Dean Participates in the Dian Fossey Project

Dean’s seven months at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International left him with new insights, experiences and friends, which include about 700 mountain gorillas.

  What is the Dian Fossey Project?

  “Do you think it will rain today?”

I asked this question of Felix Ndagijimana, a Rwandan who serves as the deputy director at the Karisoke Research Center. I already know the answer, given the fact we are hiking through a rain forest. A wager is made that it won’t rain before we leave the forest.

“How do you define rain?” Felix asks with a smile as a drop of water falls from the sky.

Determined not to make it too easy, I reply, “If you have to put on a jacket to stay dry, it’s rain.” This playful game is repeated each time Felix and I enter the Volcanoes National Park, home to approximately 300 mountain gorillas in Rwanda.

Read more from Dean's article published in the Fremont Tribune.

  Dean Returns to Africa to Help Bisate School of Rwanda

Classroom by classroom, young school children walked single file across the grass-covered playground as they followed their teacher and schoolmaster to the door of a vacant room. Some wore shoes; others were shoeless with dirty bare feet, toughened by the cold wet environment in which they live.

All had shaved heads. The only way to really distinguish who was whom was by the color of the school uniforms — tan for boys, blue for girls.

Approximately two months before this early Thursday morning, I had been on a photo project at the Bisate village school for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. I was covering a piece of their education outreach. The school has 1,700 students, and there is no electricity or no running water — just committed teachers, students and parents.

Read more from Dean's article published in the Fremont Tribune.

  Dean Documents Work Done at Reasearch Center

It was a perfect match.

A research center in the middle of Africa studying mountain gorillas needed someone with journalistic experiences in writing and photography. Fremont resident Dean Jacobs needed another challenge and a way to use as many of the skills that he’s acquired over the years and over his travels.

Jacobs recently returned home from spending 7 1⁄2 months based in Rwanda working for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, documenting various activities in words and photographs.

He said he got the job by chance...

Read more from the Fremont Tribune.

  Mountain Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Share in Dean's private tour of the Congo gorillas.