But many viewers of Jungle Gold thought exploiting Ghanaians was precisely what Wright and Lomu had done. When Lomu suggested removing the miners by force, a chief replied: If you attempt it, they will kill you! The crew captured everything on film and loved it. We partner with mines to digitize their precious elements. Its still higher than when we originally went to West Africa to find it. He had no idea George is an experienced MMA fighter, the shows gravel-voiced narrators says. Because it really is a joke how nave and unprepared these douche bags really are. Thats the last were going to see of Ghana.. But their new status as wanted men made riveting TV with little effort. Lomu had heard that Americans could expect to buy gold in Ghana and resell it in the U.S. for a profit approaching 20%. The Lomu brothers then drew up a three-page final draft outlining the premise and sample episodes, in which three American entrepreneurs in dire financial straits would grapple with Ghanaian tribal chiefs, gold robbers, rival miners and each other. This was met with disappointment in the first 5 days of our trip to Africa because it's not even CLOSE to easy to get cheap gold in Africa, they know the price of Gold better than anybody! Now Wright and Lomu are the stars When the market fails where do you go? (Raw declined to comment on the incident.) Jungle Gold an action-packed reality show about two Mormons from Utah mining for gold in Ghana was a hit when it premiered on the Discovery Channel in 2012. The Mormons stuck to soda. And its worked up to this point. Gold miners George Wright and Scott Lomu sit down with THR to talk about the mistakes they tried not to repeat and why they keep returning to Ghana despite the life-or-death stakes. Desperate for cash, he recruited two men he thought would make enthusiastic gold dealers. By paying for excavators and local laborers, foreign investors could split the gold profits with the companys owner. As it happened, Akwesi was the brother-in-law of the landowner, who had cut him out of the $5,000 the show paid in compensation for the cocoa crops. Oh my word, they think I killed him, he said. On Demand DVD New Releases Aug. 26-Sept. 1, The three crew leaders from Discovery Channels Gold Rush series will be featured in a limited summer series called Gold Rush South America, the network announced today. Broke and demoralized, the three men abandoned their nascent mining operation in October 2010. At the moment I jumped in, he was right over [our security guard] and was going to push his head underwater. The Guyana operation was expanding, and Mishleau valued Wright and Lomus years of mining experience in Ghana. You would make a good politician though, you could go cry with Speaker of the House John Boehner about how tough it is to support your trophy wife. Scott Lomu and George Wright buying supplies during an episode of Jungle Gold. Not everything works out how you want it to, said Wright. Laborers were shown polluting water bodies with mercury, which is used to recover gold from other minerals. Most assumed they were mining illegally. Visionary entrepreneur and leader. I can say this, the head guy on Gold Rush hates us and we don't know why? The stage is being set for a redemptive second season of Jungle Gold, they wrote. Seconds later, a gunshot rings out. Back home at 21, he got married and landed a spot on the Utah Jazz Stunt Team. The company owned a large mining operation in Guyana, a former British colony on the Caribbean coast of South America. How Does the CBS True Lies Series Compare to James Camerons 1994 Movie. By August 2012, more than two months into the shoot, the stars joint venture had found only a few ounces of gold. The Minerals Commission claimed the crew had pushed ahead without adequate permissions and secretly asked the countrys National Security Agency to investigate them, fearing a stampede of greedy foreign miners, according to Buzzfeed. Could their adventures be a reality TV show? As chronicled in their Alerted to the situation by Raw, series producer Christo Doyle set up a "war room" as the cameras rolled. Their timing was perfect. They toiled for 18 hours a day, travelling two hours from a nearby village to the mine, living in a mud hut and battling with storms, broken equipment and constant delays. 