Justin Wren - Fight For The Forgotten

Full transcript: Justin Wren on London Real

9:41 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Justin Wren, a.k.a. The Big Pygmy, who is an American professional mixed martial artist currently competing in the heavyweight division of Bellator MMA. You are the creator of Fight for the Forgotten, a non-profit foundation making a life-altering impact in the remote parts of the Congo jungle by working to free the Mabuti Pygmy people from slavery and develop sustainability.

10:17 One of the tools in your fight is providing clean drinking water and you will return to the Congo this week to celebrate your 35th water well. Congratulations. You just gave a TED Talk here in the U.K. where you asked the audience in the lives of others what great difference would you make if you knew you could. Justin, we’ve been trying to do this for, it feels like a couple years. Welcome to London Real.

10:37 Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here. Big fan of the show and inspired by who you are. So this is a great opportunity for me.

10:46 Cool, man. It’s so good to have you. I think like most people, we first probably heard about you on Joe Rogan’s show and we were always kind of touching base and trying to get you here. But you have quite a crazy story and I want to get into all of it. But some of the highlights are, you know, going into the Ultimate Fighter TV reality show, I think with like a 10 in 1 record, almost beating Roy Nelson, going to the finale and fighting there in Vegas.

11:11 But at the same time, you were dealing with depression and opiate addiction and you left the sport and you somehow found these, the Pygmy people in the Congo, which, you know, which quite literally saved your life, I think, as far as you save in their lives. You created Fight for the Forgotten, a great book as well, trying to free them from slavery, provide clean drinking water. Now you’re back in MMA as if the story couldn’t get more interesting. You just fought on the card that Kimbo Slice fought on.

11:38 Now it looks like you guys might be coming up to fight, which would be epic. And you want to really get the heavyweight title in Bellator and you’re pledging your win bonuses back to the Pygmy people to make Wells. That’s a pretty epic story. Even you have to admit this is like movie material, right? That’s what people keep tweeting and other people keep saying and even people from, I just know his name’s Dwight from what is the show The Office.

12:05 He’s messaged that out to me and so has King Horik from the show The Vikings. He says, my life’s going to be a movie. Those guys know what they’re talking about. I don’t when it comes to that. But no, it’s just so super humbling because honestly, man, I dealt with depression and dealt with addiction and the depression was ten full years.

12:26 I mean, I was clinically depressed, like diagnosed with it when I was 13 years old. So 23 years old, I attempted suicide and I was, you know, an alcoholic, drug addict. I was just a depressed dude. And so I tried to end it all by taking a bunch of pills, everything else I had around and wash it down with half a bottle of Everclear and thought, you know, lights out, life was over. Life wasn’t worth living.

12:53 And now to have such a big turn around knowing that life is worth living, you know, every day is a gift that we have breath, you know, that we have nostrils to breathe, you know, and fill our lungs with air and oxygen and our hearts pumping and, you know, blood’s going through our veins. Like that’s truly a gift that like I took for granted and to now know that with the life that I live, I can hopefully help others is, I don’t know, it’s just so humbling to be able to live a life like that and to be able to have a second chance. How old were you when you tried to commit suicide and how long ago was that?

13:31 Yeah, I was 23. At 13, 14, I definitely contemplated it so much. Luckily, my parents, they didn’t own guns or anything like that, but if they did, it might have been a different story. I grew up getting really heavily bullied, so that’s why I kind of just didn’t want to be the dude that I was. I remember sitting at the lunch table, you know, by myself, getting pelted in the back of the head with chocolate milk spit wads.

13:57 I was invited to my middle school crush’s birthday party and her name was Jennifer. It’s in the book, but, you know, I remember her dad worked at Dr. Pepper and she loved Transformers, so a country kid in Texas with some duct tape. We can make pretty much anything, so I got the boxes of soda cans that are cardboard that are Dr. Pepper, cut them all out, made myself a helmet and chest plate and armor and a sword, and I went to her birthday party because it was a costume contest.

14:29 The winner gets a prize, and so I went to her birthday party as a Dr. Pepper transformer, and then when I get there, go to the backyard, her grandmother’s like, Jennifer’s going to love this, and I get to the backyard, and when the door opens, it’s lots of lights, and people point their fingers and the sound of laughter, and Jennifer saying that you should just, I can’t believe you thought you were cool enough to come to my party, and then after that, someone’s saying you should just kill yourself, and someone else saying you’re worthless, and so at 13 years old, I started believing that about myself, that I felt worthless, that maybe I should just kill myself, so it wasn’t until I found wrestling and even the sport of mixed martial arts that I kind of had a purpose and a passion and something I could focus on to get me off of focusing on all my problems.

15:23 So I put all my eggs in one basket, decided I wanted to be a professional mixed martial arts fighter. I loved the sport, the chess match of it, but I also knew that those dudes probably didn’t get bullied. Yeah, do you think a lot of fighters start off that way as an anti-bullying in defense? Maybe. I know that Diaz, that’s a big thing right now, but the Diaz boys, I know at least the older brother Nick, he dealt with like some social anxiety and just some social issues growing up, and maybe he didn’t have the best speech or something, and he got picked on, and so he became a tough guy, started fighting.

15:59 So I think a lot of fighters probably started off in some way getting picked on and just deciding it’s time to fight back. Yeah, fighters are a unique bunch, and you probably know him even better than most of us. A lot of us see them and are like, okay, he’s the ultimate alpha male tough guys, but they’re probably deep down inside scared. They probably still remember being bullied as kids. They’re a crazy bunch.

16:23 Some of them are busy dealing with heavy opiate addictions and they look like everything’s fine. I guess you’ve probably seen all of that. Yeah, I have, and let’s just say my best friend, I was the best man at his wedding, he’s the best man at my wedding, he was a UFC veteran, his name’s Josh Copeland, nicknamed the Cuddly Bear. He’s a great guy, but I remember us sharing stories. Whenever we first met, it’s like our growing up was so similar because he’s a heavy weight.

16:53 All the kids picked on him, teased him because he was a heavy-set kid, and then he found Brazilian jiu-jitsu, found boxing, found MMA, and that gave him something to focus on, and it started giving him a lot of self-worth, self-value, something to aspire to be, and now it’s for him and I both, it’s become something greater than what we could have hoped for. Other guys, yeah, you look at the stories of guys like Chris Lieban, who have so much talent. He’s such an incredible dude, but then he grew up with a tough past, and from that has stemmed a lot of personal problems.

17:32 I’m not trying to throw him on the bus. I’ve had a lot of my own personal problems, but you see fighters, we’re always fighting something. Funny that, right? There’s always another fight in the background. I think I had this realization, because I trained for 10 years.

17:46 I’m a purple belt, and I used to train heavy, and I think at one point I realized that a lot of times fighters are fighting themselves. They want to go kill somebody or knock the block out of someone or beat the hell out of a heavy bag. In a weird way, you’re almost beating yourself up. I don’t know if you ever felt that way. No, yeah, and that was even from your interview with Dan Hardy.

18:06 He was even talking about how he discovered that part of himself, was that he was always just so quick to jump and to fight against somebody else, but really it was an internal battle. I’ve had that my whole life. Once I decided I wasn’t going to get bullied anymore, I started to try to fight back. My parents had to shift me out of one school because the bullying got so bad, and I didn’t fight back. Then at the second school I transferred to, the bullying continued, and I started fighting back, so I got asked to leave the school.

18:37 Fighting too much. Yeah, I was fighting too much. And then now I feel like I’ve shifted from fighting against people and being this angry dude with a lot of internal problems that I used to numb myself to now I get to fight for people. And to go to the Congo, to meet the Lubuti pygmies, to see the suffering they face, it’s gigantic in comparison to my problems. And so it shrinks my problems down into something very bite-sized or I don’t know, I always put myself under a magnifying glass, under a microscope, and I would focus in, and that’s all I could see was my problems.

19:22 But now with them accepting me and me becoming family with them, I see their problems and I see that, hey, I can’t be that jacked up dude anymore because if I’m that jacked up, there’s no way I’m going to be able to help them. And so there’s no way I’m going to be able to invest my life into theirs or into our team’s life. And so it has given me something of higher purpose to live for, not just living for myself. I don’t think life, for any of us, is about ourselves.

19:50 Life’s not about us. It’s about everyone. It’s about each other. And it’s how can we, how can we love each other and how can we move forward as people. It’s strange how we don’t get taught that lesson.

20:03 It took me a long time to figure it out and I’m still figuring it out. It’s going to take me even another 10 or 20 years. But it’s like you’re not taught that, especially the American dream. It’s just like, what do you get? I get mine.

20:15 Look at my IPO. Look at my jet. Look at this. And you’re judged by your accomplishments. There’s a few people that serve.

