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Aug. 24, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:09:33
Joe Rogan Experience #687 - Justin Wren
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28:13
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justin wren
01:36:50
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
We're live.
What's with the funky bag, fella?
Look at that.
Beautiful little hippie case you got going on there.
You got the bandana rocking.
The pygmy has returned.
When did you become the big pygmy and not the viking?
justin wren
Yeah, I think that was just something that kind of naturally changed a couple of weeks ago.
joe rogan
Oh, a couple weeks ago?
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
So you've returned, everybody.
Justin Wren.
You're going to be fighting for Bellator now.
justin wren
Yeah, it's Bellator.
joe rogan
Pull this sucker right up to you.
justin wren
Absolutely.
It's Bellator 141, and yeah, it's Friday night, August 28th.
We'll be on Spike.
joe rogan
So you talked about doing this when you were here before, and you said, you know, it was a good way to raise awareness for your cause, Fight for the Vergotten.
I got the t-shirt on right now.
Is it fightforthevergotten.org?
justin wren
Fightforthevergotten.org right now, yeah.
And fightforthevergotten.com will be changed in a matter of a day or two.
joe rogan
So you decided to make a comeback just to try to raise awareness and help these pygmies.
justin wren
That's the number one motivation for sure.
Second would be, man, I love the sport.
I love the sport.
Just like you.
But, yeah, I think that's a great opportunity to give my family a voice.
joe rogan
And how long has it been since you fought?
justin wren
It's been five years, bro.
unidentified
Wow!
justin wren
Five years, two months.
joe rogan
How old are you now?
justin wren
I'm 28. You're still a youngin'.
Damn, man.
I think I've still got at least seven years.
joe rogan
Yeah, for sure.
Especially heavyweights.
Heavyweights.
I watched some videos of you training, too, man.
You're looking good, dude, for five years off.
That's crazy.
unidentified
Yeah, thanks.
justin wren
Yeah, I guess in the forest it wasn't too much of a fatty diet like here in the States.
joe rogan
Well, it's not just that.
Like, you didn't take any beatings.
You didn't, you know, no gym wars, no stress on your joints, all that.
justin wren
I got to heal up a lot on the battle wound kind of things.
I mean, I went through a lot of sickness and stuff.
But besides that, like, yeah, fighting-wise, I healed up from a lot of injuries.
joe rogan
Imagine if, like, you have a malaria actually gives you endurance or something crazy.
justin wren
That'd be awesome.
I'd go get it again.
joe rogan
You know, because they say that, like, certain things are actually good for injuries, like bee stings, like, are good for arthritis.
justin wren
I didn't know that.
joe rogan
In some strange way, yeah.
Yeah, like, they put bee stings on people that have certain types of arthritis and it actually helps relieve them.
Imagine if people found out that, like, malaria, because you were saying you were, like, basically on death's door.
justin wren
Yeah, I was about to die, for sure.
One thing that's crazy, say insect bites, there's a way that they do sutures or stitches in the Congo with these crazy ants.
And they're these army ants or soldier ants that literally they pierce your skin.
And so they'll just take it and let it bite a wound and then they pull the body off.
And so they leave the head, leave the mandibles or the jaw that literally close your wound that way.
unidentified
What?
justin wren
I've been bit by them, man.
They're terrible.
joe rogan
That's fucking crazy.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
So you just walk around with a bunch of heads on a cut.
justin wren
Right.
Absolutely.
joe rogan
Does it work?
justin wren
It works.
It works for sure.
So it's like a staple.
Yeah, it's like a staple.
Yeah, it'd be just like getting staples, I guess.
joe rogan
Necessity, the mother of invention.
I don't know if you know this, but this is a crazy malaria fact you could throw around.
Malaria has killed half of the people that have ever died ever in the world.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
That's crazy.
That's nuts.
Had no idea.
But I believe it.
Absolutely believe it because it's terrible.
I've known people that have thought of it.
joe rogan
Look at that picture.
justin wren
Yeah, there you go, bro.
joe rogan
That's fucking nuts.
That is nuts.
Wow, those guys have some really long...
We're looking at a photo of the army ants being used to suture a wound.
justin wren
Yeah, and those ones have these crazy long and slender ones, but the ones in Congo, they have these thick, just nuts.
So, yeah, look right there.
joe rogan
Look at that one up top.
That's crazy.
justin wren
Is that fake?
joe rogan
That looks fake as fuck.
But...
That's just stitches.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's, well, necessity, right?
I mean, you gotta figure out a way to close things up.
There's no crazy glue in the Congo, right?
justin wren
No, no.
They use other kinds of stuff that's real sticky sap to kind of mend things together.
From trees, they also use vines to tie up a bunch of stuff.
Like soccer balls, they'll use a t-shirt, old t-shirt, a rag, and then they just use these vines and tie them so tightly that it becomes a perfectly round ball.
joe rogan
Wow.
justin wren
Not perfectly round, but round enough to kick around.
joe rogan
Well, that's one of the things about soccer that people find appealing is that it's not that hard to create a ball, and all you need is just flat ground.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, that's why it's such a good sport for people that don't have money.
justin wren
Yeah, they even play with half...
Flattened balls that they kick around because they still use it.
joe rogan
Yeah, everybody's using the same ball.
I guess it's not as good.
justin wren
Yeah, they get beaten up and popped and everything.
Because they sell the really cheap soccer balls anyways.
They're only going to last a couple weeks.
joe rogan
Now, when you say the Congo, the Congo itself is really huge, right?
I mean, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think it's as wide as the United States of America.
justin wren
Yeah, I think it might be like three quarters of the continental United States.
Something like that.
It's the 10th largest country in the world, I believe.
And so it's massive.
It's only got about 74 million people, but I think 85% of those people, or maybe 80-85% live on less than a dollar a day.
Yeah, it's the flip-flops between the poorest country in the world and second poorest, but it is the most underdeveloped country, so...
Least amount of roads, clean water, education, medical, like it's just the most underdeveloped.
Like when I go to Uganda, I kind of get the feeling of whenever I come back from Africa to the United States and how it's just like, wow, this is really developed compared to there.
When I go from Congo to Uganda, I feel like, wow, Uganda's really developed.
They got 3D movies, a yogurt land.
They have a KFC. Actually, they have like four or five KFCs now.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
How racist.
No, I... First thing that gets there, KFC. What's next?
Watermelons?
Assholes.
unidentified
They have, what is it?
justin wren
Oh, it's kind of fine dining at KFC. KFC is?
Yeah, they have a waiter.
joe rogan
Really?
justin wren
Yeah, it's real nice.
You've got a charging station for your smartphone in Uganda.
joe rogan
Really?
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
KFC's pretty goddamn delicious.
I know it's supposedly not good for you, but I'll tell you what, man.
I indulge in KFC every couple months.
I'll buy some KFC, and I either eat it or I wait till it gets cold, and I eat it with hot sauce.
KFC with some habanero hot sauce, get some El Yucateca, the real Mexican shit that you gotta go to those funky grocery stores to buy, or online.
justin wren
Some good stuff.
joe rogan
Oh, dude.
It's just not good for you, apparently.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
We're talking about how they're putting sucralose in Diet Pepsi.
You need to figure out a way to make Kentucky Fried Chicken good for you.
justin wren
Yeah, that'd be great.
That's the worst thing about all the tasty food is it's bad for you.
joe rogan
Exactly.
justin wren
It's the opposite.
joe rogan
Fuck, man.
What's up with that?
This is first world problems, like literally.
If anybody can talk about first world problems, it's you.
I mean, a guy who goes from being a reality star on The Ultimate Fighter, fighting in the UFC, and then all of a sudden you're living in the Congo.
For folks who don't know Justin's story, Justin's been on the podcast a couple times, and the story is compelling, it's crazy, it's heartwarming.
It's an amazing tale of a guy, you, who goes to the Congo and falls in love with these people that don't have a voice.
And you've done incredible things.
And because of the money that was raised, because your show's on here, there's the Fight for the Forgotten website.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
How many wells have you created now?
justin wren
We just celebrated, as of yesterday, our 25th water well.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
And what's so great about that to me is I was there for the first 13 water wells.
And now we've built...
So what I love, and that website that was up, was we're partnered with Water4.
Now it's water4.org, so the number four.
But man, it's kind of like we set up an exit strategy.
This is a lifelong goal for me, and I'll be going back wholeheartedly, everything else.
But our goal is to empower the locals to be able to do it themselves.
I was there for the first 13 water wells.
People from the Director of Implementation of Water Fork come in and teach our guys hydrology, geology, all the different ins and outs of how to drill a well and protect it and all the sanitation.
But we're investing in the locals so that they can be the answer to their own problem, if that makes sense.
And that way, now we have 17 full-time employees.
joe rogan
Wow.
justin wren
Yeah.
And we have two well drilling teams.
There's 14 guys on that.
And then when they go out into a community, we invite the community into the project.
We want them to feel a part of it.
There's a lot of organizations out there, and I'm not trying to talk bad about them, but they'll go in with a million-dollar drilling rig and Westerners that are water engineers, and that's great.
But they'll go into a community and kind of say, you know, get back.
We're here to do this for you because you can't do it for yourself.
And then the parts are so expensive, they're not going to be able to repair it when it breaks.
And there's a good chance, like, I think, two and three of those expensive ones, or at least, no, one-third of them, don't operate after a year of drilling it.
And so what we want to do is go in there, teach the locals how to do it themselves, create a local economy for it and stimulate that, give people jobs, and then let the community feel a part of it.
So we look for day laborers in the communities we go to and give them a job while we're there.
Invite them in on the process, teach them some of it.
We've acquired some of those guys that are just big, strong, love helping people.
Now they're part of our team.
But the core of our team graduated from university in degrees of community development.
So that's what we want to do we want to go in there empower the locals and yeah, I'm a big part of it and but what I want to do is be able to fan the flames and say you can do it because a lot of international aid Tells the locals that they can't do it for themselves Maybe maybe they don't say that but it's kind of the way they go about attacking the problem and you got to go about it in a way that That kind of creates dignity for the locals instead of kind of robs them of dignity
where they feel like they can't help themselves.
joe rogan
That's a great way of approaching it.
I'm really, I'm so happy you're doing that.
I love that.
I love that you're trying to help these people become a part of this solution, you know, instead of like someone solving it for them.
Now, when you're involved in digging these wells, and you're saying these expensive wells break, or the machines, like the pumps, how many parts are involved?
Is it like a lot of stuff?
Is there different ways to do it?
justin wren
It's a lot.
It depends on how deep it is.
Yeah, there are multiple ways of drilling a well.
The way we go about it is, I would say, more simple but harder, a lot harder labor-intensive.
But it's just as safe.
Well, for instance, the deep wells, those are great.
And honestly, in a place like Ethiopia or places where the water tables are super deep, you're going to need those.
So those are absolutely part of the solution.
We need those water engineers.
We need those people doing that.
But whenever, say, in the Congo, it's a place that is Dangerous.
There's lots of rebel groups, lots of instability.
They're not going to drive a million dollar or half a million dollar drilling rig deep into the forest over these bridges that are notorious for collapsing and taking and washing away big lorries or 18-wheelers.
They're not going to drive them across there.
They can't get on the roads that we go on because they're heavy, they're dense, the parts break on the travel just out to the villages.
And then once you get there, like going into the Pygmy Villages where we are, sometimes it's taken up to two days, I think, to get our equipment into the village after we traveled there because we have to hike it all in.
And we can hike an hour off the nearest road to the village.
We can hike three hours from the nearest road to the village.
And so we're hiking in over a ton.
So when I'm saying this is hard, like our guys are, I think they're just as much fighters or more than I am because they're gritting down, they're hauling this stuff in from the augers.
The way we do it is we use a tripod and we use augers and ropes and pulleys and we use these chisels that go down and they're single prong, triple prong.
And so we have all these tools we can use for each obstacle that we're going to hit as we go down in different geological layers.
joe rogan
This is incredible.
So you're walking three hours with a ton of equipment.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Walking.
justin wren
Like anywhere from gravel to bags of cement that are 100 pounds to the rock breaker that can be 40 pounds, another one that's 80 pounds, and another one that's like 130 pounds.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
justin wren
Yeah, and we're taking in all the PVC pipes and the galvanized pipes.
Yeah, everything that you can think of, sand, bricks, and we have to hike all that in from the roadside into the village.
So it can take two days of going back and forth to the truck if we're walking that long with all the supplies.
joe rogan
Two to three days of just walking with giant augers and steel pipes and sandbags.
justin wren
Normally it's like a day.
We get there and we take all our stuff.
But yeah, it's taken a long time before because, yeah, it's a fight to even get there to start the work.
And then once we dig, man, that's the biggest fight.
joe rogan
Yeah, you must be exhausted by the time you even get there.
unidentified
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
You're hiking with all this weight.
justin wren
Wow.
And then once we start drilling, our average well in other parts of the world where the obstacles aren't as big, they can bust out a well in a week, 10 days.
But where we are, we average 10 to 16 days per water well.
And so our guys are out there and living with the pygmies.
That's something that we selected every member of our team Based on, can they survive in the forest?
And more than that, can they love my pygmy family?
Because that's important because other people around there, a lot of them don't love them, hate them, or discriminate.
So we want to find people that are passionate about the people, passionate about the water crisis.
And then that way, yeah, we can then teach them and put the tools in their hands and invest in them.
And so that's what the last four years has been for me, really investing in good people, people that believe in it.
