You would probably think we were sitting back and relaxing a bit from our lack of updates. Well, you'd be partly right. In fact we both needed some space from the project. That and the strange occurrences from 67SYNDICATE have made us fall back and regroup a bit.

Now, we are back to movie making full bore! There's some very exciting news about the Chang'aa lab results. As you might have guessed its nasty stuff, but surprisingly 'natural'. That'll be detailed more in the movie and the book. Yes, I'm (Adam) making a book while Matt hits the movie with all his force. Actually he's working many extra hours at work 4 days a week to work one day on the movie a week. We need that since he's the creative mastermind of the film product.

I want to take just a minute to thank everyone that has helped us out so far. The support has been wonderful. I didn't ever think there would be so much for this idea. Like we said, all $100+ contributions will get credits and a little something something I'm working on. Any ideas? :) yeah, I'd better get working on it.

Thanks again everyone, we'll be updating more frequently now that we've mentally compiled the experience.

Love,
~A

We've posted some of the best pictures we took online. We and Roots took well over 1,000 pictures, so these 30+ are just a sampling. I've made some comments, and added noted areas to some of them explaining what is in the shot. Go to my flicker photos.
~Adam

Our trip ended in a jolt. Actually, I was heading back to our hotel to get the USB drive that I had put our final blogs. I didn't get to post that last blog.

Bottom line for the documentary is that we got AMAZING footage! A lot of it too. I don't want to give away any surprises, but just trust me, you will be awed when we're finished. When will that be? Not for a while. The data and footage we need to go through, and the editing itself, will take months. Right now we're shooting for this early summer to have it ready for film festivals.

We're just getting back into it. I needed some recovery time, and Matto needed to start his new producer job. We don't have the studio set up, or even all the equipment to handle this project, but we'll start on our personal machines to get the framework built at least. Then we'll get the rest of the editing equipment when I pay off some of this debt!

Speaking of that. I want to thank all the people who contributed to this project so far. You Rock :)

~A

PS - I'm severely post-dating this entry to save face. Lets say January 1st

This whole trip is far too surreal to be real. Ok, today, we woke up after digitizing tapes until 1:30 am – that’s an early night for us actually. Hit up Nairobi Coffee and ate Pria bars for breakfast. Rode to Mathare as usual, and started by taping a garbage pile complete with the requisite dead rat, dead duck, and dead chick (as in chicken). Then on to interviews, a group meeting, and lunch for a lot of the Roots Group (at our treat) in a Somali refugee community. We took a matatu from Mathare about 4 feet down the road to walk for 10 minutes through a middle-eastern market that was more nuts than you could ever imagine without being there and using all your energy to keep your eye on the person you are following in front of you that gets further and further in front, and the person behind you that is thinking the same thing. On to an Ethiopian restaurant. All meat. Hmmm… Matto says it was like a sloppy joe with a lot of little bones. I’ll have to take his word for it. Matt has completely lost all his tolerance for shenanigans, and I’m working to keep all balls rolling and everyone happy. The blur is not necessarily bad, but we’ve both realized that whatever processors we have in our heads, they are unable to assimilate the information we are bombarded with every day. 700,000 people: struggle, hope, fear, death, love, anger... just fried a million more neurons.

Now we just work, often half numb to the city of garbage, to make this project real for a hope at change. We’ve got another 6 hours of digitizing tonight before our biggest day tomorrow – I best get on with it to try and get some sleep.

-Adam

Things are going really well. Africa is frustrating in a lot of ways, but it is more than made up for by the super great people here and the rhythm of living that I can’t explain. I hope Matt is having an OK time. He’s basically been thrown into a whole pile of crap and asked to work his ass off on something that is REALLY hard technically, physically, and of course emotionally. So far, he’s rocking it. We’re a good team. I work well with people to ‘fix’ things and make everyone work together as part of the team, and Matto has the crazy artistic vision and hard-driving demand for success – we execute without alienating. We have new ideas every day and the Roots are more helpful and engaged than I ever imagined they would be. They are driven by something that is almost foreign in the U.S. They are younger than me and yet they surprise me by being more organized and detail oriented than professionals twice my age. So with them backing us up and guiding us through the valley, we won’t fail.

-Adam

It's been about a month since I last wrote and a lot has happened. We've been interviewed by the Rochester Institute of Technology's student magazine, the Reporter (Oct. 12 issue). We made the feature article! Very cool. It was an email interview for me, so you have to understand context is derived from my feeble ability to translate thoughts into words. Matto and I met in DC just a couple weeks ago to run through the equipment, logistics, timing, you name it, of this trip. Plus, Matto's friend, John McNeil, interviewed us for an untainted pre-trip perspective. We sent an email to our friends about this documentary, asking for good thoughts to money - so far we've gotten a little of everything! A list of them is on our sponsors page. Thank you all so much. I'm lucky to have such great friends!