20:21 There’s families like the Kennedys that have always served in public office and that kind of thing. But it’s not high on the list when it comes to how to lead a good life. It’s not, I don’t feel like it’s taught that much. But a lot of people figure it out and then they live these great lives. Yeah, well that’s for me, that my childhood dream, 13 years old, become a UFC fighter.

20:44 Even whenever I found the UFC tapes was I was saving up my allowance to buy a BB gun. And at the flea market, or it’s called a trader’s village in Arlington, Texas, on the way to the BB gun store, I crossed a used video store and I found UFC like 2 through 10. And so I used all the money I saved up for the BB gun to buy the UFC tapes. And I’d like smuggle them back into my house because my parents were kind of conservative and at that time it was being advertised as, I don’t know, human cock fighting or like one man enters, or two man enters, one man leaves and just a blood sport and violence and, but I hid those under my bed.

21:23 And whenever my dad, you know, VHS tapes, when you try to turn your TV off, it’s still moving around and everything. My dad sees the light coming from under my door and I try to act like I’m asleep. He opens the door and the VCR is still moving around and yeah, so he knows I’m awake and he pulls out the tape and he’s thinking he’s going to find porn. But it’s just the UFC. It is porn in a way, adults doing strange things.

21:51 Right. And then later he finds a whole stash of like 10 or 15 UFC tapes underneath my bed and still, again, thought it was going to be a stack of porno but it was a stack of fighting. What did he say? He jokes around saying, sometimes I wish it was because that’s a normal 13-year-old thing or young man thing to do but now I know you’re going to try to be one of these fighters and that’s dangerous and that’s this, that’s that. But since he’s become very supportive and yeah, it’s been, it’s been something that for me though, my childhood dream became a reality and, you know, and quickly, I was a national champion at 17, 18 and wrestling, lived at the Olympic Training Center at 18 years old.

22:38 At 19 years old, I was fighting professionally. 21, I was on the Ultimate Fighter TV show. Which is crazy. And that was a big season. Yeah.

22:46 I remember Rampage and Rashad were going after each other. After each other. Two guys at the time, really at the top of their game. I’m a huge Rampage fan from the Pride days. Yeah.

22:54 And Rashad as well and those guys were up in each other’s grills. Like, I don’t know what it was like to be in that house but I don’t think there’s been too many seasons like that. Yeah, you’re right. And what an all-star lineup. They dropped Kimbo in the mix at the very last moment and he was obviously huge from the backyard brawls.

23:10 Roy Nelson was coming from another organization. IFL. He was the champion then. And this was the first heavyweight show as I remember, I think. And then you were there.

23:18 Yeah. What was that like? It was crazy because I was kind of caught up in the spotlight of it all. You know, like, hey, I mean, I had been around Olympic gold medalists. Those were my coaches and other things like that.

23:29 But this was the sport of the UFC and it was big and it was… I mean, that was when it was becoming real huge. I mean, that season, I think, averaged something like over six million per episode and so I couldn’t go to the grocery store without people getting in trouble by the manager because they’re leaving their cashiers register to come get a picture and all this stuff. And I’m like, wow, like, I’m this kid, you know? Twenty-one, twenty-two.

23:54 Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. And then, yeah, so my childhood dream became a reality but then because of all the internal stuff and the American dream might have happened because I was getting paid to do what I love for a living. But still I wasn’t fulfilled.

24:09 And I think maybe you even, that’s maybe why you made that transition from being a banker to making millions, to inspiring millions, being here and doing this. It’s because it’s not always about what you can accomplish, what you can achieve, what you can conquer through maybe the American dream or what the Western world says is important. It’s how you can touch the hearts of people. Yeah, I think, like, subconsciously, it’s not like my parents or people specifically said, you know, this is what you have to do, but we just see it everywhere we feel.

24:41 We see it in the movies, we see it in the music videos and all this stuff and even on social media. And then when you get there, especially if you get there quickly to a high level, I think a lot of people feel like empty, you know, and inside. And I think if you don’t, maybe something’s wrong. And so, you know, you feeling that at 21 is interesting. And then also you’re dealing with some depression too.

25:02 Yeah. Well, and then that depression, I looked around at certain guys and I won’t name names, but guys that had the straps, had the belts, the gold belts, had multiple, you know, UFC championships, the stuff that I wanted since I was 13 years old. And I started becoming friends with these guys or helping them train for fights. You know, go over to their house for family meals. And then I see, you know, a lot of the stuff they’re going through and what I’m currently going through and I’m like, even if I get that 10 pound belt of gold, is it just going to sit on a shelf one day and collect dust?

25:39 Is it really going to fulfill me? Or am I still going to have these same exact problems? Or are they going to be magnified? You know, what is going to really matter in life? Is it a belt?

25:52 And not saying, like, because right now I’ve returned to fighting, right? Right. So I would love to get the Bellator Heavyweight Championship belt and then go on and see whatever the other belts I can get. Or I just want to be the best that I can be. But now I feel like it’s shifted to where I’m not doing it just for myself.

26:11 The biggest motivation to come back, my wife and I talking about it and she was kind of the one encouraging me saying, look, if we just go get lost in the jungle of Congo and nobody knows what we’re doing, it’s going to be hard to support ourselves, which will make it hard to support the people we want to help. And so what if this is a tool you can use for the next five, seven years? You know, I’m 28 right now. Most of the top 10 heavyweights in the world are in their thirties.

26:42 Redoom is 37 I think. And Mark Hunt’s like 40. And so some of these guys are like older guys. So if I could use five to seven years to get into my prime, to get a belt by then, you know, then I could set up, fight for the forgotten for the next maybe 50 years because I will have had a platform, had actually accomplished something on that stage and then be able to say, no, this is what I’m going to do with my life. It’s interesting that you’re having this journey because I think when I first heard about you on Ruby and you were done fighting.

27:12 Yeah. And so I was really happy to see you come back and I know you agree with your wife if you came back to fight that, you know, your win bonuses would go for fight the forgotten, would go to build these wells and now you really feel empowered. I would be scared if I was an opponent to know that you’re not fighting for yourself but you’re fighting for these people and this movement and like that seems a little scary if I’m fighting a guy but it’s interesting that, you know, you can tell this fairy tale story that yeah, then we went to the Congo and we live heavily ever after but, you know, there’s struggles with that and I want to hear about them.

27:43 You know, you go to the Congo and like your wife said, now we’re just here, no one knows what we’re doing and we’re barely raising enough money and we’re not really making an impact. Plus, maybe you also, maybe you need to live your own dream and combine it with other people’s dreams, you know, and maybe it’s not as simple as, you know, it just goes opposite to this one way. Right. No, I agree. I think I thought it was one or the other.

28:04 That, okay, here’s my two passions, MMA and fight for the forgotten and I can’t put, I didn’t see a way that I could put them together at that time for five years. That’s why I stayed away for so long. I wasn’t even training, like zero mixed martial arts training from wrestling boxing, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, none of it. And I was, I was wholly, just full, fully invested in this. Like nothing, I had blinders on.

28:30 I’m not going to see anything else except how far we can go with this. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh my goodness, like, I don’t have to choose one or the other. I can put them together. And if I do that, then hopefully they can rise together, which I’ve seen from the first fight, you know, close to a million people seeing and hearing why I’m coming back and being able to, to not just go and be there with them, but then to come back and say, hey, I’m going to fight and that’s going to be hard.

29:02 Going to Congo’s hard, fighting’s hard, but it’s worth it. And then also, like, I’m not just going to ask people to give. Like I’m, I’m personally giving, you know, like I’m going to give, you know, half away. Like my win bonus is a hundred percent of them always go to the cause. And so that’s why if, I don’t know, if I could get that Kimbo fight, I would love it because I feel like he escaped me on Elite XC.

29:27 I was just a young kid, 19, 20 years old. My name was in the hat though. I was a national champion wrestler and he was a street fighter. So I got dropped off the list pretty quick. Right.

29:38 Yeah. The promoters wouldn’t have made that fight happen. Right. Right. And then on the, on the show, I was the first guy that was supposed to have a crack at him.

29:47 A lot of people don’t know that. I think it was maybe shown on the show a little bit, but Rashad knows, Trevor Whitman knows, Brendan talked about it on the fighter and the kid. Yeah. They, he was the first one to have the fight. And then they, some suits came in, I won’t say exactly who, and said that, you know, I could have the second crack at him, but first needs to be a veteran.

30:10 And so they chose Roy. Right. Because if a world champion beats the street fighter, the UFC can always bring Kimbo back. But if some unknown 21, 22 year old kid goes in there and you know, just crushes them, then it’s a hard, hard sell to bring Kimbo back into the UFC. Could you have beat Kimbo?

30:29 Then? Yeah. Absolutely. I remember seeing everybody in the house, because we saw Kimbo as this scary guy on YouTube. And I remember when he came in there, I remember all of you going, I want the fight.

