Fred Quillin

So the director of the FDNC, Justin Silbaugh, is American and had some friends come in for a visit recently from San Fransisco and L.A. I had heard of how one of them works for Sony and does motion graphics for movies such as the Spiderman movies and I was excited to talk to whoever that guy was. So when I meet them that particular guy is staring at me kind of mouth-gaping and interrupts what I’m saying right away and says, “I’ve read about you!” Then he turns to his friend and says, “He’s the guy I was talking to you about! Aren’t you that guy who’s kind of rambling around Africa teaching underprivileged kids computer graphics software and stuff???” He said a friend of his sent him the article that David Stairs wrote about me on this very website and he thought it was so great. He said he literally thought of trying to actually find me and the girl next to him said, “In the continent of Africa, yeah right,” and he muttered, “This is a really staggering experience…”

He said he really wants to do with his life what I’m doing here and that that article was really inspiring to him. He later told me that he’s working in L.A. doing intros for “shitty movies like Spiderman.” He said the money and benefits are great but he has no sense of worth in his life, like he’s wasting it on such a selfish means. He said his mother was a doctor and his father does something else helping people and he got this gig and started to look around realizing it’s not what he had ever expected or wanted his life to be. I started telling him about the book Be Here Now, how the author was kind of in a similar situation at the beginning of his journey to happiness. Anyway, he as excited to talk about the industry and life before he left as I was.

Don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, that’s just what happened in such ridiculous odds. It’s especially crazy because as David Stairs was driving me to this village his exact words as the car bounced up the huge hilly dirt potholes were, “Do you realize how far into Africa you are??? You’re not on the coast or anything, you are DEEP into Africa. Someone couldn’t find you if they tried. This is really like what Dr. Livingston was trying to achieve.”