And then from there, we can fan the flames for them.
joe rogan
Is it perplexing for you to have discovered this place and, you know, to being alive in the 21st century with all the modern communication and all that and to know that these people are out there and no one has tried to do this before and that you're stumbling across these giant groups of people that don't have anyone looking out for them?
justin wren
Yeah, yeah, it's nuts.
I mean, I would say that I'm not the only guy that's ever tried to help them, but I would say that maybe we're trying to take an approach, and that's what's so awesome about the university that I'm partnered with.
They've been working with the Pygmies for years and years.
The guy that's leading the way, the Dean of the School of Community Development, he's been doing it since the year I was born.
And then he started with the university there for the last 10 years.
So I went to them to say like, hey, how can we do this in a strategic way that the impact will last?
It'll keep going on and on and on instead of a lot of...
I don't know if it's American culture or what, but it's so fast, you know, and we want the quick fix.
And the quick fix a lot of times isn't the best route.
The results can just be a temporary one where we have a...
I call it the show up, blow up, and blow out technique.
We show up, we do the show, we take the pictures, and then we leave and we never come back.
And so what we want to do is be opposite.
We want to build relationships, get in touch.
We want to be like a family with them and then show them that, hey, we're not just here for land because that's what we started with first.
We got them 2,470 acres of land.
That's 10 square kilometers in the forest.
Then we did the water, and now we're doing food.
joe rogan
You got them, meaning you purchased it for them or had a purchase for them?
justin wren
Right.
We petitioned, lobbied, and basically said, yeah, we went to battle saying, I mean in a peaceful way, but said, these people are the first people of Congo.
Not just that.
A lot of people say they're the first people of Africa.
They're one of the oldest people groups.
They're so peaceful.
They're so loving.
joe rogan
Well, if that's true, then that's the origins of humanity.
I was just reading this Bill Nye thing about humans.
It was just some quote that he had said about the human race.
It's been proven now that we are literally all one race and the only thing that's different is our exposure to ultraviolet light and different environments have changed the way we look and how our bodies react to the environment.
But if that's the case...
justin wren
I didn't know that, but I love that standard effect.
joe rogan
Well, we know that all people, as far as we know today, you know, the knowledge kind of grows and changes over the years, but we know today that all human beings, as far as we know, came from Africa.
So if that's the case, these people you're dealing with could very well be the oldest humans in the world.
And it kind of makes sense if you really think about it.
I mean, that's where the primates evolved and came down from the trees and started experimenting and moving along and trying different environments and spreading out throughout the land.
It's pretty nuts.
You're like at the cradle of life.
It's really a bizarre place.
justin wren
Yeah.
All I know is, man, the culture there, their hearts, they're such sweet people.
And I don't use that word a whole lot, but they're just...
They're sweet as can be.
And so whenever we went in with my team, basically it was like local-led.
I mean, I was in the picture, but kind of playing behind the scenes when it came to the negotiating.
And they went in there, and it was the dean of the School of Community Development.
It was my guy that's the director of Fight for the Forgotten in Congo.
And they said, these are the first people of Congo.
Why is it that they have zero land of their own?
Because shouldn't they have some land to call their own?
And we know that looking through history and whether it was you or whether it was your grandfather, we stole this land from them.
We stole it.
They have none of their own.
And don't they have a right to have some land?
And so that's kind of where, yeah, we just lobbied on their behalf and then said, so if I bought the land in Fight for the Forgotten, if we would have bought it in our name, we would have gotten a five-year certificate and we would have had to renew things and fees and everything every five years.
If we bought it in the name of the university there that we partner with, It would have been a 25-year certificate, but then at the end of the 25 years, we'd have to pay the same price that we purchased it for 25 years earlier.
Would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars every 25 years, maybe more.
And then we were thinking, it's kind of cool.
In Africa, I would say a lot of the countries, at least, my understanding is that it was the colonialists or colonists or however you say that, they were the ones that set up the boundaries of the countries.
It wasn't the tribes.
And so, like say Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi, they probably wouldn't have put their country together right there because they've had a long history of disputes with each other.
So they wouldn't be in the same country.
They would have been two different countries.
Same thing in Congo, there's over 200 tribes.
So, in Congo, what's very, I don't know, here we're all, America, America Pride, or Texas, and things like that, but in Congo, it's about what tribe you're from.
And so, in a lot of parts of Africa, they're really proud about their tribe.
And so, on the government level, the strongest thing in court was buying the land in the name of a tribe, because that's what they respect, that's what they value, and yet nobody was petitioned.
Petitioning and lobbying on behalf of the Pygmies.
So that's what we wanted to do.
We wanted to go in and say these people deserve some land.
What we did was buy it from the people that originally stole it from them, whether it was them or their grandfather.
And so that benefited the people that were basically oppressing them financially.
And we gave them years and years worth of salary.
To work with us.
And then on both sides, we said, so they benefited financially and the pygmies benefited by having their own land.
You can't give them a water well without them owning the land that they're on.
And so then we said, how can we give you both water?
That's what the next step is.
And the next step after that is food.
How can we start a farming project?
Teach the pygmies how to farm correctly or farm really for the first time.
A lot of them worked for their former masters and stuff like that.
But then with the makpala, which means non-pygmies, we're like, how can we teach you better farming practices?
You need to plant your seeds deeper.
You need to put your seeds farther apart because they're not producing fruit because the corn is only half of a cob instead of a full cob because your plants are basically choking themselves out.
So we have three agriculturalists.
We're interning right now.
They've already done a great job, but we're wanting to expand from three villages to ten villages.
joe rogan
It's just an immense sacrifice that you've done, that you've taken on, and it's probably quite difficult to find people that have the same kind of passion for it that you have.
Do you find that to be the case?
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
Your passion has got to be infectious.
I mean, a lot of people, I'm sure, like I have been, moved by it.
justin wren
Thank you.
joe rogan
But it's got to be hard to get people to go to the Congo, though, dude.
justin wren
Yeah.
Well, that's the reason we invest in the locals.
They're there.
They're there in Congo.
The people we selected to solve the water crisis, they know what it's like to go without clean water.
So if they can be the answer to that, they're going to be the ones even more passionate about it than me.
joe rogan
Also, it's the old adage, teach a man to fish.
Give a man a fish and just one fish.
That's it.
You're teaching these people.
Now, we got off the subject of the wells.
The tripod and the auger.
So, what kind of a machine is involved in digging this thing?
justin wren
It's been developed by Water 4 and they're awesome.
An actual machine that is small enough that we can carry it into the villages.
joe rogan
How much does it weigh?
justin wren
Maybe I shouldn't quote myself on this, but I think it's around 150, 150, 200. So you guys have to carry that for hours.
You could.
Some of the land is only like a 30-minute hike off the nearest quote-unquote road.
That's just dirt and clay and silt and big boulders.
But yeah, most of them are 30 minutes an hour, two hours, one's even three hours off the nearest road.
So yeah, we got to hike that stuff all in.
But I would say that the manual drilling method, which has been approved by UNICEF and USAID and all these other major organizations that say it can be just as clean, just as safe as the deep water wells as long as we do it to a high standard and keep a high integrity when we do it.
Which means we backfill it with a clay sanitary seal.
We put a cement plug on there so that way there's no sort of bacteria or anything else that can get down into our well.
We gotta protect the water table.
And so we do that every single time to a high standard.
But yeah, so whenever we're doing it, the machine is us.
The manual drilling method, we have wrenches and those augers.
And so those augers would look kind of like a folder.
joe rogan
Like an ice auger?
justin wren
Yeah, very similar.
It would be almost like a coffee can with two claws on the bottom of it.
And at the top, it's got a stem that attaches to a drilling stem.
And then at the top, I mean, whenever you're starting from the first...
down the first two or three feet, like you can see the auger and you just...
joe rogan
So it's totally by hand.
justin wren
You're just twisting.
Yeah, you just twist.
Almost like a pummel.
joe rogan
Good for the forearms.
justin wren
Oh, yeah, man.
Dude, my forearms and my...
Well, my right bicep over here and my left tricep over here.
joe rogan
You've got to switch it up, dude.
justin wren
I know.
We need to have the augers changing, but as of now, it's just the same way.
But yeah, so it's us just drilling, and we can go up to 150 feet deep in the ground.
And so when we're doing that, it's brutal.
joe rogan
I think the deepest we've gone is like 70. So when you're doing 70 feet, what kind of a pipe do you have to keep attaching a longer and longer pipe to it?
justin wren
Six-meter, 20-foot-long segments of this drilling stem.
It's a square tube that's really thick, really strong, really heavy.
And then we attach that.
At the bottom we have a rope that's secured to it so we can crank it up.
So we crank it up on the way up, but we drill down.
joe rogan
So you're doing it all by hand.
You get to a certain distance, depth rather, and then you put another segment on and then you start from scratch?
justin wren
Right.
We attach the segments the deeper we go.
So once we're 20 feet deep, we got to attach another drilling stem.
And once we're 40 foot, we have two drilling stems.
Once we're 60 foot, we have three drilling stems.
joe rogan
And how do you know where to drill?
Do you have one of those dudes with one of them wishbones walking around?
justin wren
Did we talk about this before?
No.
joe rogan
I always wondered if that divining stuff is real.
justin wren
I have no clue.
I hear some people say it's legit, but I haven't ever seen it in action.
joe rogan
I hate that expression.
I hear.
unidentified
Legit.
justin wren
I hear.
Yeah, no, I have no clue, to be honest, the validity.
joe rogan
I just don't know how it could possibly really work.
I have a friend who had a well dug out here, and they hired this guy to come over, and they had the two sticks, and he's standing there, and he's telling them where to dig.
justin wren
That's not how we go about it.
We...
We have a VES machine, which is basically we hook up a car battery and some of these other electronic devices and throw it in the ground.
And then you have a laptop out there, and it shows us all this on a graph.
But the way I did it for the first 13 wells, now our team's been trained in that as well.
So that's what's so cool about us partnering with Water4 is they're continually training our guys on the better drilling methods.
But whenever I was out there, hey, we're in the rainforest.
There's got to be water, you know, underneath our feet.
So let's dig.
And it was real tough the first time because we had eight failures over and over and over because we were hitting sandstone.
Now with the VES machine, we can see if it's sandstone, if it's quartz, if it's granite, what kind of rock is underneath, where the water table is.
We know how deep we need to drill.
But at first, for the first 13 wells, we were just trial and error.
We'd dig, and we even had one spot where we drilled for 10 or 12 days.
And we hit water, but then all of a sudden we hit a layer of quartz underneath it.
And so there was just about six feet of clean water on top of this quartz.
It was deep, but we needed more.
We needed to break through that quartz and then be able to have, hopefully, what would be right underneath that as a rushing...
Awesome aquifer for us to tap into.
That would make that well sustain a lot longer.
But we couldn't break through it at that time.
We just didn't have the right tools.
Now we do.
But we just had to pick up and move.
So we picked up, moved maybe a football field away.
And we went down the hill a little bit and said, hopefully we don't hit the courts layer.
And yeah, just a football field away.
The geology was different.
The water, the recharge rate was great.
The water kept coming into our well.
And then we have to do a lot of different things, like we have to plunge and bale and develop the well to where it'll be clean.
We put a gravel pack around it, all this different stuff to make sure...
joe rogan
So the gravel pack acts as a filter?
Is that how it works?
justin wren
Kind of.
And what it does is it keeps...
So we put down a PVC, like, four-inch...
Sorry, but we put the pipe down there.
And the gravel pack goes around it.
And the gravel pack kind of keeps any dirt, silt, sand, depending on what layer we're in, it keeps that from coming into our well.
So that way the water that is inside of our casing, there we go, our four-inch casing pipe, that allows, it has like little slits in it.
Maybe it would be like the size of a A saw if you just kind of put a saw in there and it's every like centimeter apart from each other and that way inside of our casing and Before the water touches our pipe like it's crystal clear.
It's clean We test it all that stuff and so the gravel pack keeps the sand the the dirt the silt anything out of our well Wow That's incredible, man.
joe rogan
It's just incredible, the amount of thinking and planning and all that's involved in just getting people what everybody here just totally takes for granted, water.
justin wren
Yeah.
It's taken us a month in one spot, a month, because we had a failed well.
And, man, it's brutal.
And sometimes, man, I'm thankful that I was a fighter, because sometimes you have to Bite down on your mouthpiece and just keep swinging whenever you want to give up and you have a team out there that's tired.
So in between the failed well and the other one, we took two days off, but we can't go back to, we call it Bunia, the town where we can kind of...
Rest and get some good food and come back out.
What we did was go to a little market and get more dried fish and some more rice and some more beans.
And we're like, hey, we're out here.
We're not stopping until we finish, until we get these people clean water.
And when you look at what they're drinking, we do the water walks with them.
I love telling my team, like, let's do the walk that they have to go on to get water.
And, man, I've gone 45 minutes, an hour.
Walking with the women because it's the women that collect the water in that culture because the men are off in the fields or they're off hunting or they're off doing stuff.
So the women go and get the water and it can be a 45 minute hour hike with these 20 liter jerry cans and 20 liters I think full is like 40 or 44 pounds whenever it's full and they're going to get dirty water.
Dirty water.
That is a 45 minute hike away from them.
And they're bringing back one or two of those 44 pound jerry cans.
So some of these Mabuti pygmy women are literally carrying their body weight or more in water.
joe rogan
Because they're tiny people.
justin wren
Right.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
Yeah, most of the hunters, we were given this Filaria treatment.
A filarial worm is this crazy kind of...
It comes from black fly bites, but it's from contaminated water that the flies go to and breed in.
They come and they bite you, and then you can get river blindness from it.
joe rogan
What's river blindness?
justin wren
River blindness is a disease that...
