Jason’s Sheper's work life spanned 5 continents in a range of computer, financial and business experiences, a musical life as a jazz artist and choral master, a stint as an international development consultant with USAID and an MBA student at Oxford University. He has also owned a 4 star hotel and currently supports an elementary school. Jason and his wife Susan have collaborated on a number of projects, most importantly raising two children in Kinshasa DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo).
Jason’s life is worthy of cinema. He began as a teenager in the mailroom of a large American corporation. And to this day is grateful for the invaluable knowledge of people that he gained from the job. During the 1980’s he worked in sunny California for Computerland – and he relished the enthusiasm and “can do” attitude of the times and people. While at a meeting in Richmond Hill, he met Susan and to hear Jason tell, he decided right then that he wanted to marry her. They went on a date (to a Blue Jays game) and so it goes! She was only here for a brief visit as she was then living full time in the Congo.
Jason decided he’d visit the Congo with her (he had vacation time) and again, so it goes. They married. They returned to California but this version of “paradise” did not appeal to Susan whose life had been filled with much less gloss and more substance in Africa. Jason transferred to Europe and while in Luxembourg they meet a Belgian couple who overheard Jason and Susan talking about the Congo. And so it goes. They move to Kinshasa.
For those of us who know some of the history of the Congo, we know that violence, cruelty and corruption have scourged the land since Belgian colonialism. (Read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; a template for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” film about Vietnam.)
