Standing on the stage of SF States's Knut Hall auditorium, thirty-one-year-old SF State alumnus Nathaniel Cogley never thought it would come to this--a squall of stormy ovations coming from a few dozen members of the university's international relations (IR) community.

Originally from a small Californian town, in his teenage years Cogley moved to San Francisco, where he was best known for his tough reputation as a high-school troublemaker with taste for baseball, 1.87 GPA, and no sense of academic direction. Now, an aspiring member of the American academia and a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science at Yale University, Cogley's identity is shaped by a number of unprecedented in scale accomplishments, including his first documentary Dakar To Port Loko: Perspectives From West Africa--a personal triumph and a reason for which he had been recognized at his former alma mater.

Focusing entirely on the thoughts and opinions of individual Africans themselves, and thus allowing their personalities and life stories to shine through their own narratives untainted by bias of the outside commentator, Dakar to Port Loko is a product of one man's two-year journey, both geographical and spiritual. And besides its educational value, it is a remarkable account in itself, for it is an inspirational and provoking story of dream-chasing, following through with a commitment, and a one-of-a-kind experience that transformed once apathetic D-average captain of the high school baseball team into a self-fulfilled intellectual.

This transformation, however, didn't happen over night. In fact, after Cogley's miraculous graduation from one of San Francisco's toughest public high schools, there were a few years of self-searching and career swings, with a number of junior colleges in the interim.

Financing his education from the earnings he made as a dishwasher and later as cook at an Italian restaurant, Cogley says he was unmotivated and bored. "I just didn't know what to study, it all sounded the same to me. You choose your career, you graduate, and you get a job. Than you get a wife and you love her, you get kids and you love them... Nothing exciting!" he says.

The excitement came when persuaded by a co-worker, Cogley dropped all of his classes, quit his job, got his best friend from San Francisco, and in a matter of weeks was fishing the rough waters of Bering Sea along the crew of the Alaska's oldest factory trawler, Katie Ann. Ironically, it was there, in the land of snow and salmon, that Cogley's love affair with Africa began.

While working eighteen-hour, no-weekend shifts as a deckhand assistant, Cogley befriended five of his crewmembers, who happened to be from West Africa. "I have never met real Africans before, and when I did, I got intrigued," he recalls. Learning about the history, culture, and challenges of modern Africans, and eventually developing a sense of responsibility for the lacking of peace and food continent, Cogley decided to give the academic career a second chance, and after a number of systematic brawls with the captain and an incident in which he almost lost a finger, Cogley cut his Alaska adventure short.

Upon his return to Sierra College, he was able to finish his GE studies in two semesters, and after getting the letter of acceptance from SF State, took his fishing money and went to Africa during the winter break of 1998/1999.

Having experienced the beauty and poverty of Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Cote d'Ivoire, he came back a changed man. "I loved the culture and the vibrancy of those places. But I hated the poverty and the war. So I thought 'I'm going to have a purpose. I'm going to help.'"

As he began his major in international relations with a minor in West African studies, Cogley quickly became a rising star of the department. "For the first time in my life I was a motivated student. I did all my homework, read all my textbooks, and even things that were not assigned," he recalls. "The IR gave me a sense of purpose. But the higher I got in this field, the more I felt I was just sitting in front of the computer... I needed my excitement back."

So in January 2002, after graduating magna cum laude the previous fall, he packed his Canon Elura 2MC camera--a graduation gift from his father--took whatever was left from the thirty thousand dollars he made while working as a nighttime driver for the San Francisco-based Luxor Cab company, and went back to Africa.

He started to film his movie in late 2002, after spending a year in the Senegalese village of Ngaparou and the country's capital Dakar, mostly reading and studying for the GRE, which, although from the second attempt, he passed with a perfect score.

Traveling throughout the continent and always keeping his camera rolling, in the following year he visited villages, towns, and refugee camps in nineteen African countries, interviewing struggling commoners trying to make ends meet, tribal chiefs full of centuries-old wisdom, refugees with amputated hands, and guilt-ridden former Revolutionary United Front rebels in the resettlement camps of Sierra Leone. The result was an astonishing account and a subject of praise from the IR students and faculty alike, both from SF State and beyond.

Lazslo Barkoczy, a SF State international relations major who has personal interest in African Studies, says that "from the IR perspective the movie is very relevant because of lack of information we have on Africa. It's important that we analyze and understand it... He [Cogley] did it in a way that is realistic and found a democratic way to show it--not just a research project... He went there and understood."

According to Cogley's former instructor, SF State's IR and African studies professor Aguibou Yansane, Cogley's creation is an embodiment of hidden truths about West African existence, which are "often avoided by the high profile documentaries and news reports in and on Africa."

From his point of view, one can "learn much more from this documentary than from anywhere else," for it "adequately expresses the views of the common people of West Africa," which is "important because many Europeans and Americans often hold absurd ideas about African cultures." Unlike other educational videos on the subject matter, "this film shows that many Africans are very humane and strive to do well like every other human being." Moreover, in contrast to stereotypical and racist perceptions and misjudgments that are prevalent in the West, Dakar to Port Loko shows that Africans are not uneducated and irrational isolationists, as they are often portrayed, but strong and intelligent survivors, who despite being trapped in a world very different from that of the U.S., "are well aware of world affairs," says Yansane. And because of it, "I think what he's [Cogley] done should be a stimuli for everyone."

As for Cogley himself, he believes that although he has achieved success on many levels, there's always a room for more. Well aware of the continual need for self-reflection and self-improvement, Cogley has "a certain sense of fulfillment from the breadth of experiences that I've done over the years, both domestic and international." Overall, "not everyone gets to grow up in both a small town and a big city, attend a dysfunctional inner-city public high school and an Ivy League graduate program, grow up in the USA and independently travel throughout sub-Saharan Africa, work as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and a nighttime taxi driver in San Francisco, and all the while interact with all the wonderful, interesting, and talented people that I've meet along the way. Of course, I'm still a young thirty-one, so hopefully the interesting and varied experiences will continue for some time to come."

Currently working on his dissertation, he will spend next academic year abroad and plans on making a sequel focusing on former African dictators. His advice to those who'll decide to follow in his steps is find something one's passionate about and pursue it. "To excel as a student you have to combine intellect with motivation. One of those alone is insufficient," says Cogley.

As far as life goes, "try to overcome nerves or any sort of fear and failure you might have. You are not in control of outcomes, only your individual preparation and execution. Focus on those two things in whatever you do, and you'll not only have a greater chance of success, but you'll be less likely to carry regrets with you into the future."