There's a pygmy woman named Mama Miriamo, and I love her to death, and she's so great.
But she's lost five of her seven children.
Due to this illness and her husband.
There's a video on it too.
I think it's called the Opportunity at Freedom or something that's on the Waterfore site.
But five of seven children are gone and her husband and it's all waterborne disease and she has river blindness.
So not only has she lost all her, not all of her children, but five and her husband, but she's blind and she's blind because of river blindness.
And so the worms get in your body and there's five different kinds.
Of filarial worms and one kind of the worms, like the babies, go to your retina, I think, and they attack and eat and live and sleep in the retina of your eyes until you have no vision left.
Fuck.
And four of the five don't do that.
But what it does is it irritates your skin.
Supposedly, I've had it.
I've had to take the treatment.
Whenever I took the pill, it made my body itch, and that's how you know if you had it or not, is if your skin itches.
joe rogan
Because it's killing the parasites?
justin wren
Right, it's killing the worms, killing the parasites.
And so I was like, man, if I have this, and if our team has it, because we treated our well drillers first, and some of them broke out in rashes and hives and really were itching.
And it's just a part of it.
If you go to that region, you're going to get it, if you're out there long enough.
Maybe not if you go for a week, but if you go for an extended period of time, you need to at least take the treatment to make sure you don't have that.
And so I was like, man, if I supposedly had it and if my team has it, then I know the pygmies, it's like ravaging them, you know?
And so we went to the different villages and took a scale and from that we knew how much medicine we should give them.
joe rogan
I talked to this guy, Dr. Peter Hotez.
He's an expert in tropical diseases.
justin wren
Okay.
joe rogan
And he said that, this blew me away, he said that 100% of people that live in tropical climates have parasites.
justin wren
Oh yeah, I totally 100% believe that.
joe rogan
That's insane.
justin wren
I know it's insane.
You live there, you know it.
joe rogan
This environment that you're in, that you're going and you're digging these wells, describe to us, if you could, what is it like?
You're talking about intensely dense vegetation.
What kind of animal life and what kind of wildlife is around you and bugs?
justin wren
Oh yeah, bugs, it's nuts.
Yeah, my wife's first camping trip ever was in the Congo.
joe rogan
You showed us photos of it.
justin wren
It's hilarious.
joe rogan
Last time you were here.
justin wren
Yeah, so it was a big eye-opening experience for her, but the vegetation, it's nuts.
So the Amazon is the biggest rainforest in the world, but the Congo is the second largest, but it is the densest, the thickest.
It's the hardest to navigate through.
There's parts in Uganda that barely touch the stuff in Congo, but they call it the impenetrable forest because there's sayings that it's harder for a fish to swim through the rivers there because even the rivers are thick vegetation and all this stuff.
Um, in some parts, but dude, it's, it's crazy.
Like walking through and hiking through, I have a picture that's going to be in my book of, of Ben walking.
And I was like, how much of this do we have to walk through?
It was, we were literally macheting, uh, using a machete to get through, um, to this pygmy village.
And I'm like, dang, they walk through this every day where it's like the, you're just walking through the thicket that's going across your face, going across your arms.
There's bugs latching onto you while you're doing that.
There's mosquitoes like crazy at all times.
There's the ants.
The ants will literally look like a small creek or rushing river.
I've seen them at least, literally at least two foot wide, and you can hear them.
You can hear them.
It's two foot wide of ants.
And it's just a black river because it's these ants that are just rushing, running in and out of things.
And, yeah, so there's bumblebees there that are, like, bright, or they have a bright blue or purple on their back.
I'm kind of partially colorblind, but I can see them.
And literally, they're the size of a golf ball.
They're, like, perfectly round.
They're perfectly round.
joe rogan
A golf ball?
justin wren
A golf ball for a bumblebee.
unidentified
Oh, my God.
justin wren
For a bumblebee, 100% like a golf ball.
And what we would do is Emily and my wife brought a racket that had It's like a little taser for bugs.
And it's in the shape of a tennis racket.
There's one village, Andy Quaqua, and it's got tons of those golf ball bumblebees.
And they're vicious, too.
The butt on those things looks wicked.
You don't want to get stung by it.
And whenever you do, it leaves like this.
It looks like you got shot by buckshot and a little bitty...
A little bitty golf ball size whelp.
Wow.
But yeah, we just smack those things with that little taser racket thing.
joe rogan
It's got to be one of the wildest places on earth, right?
I mean, next to the Amazon, it's probably like right up there.
justin wren
Yeah.
It's nuts.
You know what?
Maybe this would give you an idea.
Jamie, maybe we get those pictures.
You can start with that.
joe rogan
What is this right here?
justin wren
I wanted to bring you a gift, man, from the Congo.
But actually, go behind those pictures first and check out...
But if you leave them, that'll be great.
But that's Sangee, and I knew you would really connect with this little dude.
We should have a picture up of this.
joe rogan
Do you have it, Jim?
justin wren
The first one.
And San Gi here is from, we call it Tundu, and Tundu just means hole, but we call it the hole in the forest.
And he's a little dude, and in that village they make those little handprints, or actually the cloth.
So the cloth is this like bark cloth, and it's like a traditional way that the Mubuti pygmies make stuff for artwork.
joe rogan
So that cloth that he's holding is made out of bark?
justin wren
Yes.
Actually, reach in there and you'll see the actual cloth that's his.
So this is kind of a thank you way that they kind of gave me a few things to remember them by and to say, like, tell your friends and people that supported this, like, thank you.
But San Gi is, he's probably 12, I would say.
This is bark?
Yeah, it's bark.
It's bark cloth.
So it feels kind of like a canvas.
And sorry on the plane it got bent up a little.
joe rogan
How do they do this?
What are they doing?
justin wren
I'm actually not sure.
It's the bark and they beat it down.
They beat it down, pressurize it or something, or put a lot of pressure when they're doing it.
joe rogan
What kind of tree is this?
Do you know?
justin wren
I actually don't know.
It's wild.
There's so many trees out there.
joe rogan
It feels like a flexible cardboard.
justin wren
Yeah.
So they'll do like their own kind of paintings and stuff.
It's really like traditional and you can like even Google bark cloth and I think it comes up with the pygmies.
joe rogan
I'm gonna get this framed man.
That's awesome.
Thank you very much.
That's amazing.
justin wren
Dude, that's his handprint.
Wow.
joe rogan
God, his hands are so tiny.
justin wren
Yeah.
He's probably 12. None of them really know their age just because they don't really have a calendar and don't keep up with it and don't have school or anything like that.
joe rogan
No iPhones?
justin wren
No iPhones.
No iPhones.
No whatever it is.
Google calendars.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
But the next picture, that's right there with you, but it's their village.
And there you go.
On my right, so if you're looking at the picture on the left, that's Laringa, and he's my translator and our director of implementation.
To his right, the guy with the hat, That is Leo May.
joe rogan
That's a dope hat, by the way.
justin wren
Yeah, he's awesome.
joe rogan
That's the chief?
justin wren
Yeah.
Chief Leo May.
And he's such a great dude.
And he's the grandfather of Sanghee.
Two over from me, the lady that I have my arm around him.
And then, yeah, right there.
That's Chief Leo May's wife.
And they're basically the parents of Sanghee.
Sanghee's right in front of me, squatting down.
unidentified
Right.
justin wren
Right in front of my right leg.
And so they're raising him because his parents passed away.
But what I want to show you about Sangy is he has a passion that's common with you, and I got to be there for two really cool things.
If you can go to the next picture, and that's the stack in your thing too.
But here's the village at night, and that dude's got a sweet little guitar thing he made.
He used wire from a tire to make the strings of the string instrument.
joe rogan
Like steel-belted radial tire, like that kind of shit?
justin wren
Yeah.
I think so.
I mean, it was like an old abandoned tire and he just made this thing out of wood to make a guitar.
joe rogan
So he got the wire, like stripped it out of the rubber?
justin wren
Stripped it out of the rubber and made himself a stringed instrument.
But if you sand geese over my back and this is just us, this is...
How we learn the most about how we can help them.
When we sit around the campfire with them, we've kind of made a goofy name for it, but we call it Campfire University because that's where they take us to school.
Whenever we're sitting around, that's where we can hear the truth about how they're really treated.
No one else is around, like any of their oppressors and stuff.
They're able to just be themselves.
Sometimes we would pretend to be asleep.
Um, so other people would leave, but now this is on their own land and they have like freedom to, to just chill and relax.
Um, and then if you go to the next picture, but, uh, I just, okay.
So you got that picture also, but that's, uh, one of the first antelope wild kind of bush meat that I got to eat.
joe rogan
Um, So they call everything bushmeat, right?
justin wren
Yeah, basically.
I've had monkey, which now I realize I probably shouldn't do that again.
joe rogan
It's probably not healthy, right?
justin wren
Yeah, you can get Ebola.
And so that's how Ebola from monkey and bats.
And I shouldn't laugh, but I didn't know.
I didn't know about that's how you get Ebola.
And then all of a sudden the Ebola virus broke out like literally a month or two after I ate the monkey.
And all of a sudden I'm like, oh jeez.
joe rogan
So this Antelope, did they shoot this with bow and arrow?
justin wren
Yep.
They got that one with the bow and arrow.
Sangi got his, in the next picture, he got his with a spear.
And this is his...
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
This is his fur...
What they do is they chase it into a net.
So they string these nets up through the trees...
And then the men and the women sometimes, too, they go through with leafs and other things and make sounds, and they scare the antelope into their nets.
I've seen how they string this out.
These nets can be, man, they can be a football field in length, and then they scare the antelope into it, and then they have to catch up to it before it escapes, and they spear it.
Sangee speared that.
That's your little dude.
joe rogan
Wow.
justin wren
And then the next one's pretty cool.
Just holding the head.
joe rogan
So they probably cook that head too, right?
justin wren
Cook the brains.
Eat every part.
joe rogan
Cook the tongue, the eyes.
justin wren
Yeah, you don't waste anything.
And that village was the first time I saw them eating a turtle.
And, like, not that turtles that strange to eat, but they even eat the shell.
What?
Yeah, I know that sounds crazy.
I saw them, I'm like, doesn't that hurt?
But they would cook it over the fire, and I guess it would weaken the shell, I think.
But it still sounded really crunchy.
joe rogan
So they're chewing on the shell.
justin wren
Eat the shell.
Eat every part of it.
joe rogan
What the fuck, man?
justin wren
Yeah.
But, I mean, for them, though, it's...
If that's the only food they got, you know.
joe rogan
Wow, I had no idea.
I saw a crocodile once eat a turtle, and I thought that that crocodile was fucking crazy, but that's a crocodile.
I didn't think a human ate a turtle.
A shell, at least.
justin wren
Yeah, and I've been out in Louisiana with my grandpa fishing.
joe rogan
Turtle soup.
justin wren
Yeah, and a Cajun guy just came over because we kept catching turtles, and he would cut off the head because you can't really get your hook back.
And then he would just open it up and see if they had eggs in them.
And right there, without cooking it, without really cleaning it, he would just pop the eggs in his mouth.
And I was like, this guy's crazy.
So that was in Louisiana.
It was down in the bayou.
But we can go to the next picture.
joe rogan
So do these people have a hard time finding food?
Or is this fairly common to eat all these different antelopes and whatever this is?
What is this, a cat?
justin wren
This is Sangee's second kill.
So I was there for his first kill and his second kill.
And they were months apart, though.
This is, I think they call it a large spotted genet.
Or I think I'm pronouncing that right.
It's G-E-N-E-T. And it looks like a cross between, I don't know, a mongoose and a baby leopard or something like that.
But I've been, someone tried to sell me okapi meat.
Have you ever seen that animal?
It's got the butt of a zebra.
It's got the body of an antelope and the head of a giraffe.
I know it sounds crazy.
It's only in the Congo, and that's what it looks like at least, but it's in the Giraffidae family, and so it's the only other surviving animal in that family.
It's actually with an eye.
joe rogan
Whoa, look at that freaky fucking thing.
Yeah, I have seen these things before.
They look fake.
It looks like a mythical creature.
justin wren
In the giraffe family, and someone's tried to sell me the meat of it.
It's an endangered species.
It wasn't a pig meat.
It is?
Yeah, endangered species, and I would have gotten in a lot of trouble if I got caught doing that.
joe rogan
If you got caught bringing the meat back?
justin wren
Probably even try to put me in life in prison or something.
joe rogan
Really?
justin wren
Probably, yeah.
joe rogan
If you had the meat.
But how would they know where you got the meat from?
How would they know that it was an okapi?
justin wren
He was selling me the butt.
joe rogan
Oh, I see.
People eat zebras too, right?
justin wren
I believe so.
joe rogan
That's gotta be insanely tough meat.
So, back to my original question, is it difficult for these people to find meat or is it like a really rich environment?
justin wren
A lot harder than it used to be.
A lot harder because a lot of the deforestation is happening.
And so I've literally been able to look up, see the sun, see that the sky is clear through the canvas and stuff.
And then it sounds like thunder.
And it's because they're cutting down these huge trees.
And so that makes it really hard for the pygmies.
To hunt because the animals are skittish.
They get scared.
They get frightened.
They're a lot tougher to get.
Wow.
So yeah, that's when he came back and first showed me.
joe rogan
This tiny little cat thing.
And so how do they cook that?
justin wren
They skin it.
They keep the skin to make a hat or a little trophy out of.
And then that's the spear he got it with.
That was a smaller one.
His grandpa has one that he killed an elephant with.
