On Monday I made a trip out to a small village near Oshakati, Namibia’s second largest city. I went to profile a group of women that receive small ($25-$300USD) loans from our newest partner, Project Hope Namibia. Project Hope operates a small microfinance institution, and we’re teaming up with them to allow ordinary people, such [...]
Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category
Banking Without Borders
Posted in Projects on December 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A Center of Academic Excellence
Posted in Projects on December 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Last Thursday I made a visit to Ongandjera, a tiny village in northern Namibia, to meet with community leaders and see if there’s any way that we can get their idea off the ground. They have a plan to increase school enrollment and performance levels by developing a school-feeding program. Food will grown by students [...]
Filming in Malawi: Baboons and Beach Music
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Interns - 2008 on October 31, 2008 | 1 Comment »
A considerable amount has happened in the last month, so we’ll recount a few of the better stories/the ones we remember the best. On October 6th, we left Namibia for the Lake of Stars (LOS) festival in Malawi. As the LOS film crew, we wanted to gather compelling promotional footage for the festival’s organizers and [...]
The Trip Home
Posted in Interns - 2008, Projects on September 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’m knackered after five days of overland travel, but the past two weeks have been two of the most memorable of my life. We finished filming the 15th of August, after which two friends from Namibia flew up and backpacked Malawi with me. Having spent the previous two months traveling the country and scoping out [...]
The Trailer, Lake of Stars & The Future
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on September 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
We’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks readjusting in Namibia and scrambling to get together a trailer to be screened at the Lake of Stars festival in Malawi next month. We’re going over film in Windhoek this week before returning to Rundu next Friday to turn all the content over to our [...]
Deep Roots back in the Studio
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on September 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
After five days of overland travel from Malawi to Namibia, it feels good to be home. The workload piles up during eight weeks of neglected correspondence, but slowly we’re catching up on everything. In the process, we’ve coordinated an exciting development.
In addition to screening Deep Roots for the press at the Lake of Stars festival, [...]
Tiwanana from the Warm Heart of Africa
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on August 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Kenny, Waliko and I have spent the past three days in Blantyre going through footage, making sure we’re on the same page—translations, cultural explanations, film treatment, etc—before we all head our separate ways. For Ken, he’s off to Canterbury to start a new year of teaching secondary school in the UK. For Waliko, it’s back [...]
The Body, Mind & Soul of Malawi
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on August 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This week, Lilongwe played host to the international finals of the Music Crossroads International (MCI) competition, a unique youth empowerment through music program initiated in 1995 by Jeunesses Musicales International (JMI) that encompasses five southern African countries: Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Since the program began twelve years ago, Music Crossroads has reached almost 35,000 [...]
Music as an Instrument for Change
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Today we had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with both Peter Mwangwa and his record label, Rhythm of Life. Mwangwa, one of Malawi’s most prominent fusion artists, has made a name for himself in the last decade by combining indigenous Malawian rhythms with international standard recordings to produce uniquely Malawian sounds. Surprisingly, he has [...]
The Wheels Got Tired
Posted in Deep Roots Malawi, Music, Projects on August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Saturday morning, we caught up with the Makambale Brothers, one of Lilongwe’s most talented groups of traditional musicians. Their unique sound, born from oil-can guitars and bottle-cap cymbals, screams Malawian. We recorded three songs with them, hoping to produce a music video from our short session with them. Afterwards, we were so impressed with their [...]
