This is the place to find information on what’s gong on with the film – from grants we’ve won, to the status of the basketball court, to Ken’s life back in the states and his planned return to Nsalamanga high school where we shot the film.

For those of you who are new to the Zulu Hoops project, here is a short, sweet synopsis: Director/Producer Kristin Pichaske and Co-Producer John Neely arrived in South Africa in early 2004 to make a film about a topic that, for various reasons, didn’t happen. Suffice it to say that in Africa, its best to go with the flow because events on the ground are seldom what you expect to find – especially when you are working in a younthful, vibrant…and unpredictable country like South Africa. So when we relized that our original topic just wasn’t going to fly – and after much agonizing – we decided to go in search of another story…

After crossing the country, visiting friends in various locales from Transkei to Joburg, we landed in a remote corner of South Africa known as Northern Maputaland, aka Northern Zululand, aka Far Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal (Zululand is the name of the “tribal homeland” set up during the Apartheid era). There we were met by an American friend, Ken Mukai, who had regaled us with some amazing stories while sipping wine at a Cape Town braai. He insisted that we absolutely had to visit because Endlondlweni – the distant outpost of where he was teaching science on a Fulbright – was nothing like Cape Town.

Indeed, Endlondlweni was nothing like Cape Town. And our 2 day visit turned into a week long shoot, which then turned into a complete relocation as we followed the progress of Ken’s quest to build a basketball court and teach his Zulu students to play a sport they had never before seen.

More on the Zulu Hoops story to come – plus fundraising news, a Cape Town blackout that frieed our harddrive, and more…

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