But yeah, they put it over a tripod of sticks and then they wrap the meat and leafs and they kind of smoke it.
So that it seems to last, I mean they smoke it and it lasts longer.
joe rogan
So they dry it out.
justin wren
And then they'll soak it again and like boil it so that it kind of gets back, it's not so dry.
Huh.
At times.
Like, I mean, as soon as they do a fish, too, and other things.
joe rogan
So it's a method of preserving.
It's sort of like the Native Americans did that with buffalo, and they do that in Mexico, too.
They take the buffalo, and they make really thin slices, and they dry it in the sun, and then they rehydrate it again and cook it.
justin wren
And so kind of like with their situation of them being the first citizens of Congo, that's what we always use with them, the terminology, similar to the Native Americans and what we did here.
Pushed them off their land, took their land from them.
That's what happened to the pygmies.
And so that's kind of, it's similar to...
To something that I was thinking is, hey, we could get these people these little kind of reservations.
We have 10 different plots of land.
All of them are 247 acres, or eight of them are.
One's like half a square kilometer, so like 120, and the other is like close to 500 acres.
And so, but that's their land.
They'll pass down.
And what we want to do is, on one of them, we started replanting trees that are targeted for deforestation.
So one of our agriculturalists that we're interning, we gave him a goal.
His name's Dramani.
Great dude.
We want him to replant a thousand trees.
We're like, hey, you can feed anyone that helps you.
The pygmies, give them breakfast, lunch, dinner, and we'll give them a day's wage and teach them how to make money and how to work for the first time making money.
When he came back, we were blown away because he had replanted 3,500 trees.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
3,500.
That's also what we want to do, too.
Preserve their culture.
They love the trees.
They don't cut down the big ones.
joe rogan
So the market, where are these trees going to?
Because this is an issue that's going on in the Amazon as well.
justin wren
There's like mahogany that's out there.
Yeah, big, heavy, heavy hardwoods.
joe rogan
And they take a long time to grow too, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
Yeah, they take a long time.
joe rogan
So they're chopping down 100, and then they're doing it on a daily basis.
justin wren
Like trees that you could drive an 18-wheeler through.
So that's why there's times that a tree falls, and I'm like, is it about to rain?
Is it thunder?
Because it's this huge, massive, old tree that's being cut down.
joe rogan
You could literally drive it.
Like the redwoods they have?
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
Yeah, I would say they're not as big as the Redwoods, and some of them are that big, but some aren't.
I mean, some you could drive a Mini Cooper through.
Wow.
But yeah, some are massive, and they're just cutting them down.
joe rogan
Just the perspective that you must gain from being in this insane environment, it's got to be a really, for lack of a better word, enriching experience.
justin wren
Yeah, I mean, it's so good for the soul, I would say.
Just your heart, you feel like you're a part of something greater than yourself, something bigger than yourself.
And I would say that that's where a lot of my struggles in life came from was when I was so focused on something small, which is myself.
I was like magnifying glass or putting myself under a microscope in my life.
And it's like whenever I took the focus off of me, And put it on others like it gave me such a Greater sense of purpose in life of man.
joe rogan
I don't need to live for myself Like this problem like what if I could be part of a little a little part a little link in the chain To help to be in the in the problem in whatever small problems anybody here has in comparison to the issues that they have there It's it's one of the things that happens to people when crisis It takes place when there's any sort of a crisis like after 9-11 One of the weirdest aspects of being in New York was how friendly everybody was
like everybody kind of had this newfound perspective They had this new instead of dealing with the stress and the the grind of the big city in the traffic and all the nonsense and all the Agro behavior that people normally had it wasn't there.
It was like people were friendly and they were nice and kind it's like they had put it in perspective and Because of the attack.
justin wren
Right.
joe rogan
And it's just, it's a shame that human beings are like that, that we have to have something kind of crazy happen to us for us to...
To unite us.
Yeah, to unite us and to appreciate.
justin wren
Right.
Yeah, and I would say there, it's almost like they are like that, like kind of what you were saying about New York, and not that...
They're constantly like that, right?
They're constantly like that.
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
They're constantly like appreciative for anything that they get.
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
Anything that they get for that day, even whenever they're working underneath their slave masters and they're getting a minnow for a full day's labor or two bananas for a family of four or five that are literally working from sunup to sundown, they get two bananas to share.
Like, whenever we talk to them about it, yes, they'll say, we need more.
This is slavery.
This is slave labor.
Like, it's terrible.
It's, you know.
But whenever they get that food at the end of the day, like, they're thankful for it.
Like, because they gotta have it.
But the oppressors use that as a way to keep them hungry so that they have to come back the next day and work.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Similar story.
Yeah.
That's the story as old as time, right?
justin wren
Yeah.
Hey, could we show that next picture in that?
Sorry, I'll try to bust this out.
So this I love.
This is Sangie's grandmother.
She's wearing Ben's.
Ben's on the right with the blue shirt.
He's our director.
And Kakura is behind him in the blue shirt and right in front of him with the sunglasses on is Mama Leomay.
joe rogan
What is she wearing around her waist?
justin wren
Leaves.
joe rogan
Leaves.
justin wren
Yeah, leaves.
So she tied vines and leaves together.
And yeah, whenever...
If cameras probably weren't out, it's not a big deal, like clothes or not clothes or anything like that, but...
Whenever we bust out a camera because it's like, hey, this is going to be a cool celebration.
So why we bust out cameras is different than the show up, blow up and blow out so that we have pictures.
What's so cool?
One of the greatest gifts I've ever given Mama Leomay is a picture of herself, a picture of her and Sangee, a picture of her and Leomay.
What we do is we print up these pictures.
We get them laminated and they've never had a picture of themselves ever.
And so we're able to go back and give them these pictures and they'll always be able to cherish and remember this moment.
joe rogan
Do they have mirrors?
justin wren
There might be A half-broken mirror that's very tiny.
joe rogan
Like a woman's compact?
justin wren
Yeah, right.
It might be crushed or broken, and they might have that for the whole village.
Wow.
But some places, no.
Some places, not at all.
Some places, I give them my iPhone, and they get to look at themselves, and they're just like, oh my goodness, because they've only seen themselves really in reflection of water and stuff like that.
joe rogan
How long before they start taking selfies?
Is it immediate?
Does it make the kissy face or no?
justin wren
Right.
No, I've even had the duck face.
Or duck lips.
But, man, on my Instagram at the Big Pygmy, there's some pictures of me actually giving this village Pictures.
And dude, some of their expressions whenever they get to see a picture of themselves for the first time, it's like the craziest looks in their eyes seeing themselves on a piece of paper.
joe rogan
Yeah, I could only imagine seeing yourself in a photograph for the first time.
justin wren
Yeah.
Wow.
joe rogan
Another thing that we just completely take for granted.
justin wren
Right.
Oh, I also brought you something that's inside that bag.
I know you're a hunter.
That's why I got you those hunting pictures.
I also got you some handmade knives that are from there, from the Congo.
joe rogan
How do they make these?
justin wren
By hand, they hammer on them.
joe rogan
Where do they get the metal?
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, so they're like butter knives.
justin wren
Yeah, it looks just like an American...
joe rogan
They made this?
justin wren
Yeah.
unidentified
How?
justin wren
Actually, Josh helped me come up with a joke to try to...
joe rogan
This is a joke?
justin wren
Yeah, that one's a joke because...
I was like, what?
I try to get a joke on the comedian.
This is the real one.
joe rogan
You rascal, you.
I was like, dude, there's a copyright on this.
justin wren
That one looked too pretty.
It was from our hotel.
But this one's the real deal.
So they made it out of a nail.
Some of the people that were working on doing deforestation and cutting down the trees, they'll build themselves ladders.
And so they're able to take the old nails out of these ladders and stuff and make themselves a knife.
And so that's actually handmade from Sangee's grandfather, the chief, Chief Leome.
joe rogan
Is his hand so small that he can actually use that?
Or do they use it with like a few fingers?
justin wren
He might use it with like three, but yeah, the dude might be four foot eight, four foot nine.
The average height of a Mubuti pygmy man is four foot seven.
So yeah, their hands are smaller and stuff like that and so they I think this into a piece of wood somehow Grab the other one.
I'm not actually they push it down on that wood.
That's that's the original way.
unidentified
See how it's a nail This is nuts Yeah.
justin wren
So...
joe rogan
Wow.
So this nail flattens out to be that wide.
That's incredible.
justin wren
And what he found was the old piece of...
So in Congo, the Belgian Congo with like King Leopold II, who was due to as evil as Hitler...
I mean, they say during his reign of Congo, he said in Europe that he was like the savior of Congo, that he was helping all the Congolese, but really he was extorting them for mainly rubber and ivory.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
And there was an estimated 20 million people, and there's a book called King Leopold's Ghost, and the guy had a big old beard, kind of like I have in one of those pictures with Sanghee.
But what they say is that it's an estimated 10 million people, half the population of Congo, that he was responsible for killing and murdering.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
justin wren
So they call that like the African Holocaust or one of the first Holocaust because there was, you know, six, some, I mean, I'm not sure about the Jewish Holocaust, six million or something like that.
But this was eight to 10 million people.
Half the, half of the Congo was, was murdered and everything else just over rubber, the rubber boom and, and ivory.
And I had, I had a slingshot for you from like the original rubber, but it kind of like rotted and broke.
So anyways.
joe rogan
The original rubber.
justin wren
Yeah, it's like white whenever it first comes out.
They just made a slingshot.
It was sand-gee.
And so I brought it.
joe rogan
So they hunt with those?
justin wren
Yeah, like birds and stuff and trees.
So I've seen them eating parrots and African gray parrots and stuff.
Anything they can get, man.
They'll knock, and it might sound bad to our culture or whatever, but this is their food, you know, so...
But they'll shoot like a nest and whatever comes down, you know, if it's baby birds or mama bird or eggs or something like that, that's free game.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, we are very privileged that we can just go to a supermarket and buy food.
So we have these ideas of what you should and shouldn't do.
But when you're starving to death, you will eat whatever you can get a hold of.
justin wren
Yeah, and whenever the outsiders make it so much even harder for you to hunt because they're cutting down the trees and it's making the animals skittish and scared and so much harder for you to find them.
joe rogan
Yeah, so there's no regulation whatsoever on how many trees they can chop down.
justin wren
Not at all.
I would say, I mean, this might not be a real stat, but in my mind, 80-90% of the logging in Congo has got to be illegal.
They just go out there, here's a big old tree, let's cut it down because it's worth so much money.
joe rogan
And who was doing this?
What country?
justin wren
People all over.
And they'll bring in trucks from Kenya and Tanzania and Rwanda.
And there's some, like, big businessmen that then sell these hardwoods to China, the U.S., Brazil.
I mean, just different big countries that they send it out.
And I've seen these hardwood on these roads sometimes...
Three-fourths of an 18-wheeler or a lorry is what we call them there.
It can be completely sunk in mud or it can just be fallen off of a face of a cliff because it's so overloaded.
They fill up these containers just so full with this heavy, heavy, heavy wood because if they can get it back, then they're going to make a ton of money off of it.
So they just overload it because it's so hard to get from point A to B to like Mombasa and Kenyatta where they can ship out this stuff.
joe rogan
It's just so depressing sometimes you think about the damage that people are capable of and the insensitivity that people can exhibit.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's just that...
that they just go there and just take all that wood, chop it all down, fuck all these people over.
Just...
The fact that it's a small amount of people that are doing it, too, but yet it affects an enormous amount of people worldwide.
justin wren
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think they said, I forget where I got it, it was a reputable source, but the size of Texas has been cut down from the Congo rainforest in the last, like, just 20 or 25 years.
Last 20-25 years of the rainforest in Congo, the size of Texas, which that's where I'm from.
I mean, it's huge.
It's 13 hours from east to west, maybe more in Texas, on good roads.
So just to imagine, like, the size of the impact.
joe rogan
That's insane.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's insane.
And then to think about the fact that it takes hundreds of years to replenish those forests if they do get replenished, because the environment that they're growing in, it gets changed as soon as you chop everything down, then the sun bakes the land, and then there's less rain.
Fuck, man.
justin wren
Absolutely.
joe rogan
That's got to be such a strange place to go while you're there and you're trying to help and you're trying to replenish and help these communities and give them water and help them sustain.
And then you're hearing these trees fall and knowing that there's just these insensitive people just chopping down trees left and right and fucking the whole thing up.
justin wren
Yeah, it's nuts.
When my wife came, we walked through a field that had been just ravaged by the illegal loggers and stuff.
And she was blown away because these trees were so much...
Fallen on their sides.
They were so much taller than I was.
It made me look like a dwarf by them.
joe rogan
Just enormous, enormous old trees.
justin wren
Yeah.
And literally the first trip she came on, which was only like...
Six months before that, like all those trees were there.
All those trees were there and it was and now we walk into it and it's probably like 10 or 20 acres of trees that were just leveled in that amount of time and the way that they were doing it there wasn't by these guys weren't using the big chainsaws and everything else.
They were just like going at it with axes and stuff.
And a lot of it actually isn't just for the hardwoods.
I mean, I would say that's the majority of the problem, but another big problem in Congo or Sub-Saharan Africa is the charcoal everyone uses for cooking.
They get it from these trees.
They cut them down, they chop them up into little bits, and then they throw big mounds of dirt over them, and they set them on fire and they smolder it for two, three weeks, I think.
And then it comes out in these kind of hard, compressed little charcoal pieces.
And so then that's what they cook with everywhere.
And so that's another thing that's a big issue.
joe rogan
God.
You know, there's a photograph of a tree somewhere in California.