30:39 I want the fight. And I was the first one to raise my hand. So you weren’t impressed with what you saw, or you just thought you had what it took. First, I should say, like now, Kimbo and I have become buddies. You know, when I saw him at Bellator this last, you know, February 19th backstage, he’s like, hey, big J.

30:58 And I went up to him, you know, gave him a hug. He said, you know, he’s happy about what I’m doing. But then he also said, you know, I hear we might be clashing skulls soon. And I’m like, dude, I hope so. I would absolutely love that because it’s, you know, I just love to fight him.

31:14 He would fight, be fighting a real legitimate threat to his style. You know, he’s a street fighter, stand up fighter. I’m a ground fighter. So he’d be taking a legitimate step up in competition. And then, and then, yeah, I think it’s a win, win, win for everybody.

31:31 You know, we both have these stories. They’re polar opposite, but you put them together and maybe it’s a polarizing storyline that then Bellator can sell, get eyeballs there. But then if he wins, you know, hey, big props to him. And, and he gets a lot of credit. And if I win, then I get to do a lot of good in the Congo.

31:48 I’ll get a bigger one bonus, which means I get to give even more water wells to my family. So that would just be, that would be, that’s why I want the fight. A lot of people, maybe after they saw the last fight, might be like, why is he calling him out or chasing him down or, you know, but, but for me, I see the exposure it can bring. I was on the ultimate fighter with him and saw the exposure it brought. And then he escaped me there.

32:13 So it’s, it’s a, we have history also. So being able to sell that part, like, you know, I’ve missed the opportunity twice. Now we’re in Bellator. It’s a third opportunity. I don’t want to miss that.

32:24 And so I’m doing everything I can to hopefully get that fight. Good. It’s a great story. I’d love to see Justin Ren, Kimbo Slice. That would be an awesome story.

32:32 And again, stories sell fights. People want to hear these backstories. That’s what fascinates people. We’ve said there’s so many fights on these days that just two guys that are tough and scary and that have a chichitsu or a wrestling background isn’t enough. People want to see it.

32:44 They want to see the footage of you in the Congo. They want to see Kimbo doing this and that. And then you guys come together. So I love it. Let me talk about pygmy people and how you got to meet them.

32:54 So you went through the house. You had a controversial decision with Roy Nelson. Some people thought you won that fight. You also were struggling with addiction there and some opiates in the house. Was that hard to do back then?

33:07 Hard to balance it. Well, yeah, to balance opiate use and fighting and also smuggle things in the house. Yeah. We’re fighting well as well. Yeah, I think going into the house, I was trying to be as clean as possible, but I had almost as a backup if I don’t want to be in a house of 15 guys, if my dream just was crushed.

33:26 So it was almost like my fall back plan. And then once I lost, one judge said, you know, I won or it should go to third round and then the others didn’t. And people telling me I got screwed and everything else, like it sent me right back spiraling into that depression. So to me, I needed those. And that’s where my addiction ultimately ended up.

33:44 It wasn’t I just wanted the the drugs or drinking and alcohol. I needed it. I physically had to have it. And so, yeah, I was I was in a rough place even on the finale. Whenever I fought like I was using the week of the fight just a few days before the fight.

34:02 And there’s a couple few different witnesses to that. You know, that sat me down. What are you doing? You know, I’ll be all right. You know, lost another split decision.

34:11 You know, if I just would have done a little bit more right, I would have won that fight. And so but I don’t think I could have handled it either. Life has a way of working itself out. And, you know, I don’t think if I would have become the ultimate fighter, I think I would have crashed and burned even harder. And I don’t know if I would have survived it.

34:29 So, you know, now how I got to the the Pygmies, I just I wanted to do something with my life that was worthwhile, that was meaningful. I stepped away from the sport for a full year and I’d started like volunteering at the Children’s Hospital in Denver, start taking the grudge fighters and some people like Rashad and Shinkar went at Brendan Shab and Dwayne Ludwig and some big name guys started coming and visiting these kids at the hospital. You know, after that, they started inviting me back onto the team.

34:58 But I was like, you know what, I need some more time to get my life right. Went to Vegas, helped out with the homeless there and just started trying to see local youth groups, started trying to meet with them, see how I could invest my life into them. Everybody think you’re crazy? You guys like Trevor and Bang and Brendan, they’re like, dude, when are you going to come back training? Because for them, I guess their whole life is fighting.

35:23 They see you. Lots of raw talent. You have great Greco-Roman talent. And what do you say to them? Like, I’m just doing my thing?

35:30 Yeah, I just said, you know, my life’s changed now. And my priorities are different. Like, I want to make a difference. I had some people that really invested in my life to help get me through the addictions, to help get me through the depression. And so I wanted to turn that around and help others.

35:50 And so also, you know, I even had family and close friends that called me just one big waste of talent that were really close to me that now aren’t. And so that I was just wasting my dream. And why would I work so hard to get there and then just to give it all up? And then also people in the States and a lot of people in the West, why are you going to go help people there whenever you can help people here? And now that’s a valid point.

36:15 But I think people need help here, there and everywhere. And the problems we have here, not that they aren’t real, but in comparison to, you know, my second trip to the Congo and having a little boy in an anti-boat die in my hands. And to find out it was just because he didn’t have clean drinking water. And to come back here, it just wrecks me. To come back in this, or at least the first time for sure, culture shock of I can just twist a handle so easily at my fingertips.

36:45 You know what, it’s even in my toilet. I can urinate in what they don’t have and that’s what’s killing them. You know, I just mess with my mind, how can we help them? How can we get them water? And then for me, it is helping Congo’s kind of become a second home, or is.

37:02 I look at them truly as family. My pygmy name is Efeosa, Mabutimang, Boch. And you have to say it like that. Mabutimang, Boch. If you don’t say it like that with a Boch, then it’s not pronounced correctly.

37:17 But Efeosa means the man who loves us. That was the name my family gave me. And then Mabutimang, Boch means the big piggy. And so they see me as one of them. I see myself as one of them as family.

37:28 And so. How do you get from Denver, Vegas, helping children, hospitals and homeless to Congo? And this is in Africa. I haven’t made this click. And then, yeah, how do you get there?

37:41 And then I want to hear about the pygmy people and this whole idea that slavery still exists in this world. Yeah. So it’s a crazy story where I get it. If people think I’m a little bit out there, I’m all right with that because it happened. And so I’m just sharing from my heart.

38:01 It’s real. It’s the truth. But I get that I can sound kind of crazy, kind of nutty. You think so? Maybe.

38:08 You’ll decide. So how I got there to sum it up was I had a vision. And at the Olympic Training Center, the sports psychologist would take us through visualization drills. As a martial artist, you always want to see the fight happen, you know, 10, 100, 1,000 times in your mind before you ever go out there and do it. But this was different.

38:27 I found myself in a place where even though I had taken a year off from fighting and I had been a part of things, you know, helping, I just wanted to know what I could truly do with my life. And so I found myself at a place where I just, and I’m not trying to push anything on anybody, but I just said, God, what are you going to do with my life? And I was just like, that’s all I said. There wasn’t anything weird. It wasn’t super spiritual.

38:50 I was just like, what can I do with my life? But I think I was at a place where I really meant it with my heart and I was open to it. And so, man, I was lit up with a vision that was like a movie in my mind. I didn’t try to make it happen like I did with the visualization drills or training. Like, it just happened.

39:08 And I saw myself walking down a footpath. I didn’t know it was in the Congo, but I was walking down a footpath. And the closer I got to the village, I heard drumming. I didn’t know where I was going, actually, but I heard drumming. Then I got closer and I heard this distinct but beautiful singing.

39:25 Then I got in and I met these people. I didn’t know who they were. I knew they had darker skin, but I just saw their suffering. And then I felt overwhelmed, like absolutely a hundred percent overwhelmed by their suffering. I knew they didn’t have clean water.

39:41 I knew that they were hungry, that they were starving. I knew that they were hated by the people groups around them. The thing that made me cry a puddle of tears, and that’s why I say I felt crazy for three days. So if other people think I’m crazy, I’m okay with that because I felt a little nuts like what just happened. And I cried a puddle of tears this big.

40:00 I’ve never cried like that in all my life. For these people I didn’t know and I didn’t know where they lived or existed. And so… And this is four years ago? Five years ago?

40:10 Five years ago. And you’re in Colorado? Yeah. Okay. And all of a sudden I’m like, who are they?

40:16 And I write down one thing that they’re forgotten. And so, anyways, I tell a guy three days later. I felt like I could tell him I’ve only known him for three days, but, you know, someone’s going to think I’m crazy. Maybe it’s going to be this guy, you know. I haven’t known him that long.

