What I'm Doing.

When I step off the plane in Nairobi I will begin a three and a half week documentary journey into the lives of the displaced people of Southern Sudan and those who have undertaken to guide them.
I will meet three indigenous pastors who regularly travel to northwestern Kenya and Southern Sudan to minister to congregations of displaced people affected by conflict in that region.

Persecution Project Foundation, a non-profit religious organization connected with the organization African Leadership equips and trains pastors indigenous to persecuted areas while facilitating their ministries. There are three pastors affiliated with PPF that I have made arrangements with in the past three months. These pastors work with Persecution Project Foundation traveling to northwestern parts of Kenya and into southern Sudan, carying out various ministerial, translation, training, and teaching efforts. During my stay I will immerse myself in the lives of these three pastors and the communities they shepherd in order to more effectively and authentically share their stories.

Kakuma Refugee Camp, located about 50 miles from Loki, is another location I intend to visit. If you have heard of the biographical novel What Is The What by Dave Eggers, this is the camp where the Valentino Achak Deng lived in for several years during the civil war after walking across the country as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Kakuma is the largest refugee camp in Kenya and one of the largest in all of central Africa.

My primary means of documentation will be photography. I will be shooting film, in both 35mm and square format, and I will also be taking audio samples and interviews with the intention of experimenting with a multimedia presentation that includes both audio and sill images from the trip.

The nature of this project will result in a large amount of tangible material that can be arranged and presented effectively. In the Spring of 2008 I will be enrolled in a two hour journalism independent study, in which I will assess the media gathered from the trip and dissemenate it into various applied forms, including but not limited to a photo essay.