I forget where it was, but one of the captions was this tree is somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six hundred years old or something like that.
They were talking about when this tree first came up, Columbus was sailing.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
And this is a tree that you could see today.
And there's trees that are...
I don't know, what is the oldest tree?
I mean, how old are trees?
justin wren
Nah, man, I'm not even sure.
I bet there's a thousand-year-old tree somewhere.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, in the Congo, it's got to be the oldest.
I mean, that's got to be the oldest, right?
justin wren
Yeah, probably.
unidentified
Or up there.
justin wren
Because it's crazy.
And then there are times that the trees, just the cycle of the forest, these trees can fall over.
But, like, we took a family of five to the hospital.
joe rogan
Here's one right here.
Methuselah.
justin wren
5,000 trees.
joe rogan
5,000 years old?
Yeah.
A Bristol cone pine tree from California's White Mountains is thought to be almost 5,000 years old.
justin wren
Oh my goodness.
joe rogan
The oldest non-clonal tree in the world.
The exact location that Donald Twisted Methuselah is a Forest Service secret for its protection.
Wow.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
That's insane.
justin wren
That's crazy, man.
I had no idea they could be 5,000 years old.
joe rogan
And then some asshole can just come along and...
justin wren
Just cut it down, man.
joe rogan
Make charcoal with it.
justin wren
Yeah.
And something nuts, like, I came in here and remember I had gotten sick.
Yeah.
And I had to postpone on you.
And anyways, I went to a hospital down in, or up in Valencia, I think.
And they had thrown me in a room for three hours, and they were thinking about getting hazmat suits out and all this stuff.
joe rogan
Because they thought you might have had Ebola because you came back from Africa, right?
justin wren
Yeah, right after the Ebola crisis.
But I had been back for like two months or something, or maybe even close to three.
And yeah, they were going all crazy and stuff.
And this is just a stat that I like to...
It's something that grips my heart, so that's why I want to say it now.
But...
Man, I think I looked it up right before I got in here, and it was around 11,000 people that Ebola took out.
11,000 people, that's a ton.
It's a ton.
It's a brutal crisis.
But I just remember the uproar and the fear.
Like, the outcry that happened publicly all over the United States, and only a couple people got it here.
And then, still, that's terrible.
But whenever I compare that, 11,000 people total in this Ebola crisis, and then the stat for children, and this is on Water4's website and stuff, and on ours, and, dude, it's what I want to fight and let people know, because there should be a real public outcry and uproar that 5,000 kids 5,000 kids under the age of 5 years old die every single day.
Every single day because of dirty water.
Because of waterborne disease.
Because of waterborne illness.
That's a legit stat from like UNICEF or one of those like legit places.
5,000 every day.
It fluctuates from like 4,700 or something to 5,000 a day.
And like for me, man, I've held two of those children, you know?
I've dug the grave.
I've had blisters on my hands.
I've had a little dude named Andy Bowes blood on my hands.
And like, bro, it wrecks me.
And like, that's why I'm so passionate about this thing.
And like, I come back and I get it.
Ebola's terrible.
And we need to knock it out because it can take out so many people.
But why?
Why are people not...
Why don't they have their eyes open, their ears open, their heart open to hearing about 5,000 kids dying every day?
I've been to the funeral of five other kids.
I've seen the grave of nine or ten others besides that.
And these are just among the pygmies.
I've seen the funerals going on of their oppressors, like the slave masters and the makpala, the non-pygmies that surround them.
Their kids are dying in the dirty water.
And it's not...
I don't I don't mean to go crazy, but no, it's not crazy at all It's and that statistic is crazy 5,000 a day a day and they're under five years old So I mean, I don't know how many with the six seven eight nine-year-olds, you know I've been to the funerals of those kids.
joe rogan
We are very strange about what we have What we focus our attention on and the Ebola thing is just something that was over here because we were worried about it coming over here We don't see a problem over here.
We It's so convenient for people to not look at impoverished third-world countries, people that are just, they've always been in this sort of state of poverty, so we just sort of accept them at being like that.
We don't think that they necessarily, that they have to live the way we live or have access to clean water and medical.
We just don't even think about it.
We worry about Cecil the Lion.
The fucking outrage about Cecil the Lion, where everybody's going nuts and freaking out.
Yeah, I mean, look, poaching's terrible.
It's awful.
Animals are beautiful.
I get it.
But the way we reacted to that, to know your statistic, to know that what you just said, that 5,000 little kids die every day from dirty water, and people aren't freaking out about that.
justin wren
I think it's like every 20 seconds.
joe rogan
That's insane.
justin wren
I think it's every 20 seconds.
joe rogan
That's really hard to swallow.
justin wren
Yeah, and bro, like, I... Wow.
That was my second...
joe rogan
5,000 is...
That's...
That's so crazy.
Just think about 5,000 dead bodies every day and have them being little kids.
justin wren
Yeah.
Wow.
And the thing that really wrecked me with that was, so I spoke at this university in Oklahoma, it's slipping my name, or the name's slipping me, but their students, this is right when I got back from Congo, and they had heard about what I was doing.
It was Southern, it's in Oklahoma City, SNU, and they said, come speak to our students, we want to try to raise enough for a water well.
And dude, they set out in their courtyard.
They set out in their courtyard 5,000 white flags.
And this is a massive courtyard.
They set out 5,000 little white flags and on it said the stat that's 5,000 kids every day die of dirty water.
And so I saw that right before I went up and spoke and I went and saw the courtyard and it just wrecked me because like for me, like the people that see that, like the stat can go in one ear.
It can it can jack with you for a little bit.
It can mess with your mind.
It can mess with your heart.
Um, but it's so easy to go in one ear and out the other, or once you sleep, you know, you're not going to wake up thinking about that just from seeing those white flags.
And so I grabbed one of those white flags and I, and hopefully some of the people just from seeing those flags will get it.
But like, I had to write Andy Bo on the back.
And, and then when I got up and spoke, I showed him, I'm like, Hey, every one of these white flags, you see it, you saw it, like it's a terrible statistic, but this, the real statistic is that each and every one of those flags has a name.
Like, it's a person.
It's a human being.
It's a little kid.
And, like, he didn't have to die of dirty water.
Not in today's age.
Not in today's age when we have the answer to the problem.
When we know what we can do about it and just people decide not to or, like you said, make the uproar about Cecil the Lion.
I mean, every American probably knows the name Cecil the Lion.
Or at least 90% probably do.
And, like, I bet not even 10%, not even 5% know that 5,000 kids every day are dying just because of 31. I don't even think it's 1%.
joe rogan
I didn't know it was that many.
That's nuts.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's hard to internalize those numbers, too.
Even if you hear that number, it goes in your head and it sort of bounces around.
There's no point of reference.
justin wren
For me, man, I absolutely 100%.
So that was when I gave the chief, Andy Bo's chief, my first promise I ever made the Pygmies, which was...
We had buried him and he had told us that he was rejected hospital treatment twice.
So he didn't just die of waterborne disease, but his other brother, his father had died of waterborne disease and his mom was all alone now.
And she couldn't even cry, bro, whenever I met her or whenever I saw her at this time.
Like, she was topless and I could see every single bone in her sternum, like every single rib attached to her sternum because she was so hungry and she was so malnourished and she was so thirsty.
And so our team went and we got mangoes and passion fruit juice, rice, and tilapia.
And we brought it back and fed it to her.
And it wasn't maybe 10 minutes.
And I was wondering, is she in shock?
Why is she not crying?
Like, why am I messed up from this so much more than the mother?
And it was because she was so malnourished.
She just didn't have the energy to produce a tear over her son's death.
So she got the mango.
She drank the passion fruit juice.
It wasn't 10, 15 minutes later that then she started sobbing.
Because she had, like, that sugar and that energy a little bit.
And then after that, like, dude, the next day was so brutal.
And I had blisters on my hand from digging the grave.
And that's when the chief came up and said, the first time we went and got treatment, they told the mother, you're too dirty to come in here.
And she said, well, can you give them treatment?
I know it's just a pill or a shot.
And they said, do you have money?
She said, I'm a slave.
I don't get paid in money.
And they said, well, then go away.
And then the second day, the whole village, and this is like 85 or 100 people, they grab everything they can, which was like almost two dozen eggs.
They brought a chicken and They brought a bag of charcoal.
They brought firewood.
And then they were able to beg because they don't make money.
These ones hadn't at this time.
And they were able to beg enough for three and a half dollars worth of Congolese franc.
And $3 was the treatment.
$3 was, I think it was a dollar for the pills that would have helped Andy Bo.
They were probably too late for the pills to work, but maybe $3 for the shot, the injection that would have helped him quicker.
And it was something like $45.
It's in the book, I got the real number.
$45 for his casket that I buried him in.
And it just blew my mind that the oppressors, the people, the makpala, the non-pygmies that surround the pygmies were thinking like, These people are so worthless or they're like animals or whatever that it's easier for us to let them die or cheaper for us to let them die than to take care of them.
And so that's when the chief grabbed me and pulled me to the side and said, Efe, which Efeosa is my first pygmy name.
It means the man who loves us.
And he pulled me aside and said, Efe, we don't have a voice.
Nobody knows about our suffering.
Can you help tell people?
Can you be a voice for us?
And that was when I said yes.
Because I couldn't promise them clean water.
I couldn't promise them land.
I didn't know how all of that stuff was going to go.
But I knew that through MMA and through some of the other stuff, like a platform, that, hey, I can at least help these people have a voice of some sort, even if it's just with 100 people.
You know, maybe I can help them have a voice.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Dude.
unidentified
Whew.
joe rogan
Boy, Justin.
justin wren
Sorry, bro.
I ain't heavy.
joe rogan
No, but I don't apologize at all.
Thank you.
Thank you for...
Thank you for just being you, man.
But what you've experienced and what you're talking about is so removed from almost everyone that lives here.
When we talk about poverty in America, our poverty...
It's almost ridiculous in comparison to the poverty that these people are experiencing.
justin wren
Right.
joe rogan
What you're talking about is just, it's not even human.
I mean, it's so outside of the realm of our imagination, to even imagine...
Living in a world where someone won't give someone a $3 shot or whatever it costs to treat a baby that's dying and this woman can't even cry because she doesn't have any food.
She doesn't have enough energy for tears.
I can't, I can't imagine that world.
And you continue to go back there to try to help these people.
now you are gonna fight like not just not just like try to build them wells not just try to help them and get them food but now you're you're gonna fight in Bellator and try to raise more awareness for this what what is it man you make this decision You decide to come back to America.
You're training in Dallas, right?
You're training a team takedown where Johnny Hendricks, former welterweight champion trains big giant modern facility one of the best places in the world and you are preparing for this fight But your main goal, you love the sport, but your main goal is to try to bring awareness to the Pygmies.
justin wren
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
So it's kind of a crazy way of a roundabout sort of a way of getting attention to them to compete in a sport and arguably the most brutal sport in the world.
justin wren
Yeah.
Yeah, I think for me, I always thought I could only do, or for the last four years, I thought I could only do one or the other.
First and foremost, My family, the people there, I'm not ever going to give that up.
So it's worth it to me.
If I never had to fight again, fine.
So be it.
That's okay with me.
So I was just so focused on that and building the team and getting something legitimately started that will really Impact them long term, not just a flash in the pan.
But I saw fighting as something that is a platform.
I mean, I'm here with you now just because I was a fighter and then the other stuff that came about, but that's the link together.
And my wife started talking to me and other people started talking to me and kind of said, well, what if you could do both?
And yeah, fighting the lifespan of it, that's kind of like a flash in the pan.
It's just, it's a short, limited window.
And the thing, the problem there is going to take a lifetime worth of dedication.
And so what if...
What if for a season in my life, it could just be a year or two.
I'm planning on it being five to seven years.
That way I can really make a run if I can.
That's what I want to do.
And what if that can set it up in a way that the long-term solution and impact is bigger, better, greater, more sustainable.
People know about it more.
And people want to get involved.
I think that...
It's hard kind of living in the two different worlds, going back and forth because they're so different.
I kind of feel like I go there and I see what's wrong and I'm like, oh, it shouldn't be like this.
But then I come back here and I'm like, ah, what's wrong here?
And it shouldn't be like this.
And so I feel like I kind of don't necessarily belong in either one.
And if I do, I belong more in the forest with them.
Wow.
Our hearts are so connected, and so it's like culture shock here, and I don't get culture shock there at all.
I love it.
But what if...
joe rogan
You get culture shock when you come back to America?
justin wren
Yeah, absolutely, man.
Absolutely.
joe rogan
From being in the Congo?
justin wren
Mm-hmm.
The culture here messes with me.
joe rogan
In what way?
Kardashians?
That kind of shit?
justin wren
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that.
And I went to Popeye's right when I got back, and it was after I had...
Buried Andy Bo and it was my second trip back coming back that was in like 2011 I think or maybe 2012 and I get back and I'm in a I go straight to Popeyes and it's in Atlanta and I Walk inside, and there's this mom and daughter, and they're there with a group that's going to do some kind of international aid in Haiti.
They got their Haiti shirts on, and it wasn't too long after the earthquake and stuff, maybe a year and a half, two years after Haiti.
And the daughter is sitting there and she's saying, uh, I'm gonna get a Coke and I'm waiting behind them at the Coke machine.
And so she starts filling up with the Coke.
Her mom goes, pour that out.
You're not going to have that.
And she goes, mom, they don't have Coke in Haiti, which Coke's in Congo, Coke's everywhere.
Coke's like, that was the first thing I wanted to say.
Like, Hey, there's, don't worry guys, there's Coke there.
