other fun fact is that when we pulled in with our car, they directed us. They have kids meet us. It's not an easy place to drive into. It's not got a, there's no driveway, it doesn't have access for cars, there's buildings in the way and there's little walkways. We found a way, we were directed down and luckily I was in a small little SUV like a RAV4 or something like that. We were able to go over big rocks and around and over a little creek and we get out there and they lead us around and then they show us the parking lot.
Speaker 2:No car had ever been there, but they had a vision and this parking lot was just dirt with stones lining the spaces and we were the first one to park there. That is amazing. That's how much vision they had, it was incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just expecting for something good.
Speaker 2:But I went home and the feeling was how do you walk away from that? How do you not Maybe that just shows my shortcoming in terms of not being able to compartmentalize and move on. It's like, okay, focus on the next thing you don't have an experience like that in my book and walk away from it and say, well, that's pretty amazing. I wish them the best, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you ended up setting up this nonprofit. What's the name of the nonprofit? The Sawira Fund? Okay, you started out with the first building and getting bricks was not easy.
Speaker 2:Nothing is easy. We're talking about gravel that's made by hand. So all these boulders that I told you about that are out in this landscape where the school is now built. They would take a hammer and a punch, but it's like a big nail and they would punch off pieces this is mallet of granite and they would sit down with these pieces in front of them and then they would take the hammer and they would smash that granite into pieces until we had 50 wheel barrels full to build the foundation for the school. Just the one class. That just gives you an idea. And you want sand. They take you higher truck and you go down and they find access to the river and they shovel sand out of the river to mix with the cement. Yeah Right, the whole process. I mean, it's a beautiful thing and there's nothing easy about any of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you set up this fund, you start raising money about how much does it cost to put a building together?
Speaker 2:It's painfully too expensive, considering we're talking about bricks, concrete and a fairly simple wood formed roof with metal panels on top. The problem is that things aren't nearly as incredible as they were in the 90s when I was there. Obviously, the economy has collapsed and glorious, embarrassing fashion dictatorship from the previous administration it's more or less just carried on in this one. Everything is imported now almost everything. There's very little production in country, which means for a bag of cement maybe it's an 80-pound bag of cement it's $13 per bag as opposed to like $3 here. Yeah, three to five dollars in max, depending on the quality, but it's 40 to 60,000 per building and each building block has two classrooms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again for the audience, we have a way of just kind of compartmentalizing things, like we imagine, because of the nature of the economy, that you're in essence in a labor market where nobody's making money. We just imagine that things just magically work. And I doubt there's any listener right now going like what do you mean a cost more to build something out there? That's just material fees is all we're really talking about, right, $60,000 for bricks and handmade concrete.