Exploring Career options Overseas

While our film crew (12 students and me) were in Nairobi, we took a few hours out of our day to meet with Andy Brown of OFM—On-Field Media.

OFM is ministry of Africa Inland Mission, an organization with hundreds of missionaries scattered across Africa, doing evangelism, leadership training, Muslim outreach and so much more.

OFM exists to help tell stories of what God is doing through AIM missionaries across Africa. A lot of missionaries—gifted as they are—struggle when it comes time to go home and raise support, to tell their stories, to generate interest, prayers and giving. OFM does a superb job of helping them make professional videos, print pieces, webisodes and more. Our team spent a few hours with Andy, learning the history of OFM (it’s not a very long history), learning what they do and how they do it, and what the opportunities are (there’s a lot of opportunities!).

One of the exciting ideas that came out of our time together is a way to be mutually beneficial to each other. OFM needs interns. Dordt’s Digital Media major needs great places to send interns. The more we talked, the more excited we all got about summer interns from Dordt living and working in Nairobi, and even pursuing a semester abroad—working with OFM.

We’ll see where it all goes, but in the meantime, the thirteen of us had our horizons expanded and students have yet another career option to consider.

Into Africa

On December 29, 13 of us will travel to Nairobi, Kenya for our third, and final shoot in slums for the slum documentary film we're working on.

We have already tracked individuals living in slums in Asia and Latin America. The final piece of the puzzle lies in Africa.

I used to live in Kenya, so have a lot of contacts there. We'll be working closely with Pastor Shadrack Ogembo, Pastor Daniel Ogutu, and a new friend, Father Ted Hochstatter.

Ogutu and Ogembo have been friends of mine since 1985 when I first went to live in Kenya after my Jr. year in college. We'll be doing pro-bono work for all three of these men, like we did in Manila. Plus we'll be shooting stories for the slum documentary.

Pastor Daniel is my main contact for finding just the right family for the documentary. He has already sent me some pictures--the ones you see in this blog--of people he feels will help us capture the story of the one billion people living in slums.

So far, they are just faces in a picture. No personalities, no names, no family histories. The beauty of this project is taking anonymous folks like this, taking jpgs, and having the privilege of discovering who they really are. And helping our viewers discover that too.

For the last few months, our team of 13 has been through quite a bit together. We've done fund raisers, students have written letters asking for support, and we've planned things out. Now the funds are in and sufficient to make this trip happen. We're excited to create publicity materials for three different groups working among the poor in Nairobi, as well as get the material we need to create this documentary.

Please keep an eye on this space over the next few weeks as I'll be putting stories here of what we discover, who we discover, and what we learn about what I'm starting to refer to as "The Fourth World," the world of slums.

La Limonada, Guatemala: The Precarious Life

Next week we go to Guatemala to shoot.


Why there and not a favela in Rio, or on the outskirts of Mexico City? Why do the Latin America shoot in Guatemala?


As we looked at the various slums in Latin America (unfortunately, there were plenty to choose from) we decided to focus on a slum that hasn't received much attention from the world. Not that most slums have, but some are more famous than others. Rio, for example, has been featured in several movies and the favelas are almost romanticised in some quarters. Funny how media can make a location famous (i.e., just think about the baseball fields here in my home state of Iowa.)


Guatemala is a small country right next to Yucatan, Mexico. We don't hear much about it in the news, it gets very little attention, and yet, 70% of the population lives on less than US$2 per day. In the countryside, 30% live on less than $1 per day. In the city, 8% does.

Guatemala City has about 2.5 million people and estimates show that at least 60% of them are poor. Those with the lowest incomes live in very precarious situations.

Our goal is to spend a week with two women who live these precarious lives; Tanya and Selma.

Tanya and Selma have stories that border on the unbelievable. We hope to make their stories real and believeable with our lenses and microphones. They live in a slum community called La Limonada, which had its beginnings in 1959.

When the government put an end to the agrarian reform program in the '50s, that, plus socio-economic problems accelerated the migratory process from rural to urban. About 600 families invaded the sides of the gullies in front of the Olympic Stadium and thus was born La Limondada, one of the largest slums in Central America today.

We don't know Tanya and Selma's history or complete story yet, but we hope to find out. As the author Chaim Potok said, "in the particular is contained the universal." Through the particular stories of Tanya and Sara, we may gain clear insight into the more universal story of the plights of tens of thousands more who live the precarious life in Guatamala City and in cities around the world.

I'll post more here about Tanya and Selma, the good people who are making this possible in Guatemala City, our experiences as we shoot, and what we learn. Thanks for checking in.