Um, but, but right after that, like the mom's like, if you drink that, you're grounded.
She goes, mom, you're going to ground me over a Coke.
And then they just went back and forth bickering.
And then all of a sudden turned into, you are grounded.
Two weeks when we get back.
Then all of a sudden the girl got pissed.
Looked at her mom and said, Mom, I hate you.
I hate you.
And she stormed out.
And this is at the airport.
They got their shirts on.
They haven't even gone on their trip yet.
And I'm just thinking like I wanted to grab them, not in a mean way, but grab them and just say, look, love each other.
Like you're fighting over a Coke.
You're fighting over sugar water.
Like stop.
Like stop it.
Like love each other.
Like you're about to get a rude awakening when you go to Haiti and I've been there and I've seen the people walking through snow drifts of garbage to take a bath and walking back out and having to climb up that snow drift of garbage to get out after they took their bath.
And I've seen them digging in the trash to find food.
I've seen kids sniffing glue to fall asleep.
Like, I'm like, you guys are about to get wrecked.
And like, it wrecked me too, because I'm like, I just buried a kid over dirty water.
And now you guys are fighting over sugar water.
This is one thing.
I don't want to offend people in a way of saying our culture is terrible or bad, but I want to point out certain things that life's bigger than our small problems.
If we can get our eyes off of those small problems and get our eyes onto the big picture, it'll do a lot of good.
It'll change a lot of things in our own lives, our own hearts, our own relationships.
joe rogan
I think with people, it's just simply a matter of perspective.
And when we don't have real problems, small problems become real problems, like this Coke thing for this little girl.
I mean, it's probably, you know, it's just a natural thing that human beings do in some sort of a weird way.
We just lack perspective if it's not right in front of our face.
God, that's so crazy.
justin wren
Yeah, so I went into a long story there, but...
joe rogan
No, it's a great story, and I can imagine that.
I mean, that would cause culture shock for you.
You must be just, like, so baffled by it all.
justin wren
Yeah, and I went to...
One thing, Water4 has been an organization that is, like...
Believed in us since the very beginning kind of like you Whenever I had come back and I'd seen you know the two things but practically I hadn't done anything yet I hadn't like gotten land to start a water I didn't know I just had the passion and the dream and you put me on here and let me tell people that water for kind of did the same thing and They they gave me the tools when I had none the the training and knowledge when I didn't know anything and And just got behind me but I got back and three days later I was at their gala and
it was awesome.
It was a great event and man I was crying because they did a video of me in the Congo and then I had to get up and speak.
And it was real tough, but I go right from there, and three days later, I'm at kind of like a black tie event, and women are wearing fur and all this stuff.
And so it just was like, whoa, from one world to the other.
But I see it as a way to, like there, they did so much that night for this project, for the people, for my family.
With their furs.
Yeah.
joe rogan
With their furs and their tuxedos.
unidentified
Wow.
Wow.
justin wren
But yeah, honestly, though, they were people with hearts in the right place.
And I get it.
It's just cultures are different.
We live different.
And so I don't want people running around here in leafs and stuff like that.
I don't want them sleeping on the ground.
joe rogan
Well, you don't want anybody doing that.
justin wren
Yeah, no.
No, not at all.
But it's been cool, man.
The Water 4 thing, a little update for you, Fight for the Forgotten has gone into a dormant stage in our nonprofit.
And we have officially partnered with Water4.
We joined forces with them because when it comes to the reporting, the business...
Anyways, even the logistics and the training, their water engineers, their hydrologists, the different kinds of things that they can add to us are so great.
They've given us a truck, all the tools, all the training.
They've really been a huge component behind us.
But one of the things I love most about them is...
Yeah, we're partnering in a way that...
How would I explain it?
We see the eye-to-eye on something.
Like, the founder, he says, Water 4 isn't about charity.
It's about opportunity.
Dude, I love that because when you just do charity, you just help for such a short amount of time.
But the Water 4 method is like, hey, we're going to put the tools in their hands, the knowledge in their heads, and then we're going to look to create an opportunity for them that goes beyond what we can do from the West or from our short-term mission humanitarian trip.
We want to give this thing a life of its own, that it becomes a breathing, living thing, or even a business.
They're in 31 different countries, and they're helping these entrepreneurs do social good.
They get paid to drill water wells and to train nationals, and the jobs don't have to go outside.
They can stay inside the house.
I've loved that about them.
The cool thing that I love is that it's not about us being the heroes.
It's about the locals being the heroes.
That's the thing.
I don't want to be the hero of this.
I want to be a spark plug, if that makes sense, in the engine.
I want to get it started, get it running.
But the people are the strength, the engine, the thing that makes it run.
The spark plug gets it started, but but the locals and investing in them telling them you can do it fly on your own wings like You just need the training.
You just need the knowledge.
You just need the tools once you have that you're golden You know once they have fresh water though, there's still gonna be the issue of food though, right?
I mean it seems like with the logging you're saying it's more difficult to hunt Yeah, so what we've been doing is we're interning the three agriculturalists right now and we're about to hire them.
It's awesome.
I'm so pumped But the guy that did the 3,500 trees, he's great at farming.
And so in three of the villages, we wanted to kind of start on a smaller scale first because it is land, water, and food.
And there's kind of a process to it.
You know, you can't start growing food or having water without the land.
First, you need, I mean, you can't live without water for more than three days, I think, right?
Or at least some of it.
And then food, you can live for like three weeks without.
And so, or something like that.
And so, with the food, we start in three different areas, three different villages.
One's Tundu, and they're the ones.
Sange's grandfather, Leo May, he's one of the most brilliant men I've ever met.
Maybe he's never gone to school.
But I promise, the dude is just a problem solver.
And he inspires his people, the whole village, to get around the vision and let's do this.
And so we basically said, start with what you have.
That's kind of the Water 4 method too.
Start with what you have and we're going to come and we're going to fuel it.
We want to empower you to be able to do it for yourself.
And and that's what people need they need a little little jump start and so So anyways in this village and just Liam is I wish I would have brought in the list of what it is but From the time I came back and got married and went back about 10 weeks ago.
I Got to celebrate the 20th water well that was dug and drilled and it was such an awesome celebration of But one of the most exciting things to me was that I walk into Tundu and at first I was like, no way.
How is this happening?
All of a sudden I was walking through a forest of bananas.
And they had planted on their own.
We had helped too.
We help when we can and we want to help so much more.
But they had planted over 250 banana trees out there.
Over 250 surrounding their village.
They had done corn, whole field, huge field of corn, cassava, which is kind of like a spinach type, tastes kind of like spinach.
They make sambay out of it.
They had done potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, Maracuja or passion fruit and yams.
That's eight.
I think the list might have nine or ten.
But they had done that all from, hey, if we get you your own land, do you think we could help you with water and you could help us with the labor, some of it, like taking the tools inside the village?
They love that.
They come and help us.
Then it's like, hey, if we want to get a farming project started, can we empower you to do that?
We gave them some tools, we gave them some seeds, we gave them some banana trees, and they just ran with it, man.
And so, I don't know, I just love seeing that if you empower someone instead of treat them like a charity case.
If you give them an opportunity instead of saying, you can't do this for yourself, get out of the way, I'll do it for you.
joe rogan
It's definitely a much more intelligent approach and it's definitely better for them in the future, for now.
It gives them that feeling of empowerment, the feeling that they're improving and that their life is getting better because of their efforts.
justin wren
Almost dignity.
It gives them something to be proud of instead of something to be sad about.
Like, oh, I can't do this for myself.
Oh, I can do it!
joe rogan
Yeah.
justin wren
You know?
joe rogan
That's got to be cool for you to see.
justin wren
Yeah, dude, I love it.
And one of the other villages that we call it Mapinda, and it's, anyways, at first my heart sank because they really loved their, in nine of the ten villages, they really loved their huts.
It's very culturally important to them, the twigs and leaves.
But whenever I walk in onto their land, all of a sudden I saw huts that were just like the Makpala, just like the non-pygmies.
It was the mud huts that were, I don't know, four to six inches thick walls.
They had the leafed roofs, but they were much stronger houses.
And all of a sudden I'd come back, I'd gone back, and then all of a sudden to that village, what was important to them, the other one, the farming.
And yes, this village, also Mipenda, started farming for themselves as well, corn and beans.
But they started doing the huts because they were like, hey, if we're really equal now, we're equal to our neighbors, then we can live in the same kind of houses that they have.
We can stay out of the rain better.
We can keep our kids warmer at night.
And so to them what was Of value to them was one of the reasons they get called animals and subhuman and other things is because of their twig and leaf huts.
And their neighbors will say they live just like animals or they live in a nest or different things like that.
Well, now this place is, now they have houses just like the others.
We're equals now.
Like, that's kind of their motto.
Like, we're equals now.
And so that blew me away.
At first, my heart sunk.
Then all of a sudden, they told me they're proud.
They walked me into every single hut.
joe rogan
Why did your heart sink?
justin wren
Because I thought they maybe had gotten pushed off their land and that the Makapala had taken the land back.
And we have strict agreements and paperwork and like stamped in the courts and law that, hey, this is the agreement that is going to be a peaceful way of doing this and we're going to help the community come up together.
So it'd be dumb of us to go in and say, we're just gonna help the Pygmies.
So we helped the community all together.
I thought these guys had gone back on their word, but then all of a sudden it was, whoa, they're living just like everybody else now.
joe rogan
Do these people have any idea of the impact of your work?
Like, did they understand, like, that you could reach, I mean, you're probably gonna, a million plus people are gonna hear this podcast.
The impact that you're gonna have when they talk about it on Spike TV, probably just as much.
I mean, I don't know what the number Spike's been getting for fights, but it's got to be probably close to a million or at least...
justin wren
Yeah, I think it's over.
joe rogan
There's a lot of fucking people that are going to be...
Did they understand that?
Did they have this idea of who you are?
justin wren
They know me as Afeosa Mabutimangbo.
That's my name.
joe rogan
But to like...
I don't mean to interrupt you.
justin wren
No, you're fine.
joe rogan
To you or to me, okay, like you tell me that 5,000 people, 5,000 children die every day because of lack of water.
I can't get that in my head.
I mean, I know I... I'm trying.
I know it's horrific, but my head is like, what?
It's almost like there's no place for it.
It's moving around in my head.
You tell me your grandfather died.
I'm like, fuck, man.
Dude lost his grandfather.
You know what I'm saying?
It fits.
It makes sense.
You tell me 5,000 kids die every day because of a lack of water.
And I'm just blank.
I'm trying to find a place for it.
When you tell them that you are going to fight on Spike TV, and they're going to show a video of why you're doing this, and they're going to show a profile on you, do they understand what you do?
Do they understand that these people are going to see you?
Have they ever seen you fight?
Have they seen a video of you?
justin wren
We've seen a Topps card.
joe rogan
A Topps card, that's it.
justin wren
Yeah, a Topps card.
joe rogan
Do they know what you do?
Do they know that you were on The Ultimate Fighter?
Do they know about the UFC? Do they understand?
justin wren
My drilling team does.
The well drilling team.
joe rogan
Right.
justin wren
And sometimes we'd put on little entertaining things where the pygmies would come around and I'm not going to wrestle one of those guys, but I'll wrestle some of our well drillers.
There's one guy that's at least 6'5 on our team.
And so I'm wrestling with them and throwing them around a little bit.
And I think Ben will tell them sometimes that, you know, hey, in the United States, he was a wrestler, he was a fighter, and people know who he is.
But for them, for a frame of reference, kind of like you're saying you don't have the frame of reference for 5,000 kids dying every day.
I don't think they really have a reference for professional sports, television.
I've never met a Mabuti Pygmy that has a cell phone, that has electricity.
I've met someone with a flashlight, or a couple guys with a flashlight.
That's like the cool dude.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we've left behind some of the cheaper radios, and they can get two stations or one.
But for them, I mean, soccer, I don't even think they really know that that's a professional sport.
Maybe they do, but they don't have a reference because they don't know any of the players.
They don't watch any of the games.
They know kick a ball around.
And a lot of times it's just in a big circle.
But there's...
I should not misspeak because there's a couple places that...
With Makpala, they have some teams and have some fields and stuff, but that's only in two of the places.
Other than that, it's just a circle and you kick the ball around.
So no, I wouldn't say that they...
They have a reference for what I'm trying to do for them, but that's not what it's about for me.
joe rogan
No, I know it's not about that for you, but for them, it's got to be so odd.
This guy, the first white person they've ever seen, and there's a video of you that was going around Reddit a long time ago of you meeting them and them touching you and they can't believe you're white and they're freaking out.
But this guy who shows up out of nowhere, like a mythical creature.
If no one else could ever reach them, and if you stopped going there, and if all contact with the outside world ceased, you would be like a part of their religion.
I mean, do you understand that?
You'd be like some Jesus Christ type character that comes out of nowhere.
Some magical man from another world who shows them how to get water, who loves them and cares for them.
Here's a video of you where they're grabbing you and touching you.
justin wren
And that's actually the Makapala.
That's the non-pygmy kiddos.
So their parents, most of them, were kind of the slave masters.
Even from that village where the reason Andy Bowe was denied hospital treatment.
But really, I believe this was a moment used in my life, especially how it blew up.
I just put it up for a couple of my friends to look at, and it had like literally 40 views before all of a sudden it went viral.
And it was up for like four months.
Three months, four months.
But dude, look at their beautiful smiles.
joe rogan
There's got to be millions now, right?
justin wren
Yeah.
On YouTube, it's 1.8, I think.