40:34 And so I tell him and he goes, that’s the Pygmies. And it’s my buddy Caleb now. And I tell Caleb, he goes, that’s the Pygmies. And I go, who? He goes, they’re in the Congo.

40:44 And I’m like, where? And all of a sudden he goes, I’m supposed to go and I’m like three and a half weeks from now, but the rebels took over the airport that we’re flying into and the team that I was going with, they’re all husbands. They all have children. They’re all fathers. And they’ve all backed out on me.

40:59 But if you had this vision and you saw them, then maybe we’re supposed to go. So if you go, I’ll go. And I’m like, whoa. He just told me how crazy it was, how dangerous it was. Rebel groups, people were getting killed.

41:11 He even showed me online how the Pygmies currently that the United Nations had verified that they had been being killed, cooked and eaten because of the belief that they were part man, part animal. And that if they could, if people could consume their flesh, that they could go into battle and be invincible. And I was just like, where are we going? Like, this seems nuts. It seems crazy.

41:31 But the vision was so real to me that I had to go. And then whenever we got there, we were walking down a footpath. The vision came true. We heard the drumming, the singing. We got in there.

41:41 Even so much turned down to the fact that the chief pulls Caleb and I to the side. And he says, hey, one thing I want you to know is everybody else calls us the forest people. But we call ourselves the forgotten, the forgotten people. My jaw dropped. Caleb like grabbed my shoulder.

41:56 Like tears started coming to my eyes because I’m like, what in the heck? Like I’ve never experienced, never heard of anything like this happening. And now I’ve had a vision three and a half weeks ago that’s now come true. Who are these people? Why did that happen?

42:11 And then, dude, my heart was just completely invested after that. I fell in love with the people. I feel like they fell in love with me too. And then from there, it started, how can I help? Because I didn’t know how.

42:25 The problem was way too big. I was way too small. I had no training in community development. The only promise I felt like I could make them was after Andy Boe died, I knew that they needed land. This is the seven-year-old boy who died.

42:39 One and a half. One and a half and died of waterborne illness. Waterborne illness. And you met him and saw it happen. Met him, saw it happen and dug the grave, had blisters on the hands.

42:49 It was one dollar for the pills that would have cured him. I mean, it would have been several days or weeks of pills, but it was equivalent to one U.S. dollar. The one-time shot that cured him would have been three and a half dollars. The casket and shovel that I used to, that we used to bury him in was like some like thirty-eight hundred dollars.

43:08 And so just wrecked me. I had a little boy. His life was stopped before it ever began just because he didn’t have something that I have that so many people do have. And that the statistic is that 5,000 children just like Andy Boe die every day. So that’s like equivalent to a hundred school buses falling off a cliff every day.

43:31 A hundred filled school buses falling off a cliff. And for me it’s like I know that in our culture if one school bus gets in an accident, it’s going to make local news or probably national news. And so, but for these people, the forgotten people or for Mama Mariamo, who I know, who is one of the just best, most sweetest people in all the world, you know, she she’s a modern-day slave before River Blindness took her eyesight. And then with the children’s statistic, five of her seven children have died just because of dirty water.

44:07 But now like, you know, knowing, I was just wrecked. Didn’t know how I was going to start anything up. But now like for Mama Mariamo at least, her village that we’re able to work with and do land, water and food initiatives, you know, she’s the closest living person to the water well in their village. And it’s 20 footsteps outside of her front door. So for her and her two surviving kiddos, you know, that was just one of the most fulfilling moments of my life, seeing them get clean water, knowing that at least her and her two children now, they’re not going to suffer anymore from that kind of sickness.

44:41 I’m telling me, I like the water well celebrations, how we’re going back to celebrate the 35th. My wife and I had an idea of 300 acres of land and two water wells. That’s when you first started in this. When I first kind of started, after my second trip, like the second trip I went to live with, listen to, learn from, so that I could love them or learn how to love them. That was my four goals, live with them so that I could listen to them.

45:07 And so around the campfire they called that campfire university. That’s where the pygmies took me to school. And then I could sit there and listen and learn. And I learned that that’s the easiest way to give someone a voice, you know, someone that’s voiceless, whether it’s someone in our own community, someone that’s homeless, or if it’s a homeless people, or a voiceless people group. Like the easiest and quickest and first way we should give them a voice is just by giving them our ear.

45:34 Sitting down, spending some time with them, listening to them. I think a lot of people from the west, they go to Africa with a solution already in mind. Or they just think they can throw money at the problem. Or they have some cookie cutter solution. And it’s like, no, it’s a different country, a different culture, a different people group.

45:53 It’s a different context. And people are individuals. We’re all unique. And so our answers to our problems are going to be unique as well. And so…

46:03 You told me, I think one of your big aha moments was when you realized that opportunity was the answer, not charity. Right. And so I think that’s what I’ve learned through this whole process is that opportunity is greater than charity. And I’m not speaking bad about charities. I don’t want to point things at them.

46:22 But I think a lot of the ways that we do it, we can do better. I think that we could reserve charity for famine, for natural disasters, for some kind of relief effort, or for people who have disabilities who can’t help themselves. But just because someone lives on the continent of Africa, and they have dark skin, like, it doesn’t mean that they need charity. What they probably need is an opportunity. Like, charity in their poverty, like, that’s just going to keep them in their poverty.

46:52 But an opportunity out of poverty, like, that can create something that they see as, oh my gosh, I can get myself, my kids, my wife out of poverty. And then that can inspire them to do that for someone else. And so that’s what we’ve done with selecting 18 locals that graduated from a university there with degrees in community development. Like, they already had a heart for their people. Like, they already wanted to be the change in their own country.

47:19 And so all we had to do was give them a job and put the tools in their hands on how to drill water wells, give them the knowledge of how to do it correctly so that we can verify and know and how to test it afterwards to make sure the water truly is clean and safe for the people to drink. You know, so tools in their hands, knowledge in their heads, and then after that, just send them out to be world changers because they’re already inspired and like, oh my gosh, this is a real answer. It’s a real solution.

47:47 I can do this. I can do this. And I can, it’s a job. So now we’re creating jobs, but they’re saving lives. And so for me, it’s awesome.

47:59 The proof in the pudding for me was like, I didn’t want this thing to be dependent on me because if it was, then I ultimately failed. Like, if Justin Ren dies right now, like, then it has to be able to still go on, or at least the impact, and I’m not saying necessarily fight for the forgotten, but the people that I know have to know that they can still run this thing. And so I was on the ground for a full year at one time. I’ve been going back and forth the last five years, but for that full year, we were doing all water wells.

48:31 So we did 13 water wells and just cranked them out, actually 12, and my wife and I sat back and we watched the 13th water well be drilled. And you’re on the ground for these things, and you’re sometimes taking days to get into these places, right? And it’s hard work, and your first… Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Hardest thing you’ve ever done, including going into a cage.

48:51 Yes. A lot tougher. And you said your first five wells didn’t succeed, right? First eight. First eight wells, the geology, the geological obstacles that we were given in this one region was so tough that we didn’t have the appropriate tools to bust through the sandstone and the granite that we were coming across.

49:13 And so… This is probably a silly question. People just lost time. But you see pictures of Congo and Africa, and it seems very green and very lush. You would think there’s lots of water there.

49:22 Yeah, no, it’s a rainforest. Right. And then again, you’re like, water is the answer. And it seems to me that I guess maybe we’re so used to water that water couldn’t just be a solution itself. But you’re saying it is, right?

49:33 Yeah, water changes everything. Water is life for the people there. Without it, they’re dying. Their children are dying. I mean, Mobuti Pygmy’s, the statistic I’ve heard, is one in two, or six out of ten, Mobuti Pygmy children under the age of five, die.

49:53 It’s one of the highest child mortality rates in all the world. And so, you bring in fresh water to a place and it changes the culture. It allows the girls to go from walking an hour to collect dirty water to bring back water in their village. Maybe they can go to school now. The women that are spending such a long time going on those walks, I think it’s something like 40 million hours a day, or maybe even more, are spent by women going to fetch dirty water.

50:29 40 million hours during each and every day because they’re going to collect. And so, being able to give water to somebody now, it’s right there in their front yard or in their community. They don’t have to go so far to fetch it. So, it’s hard to explain unless you lived it or been there to know how much it changes things, but it truly does. And so, yeah, with us, it was first land, then it was water, then it was food.

50:57 And so, we’ve acquired 2,470 acres of land for the Pygmy’s. By the end of the year, we’re hoping it’s going to be 3,000 officially, but it’s legally that they own. They’ll pass it down from generation to generation. Now, we’ve established 10 brand new villages on that land, and those people are transitioning out of the life that they’ve always lived of slavery. Can you tell me a bit about that life?

