About Gabriel Buchmann

Gabriel Buchmann, 28, went missing on Mount Mulanje in Malawi, southeast Africa, on Friday 17th July. The Brazilian economist got lost when trying to reach the highest peak on his own. He has reportedly dismissed his guide and, hour later, the weather conditions got severely worse.

A search and rescue operation with up to 50 people has been set up but, after 10 days of tireless efforts, his location is yet unknown. There are reasons to believe that Gabriel might have escaped to an area of forest west of Mulanje. In 1994, a Malawian citizen was found alive after wandering for three weeks in the area.

This is why his friends and family will NOT give up on finding him. It is important to keep this story alive in the international media, so as there is enough public pressure on the authorities to keep searching until Gabriel is brought back to safety.

Please, forward this email to your contacts in the media, government, NGO community and ask your friends to do the same. It will only take you 2 minutes and you could be helping to save the life of a very special young man.

You can get in touch with us on ajudegb@hotmail.com

GABRIEL’S JOURNEY

Gabriel Buchmann has been travelling around the world since June 2008. Malawi would be his last stop before returning to Brazil on July 28th. In search of a better understanding on global poverty, Gabriel backpacked across more than 28 countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He was doing so with a budget of less than 20 dollars a day. He would usually stay with locals, sharing whatever he could save of his daily budget with the people in need he befriended.

Gabriel is a brilliant economist. With a BA in International Relations and Economics, he pursued an MA in Economics at PUC University in Rio de Janeiro. He has been awarded with a Fulbright scholarship and will (we believe he will!) start a PHD in Public Policy at UCLA this coming Fall.

He could have found a job in any investment bank in Brazil or Wall Street and hit the jackpot. But Gabriel has always wanted to make better use of his talents. He considered unbearable the idea of waking up every day to go to work on a mission to raise a company’s profit by 3% a year. He wanted to make this place a better world, and off he went on this global trip, to get to know the poorest countries, to understand what is out there to inspire his work as economist.

This is an excerpt of an email written by Gabriel to his family on the 1st of June.

“the best about being in Africa is that only here I can travel the way I’ve always dreamt. Today for the second time I stayed at a hostel since I arrived in this continent, all other days I stayed and had meals with the locals, spending less than 3 dollars a day, which has allowed me to distribute the rest of my daily allowance among those who helped me along the way by feeding me or by receiving me in their homes. I am overwhelmed to live such adventure...making a real journey into the heart of Africa, a totally non-touristy one, in a sustainable way, being able to help a few Africans on the way...here with almost nothing you can make a huge difference in people’s lives...for instance with only 12 dollars I paid my friend’s rent in Congo for the whole month. With only 40 dollars I paid for one year of such a cool school for this other boy....”