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1975th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 975th year of the 2nd millennium, the 75th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1970s decade. The stars solved the dilemma by essentially pretending to mine, digging in the mud or washing gold by hand when a scene called for it. G: When the show gets edited they are continually making editing choices between our daily life choices and events. There were things we didnt expect, things that normally wouldnt happen to us happened because the cameras were there, said Lomu. Comments: RELATED: GOLD RUSH SEASON 4 PREMIERE DATE In Gold Rush South America, premiering Aug. 2 at 9pm ET/PT, Gold Rush crew leaders Todd Hoffman, Dakota Fred and Parker Schnabel take their operations to find new, gold-rich ground in preparation for Gold Rush Season 4, which Discovery says will premiere in the fall. What are some of the more hair-raising encounters well see you experience in Season 2? It was time to bail out. It was tempting, but it didnt make sense: Anyone could sell gold to the state-run Precious Minerals and Marketing Company for just 2% under the global price. The production team swore to take a different approach to the second series. Lomu signaled for the check. One op-ed, titled Jungle Gold: A Case Study in the Exploitation of Africa, captured the collective indignation that greeted the series. What shocked me is how much seemingly relevant content never gets used. The following year, they tried again, on the land of a Ghanaian Mormon bishop. Scott Lomu and George Wright, . The next morning, they passed through customs and boarded a privately chartered jet bound for Paris. ", "This is a disgrace for a brand such as the Discovery Channel to glorify what these bandits are doing in our country. Tay saw the show itself as a good thing for the village. Reece informed him that an armed militia had just attacked a group of miners near Wright and Lomus former mining site in Romaso. In April, Ensurge hired both men: Wright as vice president of public relations, Lomu as vice president of investor relations. I thought, Why have the authorities not intervened?. The camera catches a masked African man dashing into the jungle, a submachine gun in one hand and Lomus gold bar in the other. Six months later, in May 2012, Wright and Lomu met with the Raw crew inside an opulent conference room at the Golden Tulip hotel in Accra to discuss the projected arc of Season 1. How is the gold market lately? (It has since been clarified in the wake of Jungle Gold.) The entire landscape of the mining industry over the last year has changed dramatically, and so we encountered a lot this season. I believe its God who brought them to me, Alan Tay, who served as a handyman for Wright and Lomu during the Season 2 shoot, later told me. We split the gold with the village, the farmers make a ton of money from us, we employ many, many locals, paying them 10X what they would normally make, we pay taxes, and contribute a ton to the local economy. Airing in the slot behind Gold Rush, it had helped Discovery dominate the Friday night cable ratings. This is a tale of our times the new American Dream set in the jungles of Africa, the introduction read. There is no such thing as an emergency with a diagnosis of autism. Follows Americans George Wright and Scott Lomu, two hard working men who risk it all to strike it rich as part of a golden plan to recover from losing everything in the real estate crash of 2008. The cast and crew hid at a nearby compound, where they discovered Wright was suspected of murder and the authorities wanted them arrested. But their return to Ghana was to be even more troubled than round one. When I asked what he and others had made of the predominantly white film crew in their midst, he shot me a confused look. There are plenty of other channels. Soon we will be creating games and NFTs based on real elements. All the details of the secret MAFS boys night are spilt at a boozy dinner party that shocks the experts. They needed to find money, fast. of this type of mining? By the time the season ended, three Change.org petitions had called for the shows cancellation, drawing a total of 3,000 supporters from the U.S., Europe, South America, Australia, and across West Africa. It's humbling to see the poverty that exists there. Focused on the action, the show failed to explain the complicated licensing process, causing many to assume they were mining illegally. We didnt think it would make us look cool and it certainly didnt.. What do they think of this? We saw mining as an opportunity and used our cash to purchase some equipment. it was rated as one of the top programs on the Discovery Channel. I mean, not logical enough to actually do it, but they clearly considered the idea (and had a relative in the field) before diving in. Hes a gentleman whos a land broker. Around 2.75 million viewers tuned in, making it the fourth most popular primetime cable show that Friday night. Big fan of the show, one my friends is from Ghana and I got him watching the show as well. In 2011, Scott Lomu saw the Discovery channel TV show Gold Rush and was perplexed that it was a hit. The Mormons and their production team had paid a village chief $12,500 to mine a large plot of land, but they arrived to find it packed with Chinese miners. And I think thats evidenced as anything by the things that Scott and I have been doing. Watching the videos, I got the sense that Wright