51:20 Like, I don’t know much about the Pygmy people, and you mentioned about slavery, and then tell a little bit about the slave masters and how that situation still happens on this earth, because like you told me before, I thought slavery was over in 1865. Yeah, exactly. Everyone in the western bubble thinks that most everyone in the western bubble thinks slavery is a thing of the 1800s, that it doesn’t happen today. But the worldwide statistic is there’s at least 27 million slaves on earth today, which is more than ever in human history.

51:51 So, back in 1800s, there was less than 27 million, so it’s grown. And so, with the Mobuti Pygmy’s, it is a different context, though. It’s not people of white skin sitting back, rich, drinking sweet tea and lemonade, having a whip in their hand. It’s, with the Pygmy’s, especially in the Congo, deep in the rainforest, it’s these people that the mukpala, the non-Pygmy’s, are able to see them, and the majority of Congo makes less than $1 a day. There’s 74 million people, and the vast majority makes less than $1 a day.

52:29 That goes for the slave masters, as well. So, for a slave master to then make $1, they’ve got to take care of their wife and their kids. So, I don’t want to paint a picture that these are these evil villains, but they saw an opportunity to take advantage of the smaller, weaker, more vulnerable Pygmy’s. Their way of life was being destroyed. Hunting and gathering, with the deforestation taking place, like the trees falling, it sounds like thunder.

52:55 So, the animals become scared and skittish and harder to catch, their numbers decrease, and they go deeper, deeper into the forest. And so, it basically took away the opportunity for the Pygmy’s to provide for their families. And so, then they were left weak, and the other people came in, stole the land out from under their feet, and if the Pygmy’s choose to stay there, to live there, they have to be their slaves. And then their slave masters will give them maybe two bananas for a whole family to share at the end of the day.

53:25 Or maybe a fish, which I call fish bait, because we use it to go catch actual fish that we can eat. But the slave masters will say, no, I feed my slaves fish. And I’m like, that’s such a small fish, that it’s fish bait. You use that to go catch another fish. But they’ve just worked for you from sun up to sun down.

53:45 Now, the small fish, they can’t use to go throw in the water and to try to catch a bigger fish. They don’t have time. And so, they keep them hungry enough to where they have to come back and work the next day, if that makes sense. But, to be able for us to come into the community, we said we want to love both sides. When we did our community development, using the locals, everything we do is going through locals because that’s the way to keep it sustainable.

54:16 Whenever people of the community think it’s being led by, and no, it is being led by people of their own community, that this is what we want. This is how we are going to help ourselves. Because you get resistance at first when the locals are thinking, oh, here comes the big white man, he’s here to take our slaves away. Yeah, that and also, or just they’ve been ruined by certain NGOs or charity organizations that come in, and I call it the show up, blow up and blow out technique, where they come in, they have a parade to announce their arrival, they throw a party to get a bunch of pictures, and then they leave to never come back again.

54:58 And so, the people in the communities are scarred by that as well because, hey, these people just use us, because they come in, they take our pictures, they go back and they make a bunch of money off of us. So, I wanted to be seen completely different. And so, is that something that’s happened in Africa with charities over the past 30 years? Yeah, I would say that a lot of charity has done it so wrong that it’s damaged the people. So much so that we went into a community and wanted to start a farming initiative, to where we taught them better farming practices, to the people who have always farmed, and then the others, we could teach them how to farm for the first time, the pygmies, the hunter-gatherers.

55:38 They hadn’t been farmed. They didn’t know how to farm. They didn’t know how to farm. And so, we wanted to do that, but this community, we had to bypass, I regret it, but we had to say, okay, we cast out the vision, they didn’t catch the vision, they didn’t see the opportunity because they said, well, we are starving, you’re right about that, but if we just wait, this certain NGO will see our suffering and they’ll come just give us food. And so, it kind of cripples them by being dependent on charity and being dependent on handouts.

56:10 So, we go in looking for people that want to hand up instead of a handout and say, we will partner with you, the community as a whole, and we are invested in you long-term. We don’t see an end to the project. Others are going to come and go and you’ll never see them again, but you’re going to see us for years and years and years because this goes on past land, water and food. So, first, we’re going to buy the land back from the people who stole it. Right.

56:36 And you got that money by what? How did you find the money for that? That was by Indiegogo, a crowdfunding thing. Yeah, so, we did a crowdfunding for the land and for the 300 acres and the two water wells. And then, through partnering with Water4, it’s a great organization out of the U.S.

56:57 It’s Water4.org. And we’ve since become an official initiative underneath them and they started helping a lot with the finances because they saw what was happening. They saw the land was actually something sustainable that the pygmies could then go live free on and it was benefiting both sides of the community because we don’t want to love one side and hate the other because then it’s going to only hurt the people you’re truly there trying to love. And so, what we wanted to do is say, hey, how can the land purchases help everybody?

57:31 We’ll help the pygmies have a land for the first time and ownership for the first time that can’t be taken away. They’ll get to go live there for free and be free on it. And the slave masters, who aren’t evil people, who sometimes it’s a burden for them to take care of these people because it’s hard for them living in poverty to take care of their own family. And so, we’ll benefit them financially by us buying the land back from them. And then we’ll come in and we’ll give water to both sides.

58:02 And so, we’ll drill water well simultaneously in each community. And then that’s going to save your kids. I haven’t just attended funerals of the pygmies. I’ve helped bury two children. I’ve held them and it was so terrible.

58:16 And I’ve attended the funeral of maybe five others. But I’ve also attended the funerals of the makapala, the non-pygmies, because their kids are dying of the same waterborne disease. And so, being able to come in and say, hey, the water is going to save lives. And then be able to say, hey, after that, we have agriculturalists that are going to come in. They’re going to teach you better farming practices.

58:36 They’re going to teach you how to farm for the first time. And so, last time I went back in Chief Leo May, his name, he was so pumped because he’s a mobuti pygmy chief saying, we went to the market for the first time in our history and we’re selling our own corn and bananas. And next time we go back, maybe we’ll sell our sweet potatoes or our beans. But we don’t know. So their first have to feed themselves.

58:59 Then after that, they have the opportunity to go to the local markets or even just the roadside and sell their produce. That’s the first time ever. Like in the history of the pygmies in that region goes back, I’m guessing thousands of years probably. Yeah, if not more, right? How do you fight all of that cultural programming in the brain?

59:20 I mean, you spend time with these people, you live with them. I mean, I don’t know, if I grew up there as a pygmy child and I never saw my parents grow, sell anything and I saw them work all day long. I mean, it’s part of the long-term battle just kind of de-programming them and making them think that I am a person that’s equal to other people because that must be hard. Yeah, but it’s hard and it can’t be difficult or challenging but I think they’re so receptive to the change.

59:51 Most people are resistant of change but whenever you have someone living living in such utter poverty that are suffering so much that now they see an opportunity to end that suffering and it’s to end their own suffering or the suffering of their wife or their child. You know, they are hungry and eager and driven to do it so much so that we thought 300 acres land two water wells and had no idea what we could do for farming. Now it’s turned into the 2,470 acres, 35 water wells, there’s three working farms, we’re going to replicate that in the other 10 villages and it’s just grown to where our team was four people in the Congo.

1:00:32 Then it was eight people in the Congo and now it’s 18 full-time staff that it’s their jobs just to find a way to sustainably love the Pygmies and the people of their community because we don’t want to leave people out, we don’t want to exclude one side. We want to come into the community and say, hey, as a whole, since we’re all equals, how can we move forward together? How can we, like, can we sit and we listen? And I think that shows them that we respect them, that we aren’t just coming in and saying, this is the answer to your problem.

1:01:06 We sit down and we field, field ideas and questions and answers and sometimes we have to say, we don’t, we don’t know, but we’re going to try to find out and we’ll try to find out together and find out a solution for that. And so even now the Pygmies, one of the villages, I went back to, they always live in these twig and leaf huts and they sleep on the dirt. But I walked back in and my heart kind of sunk because all of a sudden I was like, oh no, for some reason did their land get, get taken from them or did they get pushed off of it and because they were living in the same mud huts with roofs on them as the surrounding people.

1:01:47 And, but it’s been very peaceful and this place has been awesome and it’s a village called Mabakulu and I love him, love both sides and it’s been awesome. But all of a sudden Chief Alondo comes out and he’s like saying, come on in, I want to show you my house. And I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s a little twig and leaf hut and you slept on the dirt with you, your wife and your grandchildren and the ground, the dirt was your bed. And now I walk in and they built themselves a bed out of bamboo and they have a sitting room and they have furniture there and they have two bedrooms, one for the grandchildren and one for them and they have a closet and I mean just, just for me, it was mind-blowing to see like, hey, you start creating opportunities for people and they’re going to run with it.

