A Note to Potential Publishers

A note to potential publishers

Back in 2012, we left Canada and moved to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we lived and worked for almost three years on a forest conservation project in a remote part of the country known as Lac Mai-Ndombe (Black Water Lake).

We started Our Congo Adventures as a way to share our experiences with friends and family back home.  Over the course of our time in Congo, it grew into a collection of stories and photographs documenting a remarkable chapter of our lives: encounters with wildlife, life in rural Congo, travel through the forest, cultural experiences, unexpected adventures, and the people who made our time there so memorable.

More than ten years later, we returned to the stories and found ourselves immersed in those experiences all over again.  The photographs brought back the places, people, and moments, while the stories reminded us just how unusual that chapter of our lives really was.  We began sharing them again with friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances, who almost universally encouraged us to publish the stories “for real.”

This book contains a small selection of six stories from more than two dozen written between 2013 and 2015. It is intended as a sample of what could become a larger coffee-table book combining photography, personal storytelling, travel, wildlife, and conservation to give readers a glimpse into a part of the world few people have the opportunity to experience firsthand.

The following stories are presented as they were originally written during our time in the DRC.  Several more stories have already been written and can easily be shared.

We hope this sample might spark an interest in working with us to transform these previously unpublished stories from an old blog into a professionally produced and distributed book, while preserving the authenticity, voice, and character of the original writing.

We hope they give you a sense of the adventure and leave you wanting to read more.

Tristan & Jennifer