After leaving Rwanda, I was off to Mongu (Zambia) to film the beginnings of an orphanage in the western part of the country. Mongu is such a unique place! It’s right on the edge of a major flood plane and with all the sand around me it felt like a beach community without the beach. While in Mongu I filmed a lot of interviews with NGO heads, the school being built, and the people in the local community … which is great! (the kids especially!)

  No matter where I’d go, there would always seems to be at least a few kids around wanting to see ‘the camera’ as well as look at themselves on the lcd. How can you say no?!

  The school building went up faster than expected too with the team being able to construct up to the roof line in 3 days.

  So on the last day in Mongu, the team went out to play a little soccer with the kids and tour the flood plane by boat.

  I had really enjoyed my time in Mongu, it was a wonderful experience and I was sad to say goodbye … until I was attacked by ants!

  On my last night in Mongu, I woke up to a bite on my face. Thinking that a mosquito had gotten into my netting, I turned on the lights in an attempt to swat it out of the air. I was wrong. Instead, there were thousands of ants crawling all over me, through my hair and on my bed. Needless to say I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

  Oh well, that was my last night there and I was now off to Mfuwe to spend the last few days of my trip at the South Luangwa National Park. All in all it was an extremely wonderful experience being able to travel around Rwanda & Zambia. They’re both beautiful and uniquely different countries that I would love to go back to again someday. Next time though, I’ve got to plan more time in Rwanda so I can at least see the mountain gorillas!

  Here are a few pictures I took of wildlife while on Safari. (I’ll post the video I took of the animals next week)

Plains Zebra

African Leopard

Puku

Plains Zebra Fighting

African Elephant

Malachite Kingfisher

Yellow-billed Stork

Grey-headed Kingfisher

Lilac-breasted Roller

Woodland Kingfisher

Yellow Baboon

  Exhausted! That’s what I am today. But in the feel good way. I captured some great footage while out in the rural villages of Rwanda and wish I could have put the camera down for 30 minutes just to hangout with the kids.

  This morning mostly consisted of filming a school where the teachers were trained by The Wellspring Foundation. So I would step into the class and document how they are using what they have learned and how are these new set of tools are improving the quality of education for the students that attend. Then, in the afternoon, I visited a school where the teachers have not been trained yet but will soon be. And honestly, there was a clear distinct difference between the two.

  In one, the students were restless, disinterested and bored while in the other school the students were engaged, respectful and participating despite the teachers putting in the same amount of effort. It’s amazing how effective ‘educating the educators’ can be!

  Below is a little clip of the kids outside one of the rural schools. These kids are so great, it sure made me miss my own… but tomorrow I’m off to Zambia!!!

So much for trying to keep a blog post going every day I’m in Africa. For the past few days there’s been a few … hiccups. For several days I had either no internet, no power, (or worse) was on my back, flat out sick! Regardless, everything is up and running again and I got to enjoy a beautiful Rwandan sunset tonight.

In the distance you can see 7 volcanoes (5 in Rwanda + 2 in the Congo). During the last 5 seconds you can see the volcano on the right (part of the Congo) spewing smoke.

Gear List:

• Sony EX3
• Canon 5dmk2
• Sony ecm-678 Shotgun
• Sony lav
• Tascam DR-100
• Kessler Cineslider
• Kessler Oracle Controller
• Litepanel MiniPlus
• Zacuto Rails + Zamerican Arm
• Lens Skirt
• Sactler DV8
• Manfrotto Magic Arm
• Rycote Universal Windcover
• SmallHD DP6
• Macbook Pro
• Lacie 400gb hdd
• CalDigit 1TB RAID
• Canon 24-70 f/2.8
• Canon 70-200 IS mk2 f/2.8
• Canon 50mm f/1.4
• Zeiss 28mm f/2
• Zeiss 100mm f/2 Macro

This past summer we had the opportunity to travel to Africa and shoot for two different organizations, Chiropractors with Compassion (Kenya) and Villages of Hope Africa (Zambia). And after filming for 2 weeks in Zambia, we had enough footage to put together several promotional videos and vignettes of students and teachers who live at the Village of Hope. This is one of their videos:

On December 1st, Mike de Jong announced his candidacy for the leader of the BC Liberal Party and in doing so, wanted an introduction video created for his new website.