1:02:37 For instance, my last time we were only at 20 water wells. Now I’m going back this next week. The team, the locals there, because they’ve been empowered and they feel free enough to just run with this thing. Now they’ve got 35 water wells. They’ve done 15 since in the last six, seven months and that to me is the proof in the pudding that it can be set up as something that’s going to outlive me, that isn’t dependent on me and I would be a fool to want and prideful and arrogant and I’d be a jerk to think and hope and not take the chains off of them to say, go run free with this, fly on your own two wings.

1:03:22 If I held them back saying, I have to be there for you to continue the work. But now it’s just, my heart’s overjoyed knowing I get to go back and see the work that they did. And you’re using the water as a tool. I think that’s just fascinating. You’re using it as a tool to get everyone to open up their minds and think, okay, all right, we can move forward.

1:03:43 And without the water, you might be able to do it, but it sounds like it would be harder, take longer, it might not work in certain areas. Water ford jumped on board right at the perfect timing because I said, hey, the land is going to work, but I think our best bargaining chip, our best tool, our best negotiating tool for the community would be able to say, hey, you guys are getting clean water. But I was like, but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how. I want to know how, but I don’t.

1:04:15 I don’t have the tools. I don’t have the knowledge. I’m not a water engineer. I don’t have a half a million dollar, million dollar drilling rig. And they’re like, that’s great, that’s perfect because we don’t want to do it that way.

1:04:24 We want to put practical tools in the hands at the local level that they can reproduce and keep it simple to where if the well breaks down, our team’s trained on how to go repair it. One of our wells did break. It was just a simple coupling or coupler that I don’t know how they say it here in the UK, but it had broke down, just a connector piece. But guess what? And so me having to come back from the United States while I’m training for a fight, our team just drove out there, a three, four hour drive.

1:04:56 They walked out the tools. They took so much more than they needed and they opened it up and they’re like, oh, hey, there is a defective piece in here. Let’s just reattach a new one. And so they did that and then all of a sudden the well is repaired. And a lot of times the way the NGOs go about it, it’s like if they’re not there present and a water well breaks down, which one in three water wells that are five, 10, $20,000, one in three will break down within like five years.

1:05:22 The locals don’t know how to repair it where they don’t have the money to repair it. So now you need locals that are empowered to be able to go out there and do it themselves. Yeah. What’s your biggest challenge right now in the journey you’re at and even in the last year to be like, wow, okay, I thought now everything was good and now I’ve got this, I’ve got to push. I mean, I know you’re going back now to shoot the second part of your documentary film, which we’ll put a link for.

1:05:48 I really love the first seven minutes. It’s awesome. And it’s important to make that piece of rich media to really get your communication across, isn’t it? Yeah. Is that one of the things that challenges you or is that other things?

1:06:02 Yeah, I would say the documentary is incredible. It’s going to be, it’s going to be so great. But I’ve always gone in there as a person saying, hey, I’m one of you. You know, I’m not the white guy. My name is Fao I’m the big pygmy.

1:06:20 I’m the guy that loves you. And I don’t bring in tourist groups to take pictures of them, you know? But what’s been so cool about all the cameras that have come in, the film crew, it’s been this guy named Derek and he’s a one-man show. He’s got a GoPro drone and everything you saw… Great drone shots.

1:06:40 Yeah, everything you saw was from one guy. Really? He’s the sound, he’s the director, he’s everything. Great sound. Yeah, and so for him to be able to come in and say, look, this project is going to be to give themselves their own voice for them to be able to sit on camera and be able to tell about the change they’ve experienced over the last five years.

1:07:03 For me, it’s challenging but also it’s so rewarding to be able to say, okay, my first promise to them was to give them a voice. That was the book, was me giving them a voice. But now the documentary, they get to have their own voice. And so it comes with a lot of challenges, the corruption, even getting the equipment in. I’m not really looking forward to it next week.

1:07:25 Okay. Yeah, what is the Congo like? For people that don’t know, what’s it like to go in there? How dangerous, how safe, how far do you have to travel to get to the areas where the pygmies are, and then how safe is it out there? Yeah, it’s so crazy.

1:07:39 It’s one of the craziest places in the world. Do you know Anthony Bourdain? Yeah. When I was talking with him about Congo… He’s been everywhere.

1:07:47 Yeah. And he had just come back from the Congo, and he does jujitsu, and so I got to meet him in New York, and his wife, who’s awesome… And hensos, you met him. Yeah, hensos. And so we all start talking about Congo and what I was doing there, and he’s like, you’re crazy, because that’s the one place in the world I would never, ever go back to.

1:08:06 It was, I felt the most unsafe, unsecure, like the corruption was the worst of anywhere I’ve ever been. And I have to just agree with him and just say at least, asking an expert like that, who’s traveled everywhere, he says it’s, to him, the most dangerous place in the world. And so, yeah, it’s nuts, but… Is it like Liberia? Like that’s the thing I have in my mind of like dangerous…

1:08:29 There’s 38 different warring rebel groups in Congo. I’ve seen them, I’ve met people that have watched their own family members be killed, cooked, and eaten. Not just that, but a specific man I’m thinking of watched his nephew be killed. His nephew’s wife have a machine gun put to her head, she was kicked to her knees. And then the most evil thing I’ve ever heard, she was force fed her own husband.

1:08:55 Like force fed her own husband. So it’s just nuts, right? And so, but luckily, the rebel leader of the My My, he got killed, actually on the first water well celebration day, only 35 kilometers from where we were. Wow. And so, but that rebel group has since been disbanded and we saw him walking through the streets like 50 or 60 of them all tied up and the military all around him.

1:09:24 Seems like the rebel groups are getting farther and farther away from where we are. It’s scary. Do you fear for your life when you’re down there? First night my wife was ever there, it was a scary night. Did you ever think about not bringing her down there?

1:09:36 Yeah, I have. And I thought she would never go, but she wanted to see and be a part of it. And so she’s lived in the forest for three full months. And it was her first night ever camping. First night ever in the U.S.

1:09:51 Or anywhere in the world, first night ever camping, was sleeping on the dirt, having roaches actually crawl across her neck that night. She was freaking out under a twig and leaf hut. She got rained on before we got there, but a rebel group hit the village right next to us. And so we were waking up as the sun came, before the sun came up, packing our bags and headed across the river on its little bitty canoe. This little wooden canoe that was made for the pygmy is not a guy closer to 300 pounds instead of under 100 pounds.

1:10:20 And yeah, so we had to get across that river, which attaches to the Congo River, the deepest, most powerful river in the world. So the rapids are crazy and stuff like that. And we had to go to a kind of smoother spot, but the water’s just rushing, you know? So we got across the river, and that was how we basically felt safe, that, you know, the rebels are on this side, we’re on that side. So you carry a gun when you’re there?

1:10:47 No, I won’t carry a gun because once it’s illegal, I’ll end up in jail. They would try to put me in jail. They’re so corrupt, man. But at the same time, like, the officials are crazy corrupt, they’re super rich, because they take everything from the people. But the people are so awesome.

1:11:05 I mean, there’s some of the most evil people in the world there, but there’s some of the most loving and incredible and absolutely amazing people there. So it makes it worth it, having the relationships with them to say, you know what, this is worth fighting through because you’re worth fighting for, and you’ve given me such a rewarding life to live, something to dedicate my life to, and so I want to be dedicated back. And so getting your camera gear in this time is tricky.

1:11:38 Yeah, it’s going to be real tricky, but we’ve come to the conclusion that, I don’t know, it might be $10,000 worth of camera equipment, and if it makes it back to the States, okay. But if it doesn’t, okay. Well, we’re going to make sure that we have all of the footage saved on different hard drives and stuff to my socks and our bags in different places, you know, different copies of it, and if they decide to keep the cameras, at least we have the material. Okay, so that’s always a risk when you go in to shoot.

1:12:11 Always a risk. Okay, so you kind of want to get it all in one take. We went there, for the book, a photographer came for two weeks. We had three days to actually take photos in the forest because they put us on like a house lockdown, like Secret Service and everything. Why are you guys here?

1:12:29 Because where we were going was by that rebel group that got killed and everything. They thought we were going to investigate that, and so they took up 11 days of our 14 days to go out there and take photos. And they hold you somewhere? Yeah, they just held it. Well, they let us stay at our place in Boonia, which is outside of the forest at the university.

1:12:49 So we stayed at the university for 11 days while they interrogated us and asked questions and kept our gear and wanted thousands of dollars, but we try our best to never pay bribes. So I’ve paid a few, but not hundreds like I’ve asked for. Do they know who you are now? Do they know kind of why you’re there? They believe it helps.

1:13:11 It helped me not get arrested having one of my UFC top cards. I gave that to a military guy, and then he took me into a military camp, and I showed the guys some takedowns and some hand-to-hand stuff. I basically felt like I was in a rebel village, but basically most of the military there were rebels at one time. They just defected and came to the military, so I was basically at a rebel military camp teaching these guys some wrestling moves, but it kept me from getting arrested for some corrupt reason.

