In May, I embarked on an exciting new journey to travel from Bristol to Kilimanjaro. My mission was to establish a new camera rental branch in Tanzania for VI Rental and provide training for the African Environments staff on the usage and maintenance of the equipment we had sent over.
At this point, I had already been working at VI for around 5 years as a Camera Technician, and I had a wealth of knowledge about the equipment that I could share with the team in Tanzania.
After an 11-hour flight to Kilimanjaro, I finally made it, albeit a day late due to delays that caused me to miss a connecting flight. A great guy named Moses picked me up from the airport and drove me for two hours back to the camp for some food and rest.
The next morning, we commenced training, and I was awakened by monkeys in the trees and other interesting animals. The primary piece of equipment we used during the training was the Panther Foxy Pro Jib. The jib, along with an oConnor head, had just returned from a month-long shoot in the Serengeti, so it was in perfect condition to demonstrate to the team how we clean, test, and service the equipment.
After a month in the Serengeti, the kit was super dusty, and there were signs that something was a bit off with the operation of the jib. There was a grinding noise on the panning of the jib and a general roughness when operating it. We dusted and cleaned it with rags and brushes, then took apart the center section to reveal that the bearings inside had a huge amount of dust built up. Everyone was well-informed about how to solve the issue, so we all agreed to pull the bearings out, clean, and regrease the internals. After applying a bit of thread lock to ensure the screws wouldn’t wiggle loose on the rough roads of the next shoot, we assembled the jib again, and the issue was resolved
4 day’s of training had flown by, the guys learnt super fast though! We had issues arise that the team at African Environments were able to solve even before I could think of the solution. I was sad to be leaving them but the mission was successful and it was such a fun opportunity to be given the chance to do, we had great food together, great laughs and talks about hopeful future travels back.