But on Facebook, a bunch of people ripped it and posted it, and it was over 12 million.
So 12 million on Facebook.
joe rogan
You literally are like a religious character.
I mean...
justin wren
I don't know about that, but...
joe rogan
No, I mean, I know you don't know about that because you're humble and you're not looking at it like that, but just the sheer perspective...
For them to be living in that world where their number one concern is feeding themselves parasites, trying to get some clean water, and some guy comes from a place on the other side of the planet, and this guy does this thing called mixed martial arts, and he fights, and they broadcast it on television, something they've never seen before in their life.
They've never seen a video.
They have no idea what MMA is.
They have no idea the impact.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And then you're going on podcasts and talking about it, and you have websites to help people contribute.
I mean, this is a...
I mean, I can't imagine that they would understand what this is.
It's so funny.
They're rubbing your head.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're going crazy rubbing your hair.
justin wren
They were doing my beard a minute ago.
But...
joe rogan
It's so funny, too, couldn't you see when you backed up?
They're all like, back up!
He's standing up straight, run away!
Like, they didn't know what to do with you.
justin wren
Well, I've gone into some villages before, and literally, the women grab their children and dive into the huts.
The men run and hide behind trees.
And grab their bows and arrows and spears and stuff.
And it's funny because in those cases, it's only happened a few times, like three or four times.
Actually, pretty much every new village, so maybe ten times.
But whenever I go in, it's funny because it's normally the women.
That are the brave ones that come up to me first and then touch my arm or touch my...
I've heard once before, it was because I'm the first Waikea they're seeing, or is he real?
Because we didn't give this village a heads up that we were coming or that I was coming.
joe rogan
The abominable snowman is on the way.
justin wren
Yeah.
At one time they were like, is that a lion man?
Another one was like, is that a spirit?
Is that like a ghost kind of guy?
joe rogan
I'm telling you, you're like an alien.
justin wren
Yeah.
Well, and then look at me, dude.
I'm this crazy wild looking guy here with all this hair.
And then there I just let it go wild.
joe rogan
That's so strange, man.
justin wren
And with the pygmies and the makpala that's there, most of them, even our well-drilling team, everyone is fascinated with my body hair, the arm hair, because they don't have arm hair or leg hair, and then I'm just covered in it.
joe rogan
So they think you're like some kind of a white gorilla or something.
justin wren
My buddies would call me the great white Sasquatch or the vanilla gorilla.
joe rogan
That's so strange.
I just can't imagine how odd it must be to them and they don't even really know how odd it is.
Like for them to not have the preference of television, not understand, like if you could take them, I mean if Spike TV wants to really make an impact, what they need to do is go to the Congo, take some of those little fellas and fly them out to your fight.
That would be fucking nuts, man.
justin wren
What would I mean, at a grocery store, I wonder what they'd think us using.
I always thought using a credit card, because for that transaction, it looks like they give it right back to you.
Yeah.
So it's like you get all this food, you give the cashier the card, they smile at you, give it back, and then you take all the food out.
It's like food's free.
You think it's free.
Right.
joe rogan
Trying to get them to understand what the internet is.
justin wren
Yeah, or the moving sidewalks at the airport.
joe rogan
How about fucking Times Square?
How about fly them into New York City or Vegas?
justin wren
Yeah, sometimes I think about it and I think it would be awesome.
Other times I think about it and I think it would be torture.
I don't know.
Maybe that sounds crazy, but also like giving them a place where all of a sudden they have everything at their fingertips and take them into a grocery store.
And then they missed their family right away.
Taking them out to go to Benjamin or Laryngo's wedding, they started missing the forest, like deeply missing their friends and family.
Deeply missing.
I've never seen it before, getting so homesick for something in two or three days.
joe rogan
Well, I can only imagine the bond because their struggle is so difficult.
It's so difficult to stay alive.
justin wren
And then when they were with us, they had the food everywhere.
We were cooking the meals for them and everything when they came to the town.
And I took...
His name's Kaptula.
And he's on the video that's on Kickstarter that launched today.
But he passed away recently and messed me up.
But he's one of my favorite dudes.
And...
Anyways, I took him to the hospital like seven times and...
joe rogan
What is this, Jamie?
What are you putting up?
This is the Kickstarter?
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
And how does someone get to this?
justin wren
It's kickstarter.com and then it's fighting for freedom.
It's a new...
It's going to be a documentary.
We want to tell the story.
I don't know if we got five minutes.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, sure.
justin wren
Play it.
joe rogan
Play it.
justin wren
Maybe we could do it with the volume?
joe rogan
Yeah.
justin wren
In my American bubble.
Can we restart?
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
Okay.
There are two people groups in the rainforest.
The Makpala, meaning non-pygmies and pygmies.
The pygmies are the Makpala slaves.
joe rogan
God, look at that forest.
justin wren
Slavery exists now.
That was a drone.
Today, it's not just a thing of the past.
I mean, that's what I thought.
You know, living in my American bubble.
You know, there's no slaves today.
unidentified
Got rid of that in the 1800s.
justin wren
Slavery in today's age?
Why?
unidentified
Communities torn apart for generations.
justin wren
They would call us monkeys or jungle people.
unidentified
The Makpala would tell us we were nothing.
justin wren
After that, they'd call us nothing.
unidentified
And we would think, did God create us or are we human?
justin wren
Their slave masters would come up to me and say, what are you here doing with my animals?
Or what are you here doing with my property?
I own these people.
We work hard from morning until night.
And we would get paid in two bananas to share.
Two bananas for our whole family.
unidentified
They just need to be given a few fish, a few bananas, something small, so that they can come back and work the next day.
So that they're hungry enough that they have to come back and work the next day.
If we made even a small mistake, we would be beaten.
justin wren
God created us.
We're human.
We have to fight this.
people are worth fighting for.
unidentified
My name is Justin Wren.
justin wren
13 years old.
I want to be a UFC fighter.
I started fighting professionally.
I was 19 years old.
I was on a reality TV show called The Ultimate Fighter when I was 21. It was the main event at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas when I was 23, and that was what I always thought was going to be my significance.
unidentified
My purpose was to be a champion fighter, if I could be that.
justin wren
Since then, I've come here to Congo.
Why should these sweet, loving, amazing people be literally thought of and believed to be animals whenever they're these sweet, loving, amazing people?
And so if there's something we can do, if there's something I can do, I'm going to do it.
I was fighting against people, but really I was just supposed to be fighting for people.
And even whenever we feel like the last ounce of strength is leaving, we still got to choose to fight.
And we'll see something amazing happen.
I've seen people set free, bro.
I've seen people set free.
unidentified
My name is Derek Watson and I'm a filmmaker and this story has dramatically changed my life.
What inspires me about Justin is here's a guy who's at the top of his game and he leaves everything behind to go and serve and love someone else.
So we really want to tell the story through film because it's a story that really can inspire an entire audience to fight for something other than themselves and to fight for freedom.
justin wren
So what I love about Derek and I choosing the crowdfunding route and being on Kickstarter is that we get to involve passionate people to be part of the story, be part of the solution.
And that's why we're inviting you along.
We could have gone different routes for funding, but we wanted to involve people in this process.
This is an awesome opportunity to really give my Pygmy family a voice.
And that was my first promise that I gave them, that I could try, at least try to give them a voice.
And now I'm asking you, help me, help me Give them a voice.
unidentified
So this Kickstarter campaign really is trying to help us get just the hard cost for this film to finish it out.
Things that you have to do to get a film out on the biggest stage possible, that's what we're asking you to do.
So this money is not going to me as the filmmaker.
I am literally giving up all of my time and the time of my production team for free to do this because we really believe in the story.
And we hope you do too.
And we're going to have some amazing kickbacks.
We're going to be talking to you guys.
We want to make sure that you guys feel as involved as we do as the filmmakers and as Justin does as a subject in going down this journey with us.
So you may be asking, why don't we just give money to Fight for the Forgotten, which is Justin Wren's organization that he works with.
The answer to that is, yeah, that would be awesome.
In fact, if you feel like that's what you want to do and you want to give directly to help free pygmy slaves through water, I would say go for it.
Absolutely.
Go to fightfortheforgotten.com and give there.
Think of this though as an opportunity to see just a dramatic impact in the lives of the pygmies and honestly in the lives of our audience as well.
So that's this project and we hope you get behind us.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
I just tweeted that out.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
So if anybody wants to check that out, go to my Twitter page and it'll be up there right now.
Today is, what was today's date?
The 24th.
Monday the 24th.
So it'll be, if you're hearing this in the future, just go back to Monday the 24th and look for my Twitter page or go to Fighting for the Forgotten.
Just do a Google search for Kickstarter, Fighting for the Forgotten.
unidentified
Yeah.
justin wren
Or the Kickstarter is actually, what was it?
Fighting for Freedom.
joe rogan
Oh, did I say Fighting for the Forgotten?
Fighting for Freedom.
justin wren
Fighting for Freedom.
But the book is Fight for the Forgotten.
That comes out on September 15th.
There's a book with Loretta that helped me write that.
joe rogan
Loretta Hunt.
justin wren
Yep.
New York Times bestselling author with Randy.
Wrote Big John's book and she helped me write this book.
It was cool.
It turned into something like a passion project for her and that's going to be one of the The kickbacks on the Kickstarter.
If you go support the Kickstarter, you can get one of the books and I'll sign it and stuff.
And then if people just want to go on Amazon, they can get the book.
And it's like half price right now until it actually releases.
It's like $12.
And when it releases, it'll be like $24.
And the cool thing about that is 33% of my portion of anything from the book, 33% goes to the pygmies, goes to water wells and stuff like that.
joe rogan
When you decided to get back to MMA to try to bring awareness and try to bring more attention to these people, how long had it been since you had trained?
justin wren
The entire time.
joe rogan
Five years?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Nothing?
justin wren
Yeah, nothing.
I mean, I was hiking through the forest.
But no martial arts?
Absolutely none.
joe rogan
What did it feel like to get back to the gym the first day back?
justin wren
Like I should have been training.
No, my body had hurt for a while.
And I only really started training two or three months before I went this last time, which was 10 weeks ago.
And then I've been training this entire camp too.
Well, the last 10 weeks or so.
But it kind of was crazy.
They bumped me up on a card quicker.
And so from going to the Congo to celebrate the 20th water well, plus like visa issues, they wanted to try to take it because they're corrupt.
My five-year visa.
And they were trying to take it like how so yeah, they so when my wife and I left Congo last time Or basically they marked it down.
They wrote it down That we left six months earlier than we had no nine months earlier than we had and I have to go back at least every 11 months To check in to show them like hey, I'm I'm actively coming into Congo and doing stuff and So, all of a sudden, my time, they said, literally, I got a call, and it was from the university and from our team, the drillers, and they said, F.A., we heard that you're going to lose your visa in three weeks.
I was like, what?
Why?
They're like, go look at your passport.
Did they write down the wrong date?
And so they literally wrote down the wrong date of me, my exit visa.
Just so that they could try to get another $1,200 or $1,400 out of me for a new visa.
And I would have lost it.
And when I went in, they would have a way to say, Oh, you came in illegally and you lost your passport and your visa.
And we're going to arrest you and try to get even more money out of me.
And when I got my visa the first time, literally, I didn't have a passport for over three months in the Congo.
I had to send my visa or my passport to the capital.
And people I didn't even know, I still have never met, were handling my passport while I'm in the forest.
joe rogan
And you could have been stuck there.
justin wren
Yeah, I could have been stuck 100%.
Fuck.
And I would have had to do that again whenever I'd gotten back.
joe rogan
I get scared of getting stuck in Canada.
justin wren
Oh, dude.
Getting stuck in Congo.
I got a friend that was arrested in Congo for nine days and was thrown in basically like a dark dungeon with all these other people.
joe rogan
For what?
justin wren
He had a GoPro.
joe rogan
They arrested him for a GoPro?
justin wren
Yeah, they said he was a spy.
Said he was a spy.
Throw him in the embassy.
I had to get involved.
He's a great dude.
He probably wouldn't want me to...
I wish I could say what he does.
joe rogan
Jesus fucking Christ.
A GoPro gets you thrown in jail for nine days.
And nine days if you have help to get out.
justin wren
Yeah, and the thing that's crazy about Congo prisons is you don't get fed.
You have to be fed by people on the outside.
So if you get arrested, it's up to your family and friends to feed you.
And so this dude, he was all alone, and he got thrown in prison.
And then you don't have clean water at all.
They do bring you water, but it's dirty.
And I think technically he was in prison in Goma, which is a crazy city.
Like, one of the most insane places on planet Earth.
joe rogan
How so?
justin wren
Well, a rebel group called the M23 took it over not too long ago, or like over a year.
Maybe closer to two years now.
But a rebel group came in.
The military and police that were supposed to protect Goma...
Goma's a million-person city.
A million people, at least.
It's like the capital of the eastern Congo.
It's where Ben Affleck is...
Or Ben Affleck, or however you say his name.
He's there in Congo, has a real heart for Congo.
That's where...
joe rogan
Batman Ben Affleck?
justin wren
Yeah.
Yeah, he's got an organization there and is trying to do some stuff.
And Angelina Jolie goes there and helps rape victims.
But when the rebel group came in, the military and police that are supposed to protect it just ditched their guns, ditched everything and ran away.
And like, I don't know, a small portion just turned over to the rebels and said they were already rebels.
Anyways, the Congo military is basically comprised of former rebel groups that disbanded and came on with the government.
And so there's like 38 different war warring rebel groups in just the eastern Congo.
I think I think it was BBC in New York Times.