1:13:42 Then, yeah, but most of the people see me as a university professor, which I have no credentials for, but the university lets me use that because we’re teaching their school of community development three times a year. We’re teaching their students practical development, how to get your hands on the tools and actually put what you’re learning into action, take it from the theoretical to the practical. They get to come out and watch and be inspired. We get to see the top students that are graduating and bring them on to our team.

1:14:12 Okay, to build wells specifically. Yeah, to build wells, to also do the farming. We’ve also replanted 3,500 trees that are rare hardwoods that are being deforested. Basically, the land we have serves as almost like in American culture, like for the Native Americans, it’s almost like a reservation, like an Indian reservation, but this is for the Pygmies, so it’s a protected reservation, and on that we’re protecting not just the Pygmies, but also the trees that are there and everything else.

1:14:44 You just gave this TED Talk, and I started off the show by quoting from your TED Talk, and you said, in the lives of others, what great difference would you make if you knew you could… You have a bigger message here than just talking about the Pygmies and your amazing vision in Africa and what’s happened. Like you said, both of us got to a point in our lives where we were promised this dream, and it didn’t make us happy. Are you able to get this message to people, and how can you get it out more?

1:15:16 How do the Americans react to your message? Most people have been really encouraging, and they receive the message well, because really, so when I had malaria, and I had heard this Swahili proverb before, but I almost died of malaria. In the Congo. Yeah, and I lost, in five days, I lost 33 pounds, or like 15 kilos. I was vomiting red and green, which was blood and bile.

1:15:45 My veins were collapsing because I was so dehydrated, I had urinated for five full days, and I had something called black water fever, which people can Google. Basically, one in four, one in two people died once they get that, and so I was like hours away from being in a coma. Years ago? This was Thanksgiving 2013. And that’s because you were, you were months in the jungle there?

1:16:07 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it was November of 2013. Okay. And so I just got real sick real fast, and I almost died, but all of a sudden, this Swahili proverb came back to me, which was, if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.

1:16:25 What does that mean? Because you sent me that quote, and I was like, if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try to sleep in a closed room with a mosquito. So there, mosquitoes are everywhere, and you hear them buzzing around, and you’ll have to swat at them. They’re annoying. And so that little small thing is going to make a difference in your sleeping.

1:16:48 It’s going to keep you from sleeping. It’s going to keep you up until you kill the dang thing. And for me, you know, it goes further. One mosquito that gave me malaria set off a chain reaction to my body that almost took my life. You know, my bloodstream was 60 to 65, maybe up to 70% filled with parasites.

1:17:09 You know, a little mosquito took me out more than any guy, professional athlete, ever has been able to. You know, and so it just makes me think of, if a mosquito can make that big of a difference in the world, in my life, in my sleeping, in my health, you know, then all of us as human beings, we should really see the true difference we can make in the lives of others, whether it’s the life of a family member, the life of a friend, or just the life of our fellow man. You know, how can we make a difference?

1:17:42 Because we are so much bigger, smarter, better, than some stupid little bugger, you know. We’re so much greater than we know. And I think that that’s some of those great quotes, you know, what would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? And then others are, you know, I think it’s something to the effect of, you know, more people are, what people might really be afraid of isn’t of how insufficient or non-great we are or whatever, but how truly great we could be.

1:18:10 Like, that’s what people really fear, is how great we could each truly be. And so I just want people to tap into that, you know. How great can you actually be? And what difference could you really make? You know, whose life could you really change, even if it’s just one life at a time, or one life with your whole life?

1:18:30 If because we’ve lived the life of someone else is so much better or greater, we’re just a little bit, you know. They can breathe a little better because I breathed, you know, because I breathed at this one point in history. Now their life, they can breathe a little better. And that was worth living. That was worth doing, whatever it was, however you reached out to help.

1:18:56 So I hope people get that, you know. I know I’m talking all about going there, but I wrote one thing in the book that was, I think it was, love where you are, wherever you are. Yeah, and what does that mean? That to me means, you know, people are like, hey, help people here. Why do you have to go all the way over there?

1:19:16 And my whole thing is, we need love, hope, and light, and help, and every nook and cranny on planet Earth for every people, you know. And I just happen to focus on the pygmies who are, you know, the bottom of the barrel of the bottom billion on the planet. But no matter where you are, you know, if you’re able to watch this interview that we’re doing right now, then that means you’re probably not in the bottom of the barrel. But there’s people around you that could use the love, the impact that you can make.

1:19:50 So love where you are, wherever you are. And so that means, to me, if I’m in the States, I used to try to put something on it. I used to try to put some sort of equation to it where once a week, I try to help locally. Once a month, I try to help nationally. And once a year, at least, I try to help internationally.

1:20:12 That’s when you started off. When I first started off, that’s what I would say. Yeah, we’re my goals. Once a week locally, once a month nationally, and once a year internationally. That was my goal.

1:20:24 But since then, I focus more internationally. I’m not going to overlook somebody that’s here. There’s a homeless guy on the street, and there’s people that don’t want to help them ever. And I get it. I don’t want to necessarily give him money just so he goes and buys drugs.

1:20:42 But I know I was with some of the MMA community, some higher-ups in LA not too long ago. And everybody started walking across the street from this one homeless guy who was just going to ask everyone for money. He walked on the same side of the street, you know? And he looked at me and said, hey, do you have anything you can give me? And I honestly just had my debit card on me.

1:21:03 I didn’t have cash or change to give him. So I said, I can give you a hug. And I gave him a hug, and the dude had tears in his eyes afterwards. And so, I mean, that’s not giving much, you know? But sometimes we just need a human touch, human interaction, someone to look you in the eyes, someone to acknowledge the humanness inside of you.

1:21:24 And so, all of us can do that. Yeah, it’s so powerful. And I think when you say that when you were looking at your own problems, like under a microscope, you know, when you were about you and your dreams and your goals, and then when you started focusing on other people, it’s like you’re so busy that the last thing you have, it’s like looking at your problems in a telescope, you know? You’re not really worried about yourself. Your inner self is probably taking care of itself because you’re so fulfilled working on other people.

1:21:49 And so many people suffer from being hard on themselves, anxiety, depression, and then, you know, the drugs come along right along after that always. And so, you know, that whole kind of service piece, you know, it’s, you hear all the greats talk about it, you know, you see the Gandhi’s and the Mother Teresa’s, but it’s easy to be like, oh yeah, that was them, but it’s not me, and I’m not giving the homeless guy any money, and then I’m gonna go do my thing, I’m gonna go home and do my thing. And so often, I think people don’t see the real treasure there.

1:22:21 Which is, like you said, helping people. Yeah. Where, I asked you this, where is five years from now for you, you know? Yeah. Where, just roughly where you want to be, and what would you like to be telling me what’s happening when we sit down here in 2021?

1:22:36 Yeah. Well, if I, I guess I’d have to preface it with first, I know in the next year or two, because I took the five years off from MMA, the next year or two, I’m working back to become a legitimate fighter again to get the right training. I’m moving from Dallas to Denver, to Colorado Springs, so that way I can have the high altitude on my side, I can train at the Olympic Training Center again and get my wrestling back. So the next year or two, I really got a lot of work to put in before I can say this.

1:23:05 How much time will you spend in Congo versus the U.S. for that period? And the last few years, like, is it like a month there, or two months there, or 10 months there? It’s kind of been as much as I can, and so 2013 and 2014 was a full year span, like November to November. And then in 2015, it was a couple of trips for a month, and I’m about to go back for three weeks.

1:23:34 And so, you know, now that I’m fighting over the next five years, I’ll go back hopefully after every fight. I’ll fight two or three times a year, and I’ll go back for two, three, four weeks, and I’ll come back and I’ll just start training right again for the next fight. So that will be kind of my vacation time to go back, see my family, and dance in the forest, and just celebrate what’s being done there, and encourage them. Hopefully just, you know, if I’m the spark plug and they’re the engine, like, I come back in and either fire them up, or I see the tank starting to lower, I fill them back up with some fuel just by being there, by encouraging them, by bringing in others that are training them in practical stuff, water and health and sanitation and hygiene.

1:24:18 But with MMA, in five years, I hope I’m that Bellator Heavyweight champ at least. And if I haven’t defended it a couple of times, I’m at least about to fight for it, or about to have it, or… You want this thing now? I want it. I want it.

1:24:35 It’s a… Yeah. I’m driven to get it, and so… When did that come back to where you were like, okay, I really want this thing? Yeah.