and Lomu, regretful over Jungle Gold, were trying to redeem themselves by portraying Guyana in a flattering light. Since small-scale mining is reserved for Ghanaians, he assumed the Americans were mining illegally. Season 2 of Jungle Gold premiered in the U.S. on Aug. 11, 2013. They got through it by dreaming up episodes for their nonexistent reality show. In one of the shows most-watched episodes, an excavator for Lomu and Wright is tearing up cocoa trees when an angry farmer approaches with a machete. WHEN two Mormons from Utah signed up to star in a reality show about gold mining in Ghana, they had no idea what they were getting into. But in Ghana, as in other former colonies, a strong aversion to neocolonialism endures. Nevertheless, the district officer demanded Raw visit the Minerals Commissions headquarters in Accra before they continued filming. The next six episodes unfolded in similar fashion. The show not only increased the chances theyd be recognized, he thought, it also provided a detailed map to their Season 1 mining claim, which lay on the same road as Fahiakobo. I was astonished, Mensah said months later. Only the most coldhearted, inhumane person could spend more than an hour in Ghana and think to do that. Cameras or no cameras, we went out there to provide for our families and I feel we let them down with some wrong decisions We didnt properly plan.. The Friday audience is a different audience. Nature Treasure Hunting Adventure & Exploration That Mormons would choose to deal gold in West Africa may seem odd, but the pursuit of gold carries historical significance in the Mormon church. Interview: Scott Lomu and George Wright of "Jungle Gold". But the optimistic, God-fearing pair are now back in the game, trying their hand at mining in Guyana, on South Americas Caribbean coast, posting hair-raising videos on Instagram. Contribute to changjiangsx/sbm development by creating an account on GitHub. Ghanas Minerals Commission had taken to decrying what it called the illegal mining menace., These controversies presented possible PR problems. According to Lomu, Raw later paid Akwesi $3,000 for his troubles. Fearing another attack, the Jungle Gold cast and crew evacuated Fahiakobo and holed up in Raws Domenase compound 20 miles away. Who gave you permission to work here? Akwesi demands, before tackling the crews Ghanaian security guard. So, so sad. To me, reality shows are like watching professional wrestling. And so they were deeply leveraged when the housing market collapsed in September 2008. There was also an image problem. Scott Lomu. George Wright has been appointed as Vice President of Public Relations and Scott Lomu as Vice President of Investor Relations. Searching to find out more about George Wright? The show, the first article said, captured horrifying scenes of foreigners taking over mining sites and killing indigenes. In the second, Fuseini promised to track down and arrest the two Americans. For instance, the men boasted of paying farmers 10 times their annual wages to mine on their farmland. He and his friend George Wright had gone to Ghana the previous summer to mine gold, and what he was watching on TV was ho-hum compared to the most uneventful day in Ghana. Additionally, Mr. Lomu has been appointed as Chairman of the Company . The series chronicles the continuing efforts of former real-estate dealers George Wright and Scott Lomu . He didnt even sound convinced himself when he said to the blonde Neanderthal that he was going back to Utah.for what? Aboagye was shocked. They whine at how poor they are, yet no wife works (the husbands hardly do either) they live in big mansions, drive fancy cars? I thank my parents. But its neocolonial echoes had caused Ghanaians at home and abroad to accuse Wright and Lomu of exploiting Africa for their personal gain. Discovery moved the show from Friday to Sunday nights, where it competed with NFL football for the eyes of American men, their primary demographic. There are so many ways to help in Africa, but we are shining a light on the problem of clean water in Africa along with http://www.worldserveintl.org and http://www.peoplewater.com So please donate to World Serve if you are so moved to help this amazing organization. G: Good question, for us this was nothing more than the right opportunity at the right time. Interview from the Chicago Resource Expo with George Wright & Scott Lomu from Discovery Channles hit show Jungle Gold Months later, on March 6, 2013, Wright posted a photo on Instagram of Raw interviewing Lomu outside a Utah diner. It may have been their worst nightmare, but it made gripping TV. He was still there when I showed up six months later. Content Rating. One day in Ghana is more dramatic than this entire freaking episode!. We work really hard and its really dangerous at times. This was never a get-rich-quick scheme. 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