I'm not sure which one said which but they call it the rape capital of the world and hell on earth for a woman Because a stat had come out in like 2012 Or 2011 that said, one woman every one minute is raped in the Congo.
It's a weapon of war.
It's 1,200 women a day.
And so, yeah, it's nuts.
It's crazy there.
joe rogan
So this guy's in jail there?
justin wren
Yeah, he was in jail there for...
At least six days and I think they took him to the Capitol from there.
The US Embassy had to get him released.
No food?
No.
joe rogan
So what is he doing?
Is he just starving?
justin wren
I think so.
I mean, I would have to talk to the guy about it.
Him and I haven't really talked about how all of it went down.
All I know is he works in surrounding countries.
The dude's awesome.
He's got a business that works in Whole Foods and other stuff that goes to do social good.
It's a really great...
I wish I could say it.
I don't think you'd want me to tell the story.
So I won't say his name.
But he won't come back to Congo, I don't think.
Or at least I've heard that from people that surround him and his family and stuff.
joe rogan
I can only imagine.
justin wren
Yeah, absolutely.
It was for a GoPro.
All he had was a GoPro.
And they did that crazy thing to them.
I have the right people in place that they don't mess with me as bad.
Although they do mess with me a lot.
Just like that visa.
joe rogan
They just try to get money out of you.
justin wren
Absolutely.
joe rogan
What a fun place Africa is.
Sounds like a terrific spot.
justin wren
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, Congo's nuts.
joe rogan
Man, so from the time you have five years off, you start training again.
How long between that and your fight?
justin wren
How long have I trained?
joe rogan
Yes.
justin wren
I think if I put it all together, maybe four or five months?
joe rogan
Solid?
justin wren
No.
joe rogan
No.
justin wren
It's been split up.
Now I'm ready.
I can tell you that.
I'm ready for the fight.
I think...
joe rogan
How long did it take before you, like, felt fit again?
I mean, how long did you, before you went back to sparring and...
justin wren
Yeah, I was, uh, for the last four or five months, I've been, I've been going in and sparring.
I helped Jared Rochalt get ready for, um, a couple fights.
And I helped Josh get ready for a couple of fights.
Um, and, yeah, so I was in there sparring with the guys and stuff.
But I'd say at first, man, it was brutal.
It was tough.
Like, my body took a beating.
And I was thinking I needed, well, I was told I needed knee surgery.
I needed my meniscus cleaned up and stuff like that.
Not a big one, but to get it scoped.
And so I was like, I don't know what I should do.
Should I fight or should I not?
And then I found some great doctors that decided to help me.
They're actually called IPI. They're in Denver.
It's called Integrative Performance Institute.
It's a new place.
One of the doctors is an Ironman competitor.
She's awesome.
Helps all the NFL, MLB, NBA guys.
But it's with, we were talking about it before, but Regenikine.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of that treatment.
justin wren
That's great, man.
joe rogan
So, they started you, you start training, and then, like, did you immediately book a fight?
How did you decide when you were going to come back?
justin wren
I came and I, so I flew out here three times, I think for two weeks, and was staying with Loretta Hunt working on the book.
She said, what if I could get you a meeting with Scott Coker?
Would you want to just go talk to him about exploring fighting again?
Because she asked me and said, kind of poked and prodded, are you going to fight again?
Are you going to fight again?
And I'd already been thinking about it and talked to my wife and Which my wife's never known me as a fighter.
She thought I did Taibo at first.
joe rogan
She didn't know?
justin wren
She didn't know what MMA was.
No.
When we first started dating.
And when she found out, she was, oh, okay.
And I told her mixed martial arts.
And so she's like, Taibo or Kung Fu?
Do you do like cardio kickboxing with your friends?
No.
But she's so sweet.
She's so awesome.
And this will be her first fight to ever, well, for me, to ever be at.
She's been at Josh's two UFC fights in Austin and Dallas.
So this will be her third live MMA fight.
joe rogan
You keep saying Josh.
Josh Copeland.
justin wren
Josh Copeland's here.
The Cully Bear.
joe rogan
Everybody.
So, when you were planning on doing this, you start thinking, maybe I should do it.
Loretta prods you.
You meet with Scott Coker.
justin wren
What made you decide to go with Bellator and not go back to the UFC? I talked, my management and everything talked with the UFC. I would say that, man, that's a great opportunity, obviously.
I love the UFC. It's great, great, great.
Even you helping support the water wells and Nate Marquardt.
I don't know if I said that last time, did I? But from one of his performance bonuses...
He gave us two water wells worth of donation.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
justin wren
The dude, Nate the Great.
He's seriously a great dude.
And he might not have...
I don't know.
He probably didn't want public props, but I'm giving it to him.
And then whenever I came out and met with Scott, though, I just felt like, you know, the UFC, you could get...
You could get lost in there.
I don't mean that in a bad way, but there's 560-something dudes under contract, I think.
joe rogan
Right.
How many does Bellator have?
justin wren
Less, and then their main card guys, I think it's significantly less.
And then also, whenever I talked with Scott, it was more of an idea of...
We want to get behind this.
Before we even talked fighting, he had sent out that video you just watched.
He had sent that out to friends and family saying, look what this guy from fighting is done.
joe rogan
Do they even have a champ?
Who's the heavyweight champ?
justin wren
I'm gonna mess it up.
It's a Russian guy Volkov was and now it's a Vitaly or something like that Nobody knows though.
joe rogan
I mean, it's not you know, it's gonna be me soon That's what I'm saying.
I'm like you could be the Bellator heavyweight champion.
justin wren
That's like a legit possibility right and I would this is what I Like to look at it as in me for my wrestling background and in fighting sometimes you get you You don't get this perspective, but from a wrestling background, you think of a podium, and the champ's at the top, and then there's, you know, normally there's the top eight or All-Americans or whatever.
It's a podium of eight guys.
And I look at it as, man, I want to get on that podium, and eventually I want to get to the top.
I want to get to the top of that podium, be the guy at the top, the champ, because if I'm there, I have a bigger voice, a bigger voice for my family.
So I mean people will look people will watch if I'm on the podium and I guess they already are because of You know you and great people that are getting behind the story that see that it's important, but I know that the better I do in fighting The more people will listen and I know that's cheap and shallow At times there's nothing cheap or shallow about that at all.
joe rogan
Did you live in like a movie?
Your life is like this crazy inspirational movie.
This is amazing.
It's amazing.
It's hard to imagine that someone could be that selfless that's doing as much as you're doing.
It's really, really inspiring.
justin wren
Thank you.
Man, whenever I look at it because of the team that we've lined up, man, the 17 full-timers we got now, about to have 20, each and every one of those people on that team, like, they are such fighters, and they're so giving, and they're so selfless, and they'll go live in the force year-round.
And drill wells and teach farming and teach all this other stuff.
So we've got a team of such great people and we've had to let guys go that just weren't with it.
We went through 20 people before we finally got to our team that we have now.
Legitimately 20 people.
joe rogan
I can only imagine.
The amount of dedication that you have to have to live that life and to be that selfless, to go over there and dedicate all of your time.
You don't get to go home.
That's your home now.
justin wren
And so we try to give them anywhere from a month minimum to eight weeks maximum in the forest.
And then you get to come home for two weeks, rest up a little bit, and then go back out.
joe rogan
Wow.
Get yourself a probe for parasites.
justin wren
Yeah.
Get healed up.
Get other stuff.
We're looking at ways how we can, there's no like healthcare system or insurance there, so we're trying to figure out how we can really set up our team that they're giving so much of their bodies, you know, like their health, their time.
We try to feed them really well out there, but still it's not as good as being in a city or town.
joe rogan
I can only imagine.
And I can only imagine what kind of medical care they even have out there.
justin wren
That's why I almost died.
The four labs told me I didn't have malaria until I was almost dead.
And then I got out into Uganda and they're like, they either said 60 to 70 or 65 to 70 percent of my bloodstream was parasites.
In Congo they didn't they couldn't see it at all So sometimes like well like our head guy We you know his wife was actually poisoned like people can be just wicked there and mean Somebody tried to poison his wife and kill her did did poison it didn't didn't kill her but I almost did she was she was in a coma because they were jealous and Literally, it was just jealousy.
They first tried to get...
I'm not going to say their names, but first tried to get our guy and then went after his wife because they knew that if they could get her, then it would affect and hurt him.
joe rogan
Oh my God.
justin wren
And so we've sent her to Uganda for treatment and Kenya for treatment, and I think they've maybe gone through Tanzania, but...
But it's been months and months.
She has been partially paralyzed on one side of her body from it and is learning, going through rehab, everything else.
So there's lots of stuff with health.
And so we want to try to see how we can love on our team that's given so much.
Like, hey, whenever you guys got a health thing, let us know.
And we want to take care of it.
So that's what's awesome.
The backing of Water 4, they're all in.
Yeah.
Honestly, whenever I first got back, I was like, how am I going to do this thing?
How am I going to do it by myself?
And because that's how it's kind of been.
I mean, I got a lot of support after being on the show and lots of people were behind it.
But when it comes to like the business side of it and filing with US government and all that other stuff is like, man, I got a CPA. I got other people got my board, everything else.
But I'm like, man, all I want to do is go there.
Be there with them.
Fan the flames.
Teach them stuff.
Love on them.
And then when I come back here, I need to come on things like this.
Speak about it.
I need to train.
I need to fight.
I need to win.
But I don't necessarily need to do all the business side of things.
So anyways, Water 4 has been awesome on getting behind us in that route.
joe rogan
That's beautiful that you've formed this incredible group of people and this organization becoming a part of you, or you becoming a part of them.
Now, your Bellator fight, when is it?
And it's live on Spike, right?
justin wren
Live on Spike, it starts at 8 p.m.
Well, it starts 9 p.m.
Central.
joe rogan
What day?
justin wren
August 28th on Friday.
joe rogan
Oh, so it's next week?
justin wren
It's this week.
joe rogan
This week?
justin wren
This week, man.
It's Friday night.
joe rogan
Yeah, today's the 24th.
So it's four days from now.
justin wren
Yeah.
joe rogan
Where are you fighting?
justin wren
It's in Temecula.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
justin wren
It's at Pachanga.
joe rogan
Okay.
justin wren
So I'm fighting at Pachanga.
It's 8 p.m.
Central, 9 p.m.
Eastern.
unidentified
Wow.
justin wren
And who are you fighting?
I'm fighting Josh Burns.
Josh Burns has fought for Bellator five times, I think.
Maybe six.
But I think this is a six fight in Bellator.
He's a tough guy.
He hits hard.
He's a finish or get finished guy.
His record's only, I think, like eight and eight.
So, the kind of...
I mean, he goes out there and either crushes guys or he gets crushed.
That's my plan, go in there and crush him, even though I hear he's a stand-up guy.
I've had so many people, even his friends, messaging me saying how great of a guy he is as a person, and that it's kind of hard for them to root against him or things.
So it's cool I'm going to fight a good dude, but he's got to go down because...
There's a lot more writing on it for me.
There's so much more at stake now than ever before.
joe rogan
Wow.
Well, listen, man.
I'll be watching.
Thank you, man.
Best of luck.
And give out all the information so people can contribute.
I gave out the Kickstarter on Twitter.
What else can they do?
How can they contribute to Water 4?
What else can they do?
justin wren
Yeah, if they want to follow me on social media, there's on Twitter, I'm the Big Pygmy.
And on Instagram, I'm the Big Pygmy.
That's the Mabutimangbo.
It just means the Big Pygmy.
So that's what a lot of the people call me.
That's where the nickname comes from.
By the way, it's random, but there's three kiddos now.
And those three, one of them's in Tundu, that village.
His name is Mbutimangbo Justin.
And so that's his full name is the Big Pygmy Justin.
joe rogan
Wow.
justin wren
And so that's kind of one of the reasons why I'm like, you know what, that should be my nickname, not the Viking.
joe rogan
Yeah.
justin wren
Anyways, but how they can contribute is, man, fightfortheforgotten.org.
Fightfortheforgotten.org.
I think later today or tomorrow, also.com will be there.
Right now it's the old site on.com, but the new, improved site is fightfortheforgotten.org.
The book, I mean, I think people can really, I mean, from our talks, this is the deepest people can see into what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and my heart behind it so far.
But on September 15th, it's 28 chapters of this stuff, and I go into it real deep.
That's on Amazon, Barnes& Noble.
joe rogan
Well, I'll tweet that out whenever it comes out.
I'll do, thank you.
Tweet whatever you need, man.
You're an incredible person.
justin wren
Thank you.
Thank you, bro.
You're incredible.
And I'm so thankful for this platform.
joe rogan
This platform's easy.
I'm just sitting in this room in the valley.
justin wren
I literally can't tell you how many people from airplanes That I sit next to someone from San Diego that's watched it and someone at the hotel and just all over the place, man.
I walk around and people are like, oh, it's Justin from The Joe Rogan Show.
And I'm just like, what?
And they're like, oh, what you're doing?
So, man, thank you.
joe rogan
I'm honored that I could have you on and give you this platform because what you're doing is just, you're amazing, man.
There's not a whole lot of people like you, man.
It's incredible.
I mean, what you've done is just, it's beyond words.
So anytime you need any help, I'm here.
justin wren
Dude, I love you, man.
Thank you.
joe rogan
Love you too, brother.
unidentified
Alright, before I start crying, that's it, folks.
joe rogan
That's the end of this.
We'll be back tomorrow with Abby Martin, the Big Pygmy.
Follow him, Twitter, Instagram, all that good shit.
And root for him, Spike TV, Friday night.
unidentified
Alright.
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