1:24:43 It came back because, well, I don’t know, behind every good man is a great woman, something like that, so my wife and her best friend, you know, they saw it. See, I thought I would have to give up, or that they would… I was like, I don’t want them to ever think I turned my back on them. I would never trade fight for the forgotten to fight in a cage, for fighting in Congo for people to fight in a cage in the United States. Like, it’s just…

1:25:13 I can’t do it. Like, this is so much more important and of value, but to know that if I do this, it’s going to benefit them even more, potentially, you know, and it’s a limited window. If I don’t do it, am I going to look back and regret it and say, you know, I didn’t even see what was possible sitting here with you today? It’s possible because I’ve come back to MMA, and people have given me a spotlight, a microphone, to be able to talk about them. If I was just lost in the jungle, that wouldn’t have happened.

1:25:48 I wouldn’t be here. And so, it started to come back once I really understood, like, hey, this is a big opportunity. I started talking to some of my coaches, Kenny Monday, Olympic gold medalist, Trevor Whitman, who’s trained, you know, UFC and boxing champions, and for them to say, hey, you really did have it. Have the potential, the talent. You’re not too old.

1:26:11 You know, you started as a young buck. Now you’re 28, you know. You got time on your side. So it’s like, okay, let’s see how far I can take this thing. And if it’s basically nowhere in the next five years, my MMA career, I’ll probably just go get lost in the jungle.

1:26:30 But if I have truly become like a champion in the sport, where I’ve become one of those top guys, then it will have given me a long-term platform to be able to respect that. People respect sports. And so if I have some sort of accomplishment there, that lets me then use that platform to tell them about what’s really important. Yeah. There’s that expression, you know, if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s there to hear it, did it fall?

1:27:00 Maybe if it fell in the Congo, I don’t know, did it fall? And I’m wondering if you have advice to other people out there that are in charities or want to start movements, but to think, oh, doing the media is this, is this, or doing this is wrong. But you’ve had real experience. I mean, IndieGoGo bought the land. The film is done on the crowd.

1:27:20 Kickstarter. Kickstarter, yeah. So it’s like, you’re out there on Rogan. You’re coming here doing media. I mean, you can’t just pray for these things to happen.

1:27:28 You have to make them happen, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this is just my personal faith, but pray like it’s all up to God, but work like it’s all up to me. And so yeah, you got to move and shake and you got to get out there.

1:27:45 You got to do all this. You’ve got to put in so much time and effort and work. And this is the thing, though, that as you do that, you’re going to see all these little benchmarks or mile markers that like, hey, I’m on the right track and you’re going to see yourself achieving or see yourself making a difference. I mean, I guess I could point back to this. The first water well celebration, local officials and governmental officials came out there and they put their stamp on it saying it was the first ever clean water source among the Mobutepigne people.

1:28:21 First ever in history. And I thought they were crashing our party, but they were actually there to celebrate with us. And then the celebration just went on and on and on and on. And I’ve been to the World Series. I’ve been to the Super Bowl.

1:28:35 I’ve been to the NBA Finals. I’ve been to the biggest boxing Pacquiao fights and biggest UFC fights. And I’ve been in the arena and experienced that. There’s nothing that compares to that water well celebration of less than a thousand people. The sounds of joy coming out of their mouths or out of their hearts.

1:28:57 Like that to me was just like, oh my gosh. Like we are on the right track. And from that it was a springboard to how can we reproduce this? How can we replicate this? How can we do this over and over and over?

1:29:11 How can this thing build and spread? And so for someone wanting to make a difference, like don’t hold yourself back. Because I did. I held myself back for a couple of years thinking the problem is too big and I’m too small. But now in the Congo.

1:29:26 Having the kiddo die in my hands, I was like, what am I going to do about it? I couldn’t forget about it. But I didn’t know if I could truly do something. But I knew that I had to try. And then once you get that, I know I have to try something.

1:29:43 Even if you don’t have the something. You just know I have to try. And if you go with that, you follow that, you follow that heart that just, you know, the direction it’s taken you. I think amazing things can happen that you never believed or thought could happen from two water wells to 35, from 300 acres to this year going to be 3,000. It’s nuts.

1:30:06 I can’t take credit for it because our team in Congo has put in so much hard work around the clock. It’s their job. And they’re happy to do it. They’re providing for the wives and their kids by helping save the lives of their people. It’s countrymen helping countrymen.

1:30:25 So smart the way you’ve thought about that and the way that it’s come about. And yeah, you’re right. That’s the only way it can replicate itself. And like you said, you can’t, you know, break a training cramp to come down there and save the world. And it might feel good from an ego standpoint, but if the true mission is there, then you know it has to be.

1:30:42 I’d love to come to one of those well parties. That’s not crazy. Oh, yeah. I wish you were coming with me on Thursday. You never know, right?

1:30:49 Yeah. Justin, we always ask everyone here a question at the end. You probably know this is coming. And I’m going to ask you, because it’s interesting to see what you have to say. But, you know, knowing what you know now, if you could bring up the 20-year-old Justin and give that man a bit of advice, I guess you would have been not yet in the house, in the tough house, but, you know, riding a pretty successful career in fighting.

1:31:10 What advice would you give him? What would you tell him, you know, to do or not to do? Yeah, I think I would. I think I would tell him that, bro, if you just keep living for yourself, you’re going to crash and burn. Like, life’s not about us.

1:31:28 And that if you, and I sign my, every time I sign my book for someone, I’ll put their name and then right underneath it, I say, live to love. Love to live. And so, but whenever we get to the first love, it’s live to love. It’s all caps and underlined and circled sometimes. Then you’ll love to live, because we’re all after the pursuit of happiness or I want to love my life.

1:31:55 And a lot of times we do that through materialistic things or a certain salary or a bigger house or the nicer car or the better looking wife instead of the old one or whatever. And it’s like, no, it’s like, if you just live to love, that’s what I’ve learned. And I would tell myself at 20 years old, just live to love, bro, and then you’ll love to live. I guess that would be my advice. Super powerful.

1:32:22 Best advice you’ve ever received. What would that be? Could be something you heard in the Congo. Could be something you heard from one of your mentors on the way coming out. Yeah, I think it would have to do with, so I call him Papa Wai.

1:32:38 He’s a father figure to me in the Congo. And he told me African, Swahili, Congolese proverb and it’s just what’s been the foundation of everything we’ve done. And it’s, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And so that’s kind of my heart is like, I always want to be, I want to take action, but I want to include people because I know that if I want to go fast, I’m just going to do it by myself.

1:33:14 But if I want it to actually go farther, then I’m going to go together with some people. So when he told me that, you know, like, hey, this thing’s not dependent on you. Like, it’s going to be a collaborative effort to know that by partnering with people. Yeah, you put yourself at risk that way because people hurt people and those are like the wounds that hurt the most. Probably emotional wounds more than physical wounds, right?

1:33:44 But yeah, if you want to go far, go together. Go together. I just saw the boxer, Chris Eubank, you know, tweet that in the last couple of days and he’s been a guest here and he’s going to be in an event of ours on Saturday and he probably got there via you tweeting it and someone else repeating it or it’s something he’s talked about for a long time. But that’s a super powerful message, you know. And I’m going to be thinking about this a lot over the next couple of days just in general because, you know, I think to a certain extent it’s kind of how we got here because there’s so many people that are on this journey with us but I always want to make sure that I get back and focus on it, you know.

1:34:21 And I used to always have people stop me on the streets saying they saw this, they saw that and I’m always thinking, but they wouldn’t stop some guy on a BBC show that interviews people. I mean, they’re stopping maybe because they feel like they’re part of it, you know. Such a huge lesson. Justin Ren, it’s been a pleasure having you here. Thank you.

1:34:39 I can’t wait to see you fight Kimbo Slice. Like you said, it’s a win-win-win-win for everybody, a great storyline. I think more and more people are going to see what you do. And again, the water’s a metaphor and a tool to get to what you want to do and I think you helping the people, the Pygmy people in Africa is also just a metaphor for the rest of us, you know, looking to other people. And for me, my life got exponentially better when I started making it not about me.

1:35:08 So it’s something I constantly try to remind myself. Yeah. So thanks for coming. Well, thank you. I’ve really enjoyed this time and thank you for sharing your platform with me.

1:35:18 You’re helping me fulfill that first promise of giving them a voice. So I’m just so thankful to have been here for this time. Awesome. Our pleasure. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey.

1:35:31 Yeah. I wish you well in the Congo. Can’t wait to see your film. Please, we’ll tweet out all the links so people can participate in crowdfunding platforms and everything. And best with your training, man.

1:35:40 I love the fact that you’re back with a vengeance. Yeah. A huge MMA fan. Sweet. So looking forward to seeing you there in Bellator and everything else.

1:35:47 All right? Yeah. Thank you, bro. All right. I appreciate it.

1:35:52 Thanks. Thank you.