Five years ago, Justin Wren was a depressed drug addict with regular thoughts of ending his own life. A two-time national wrestling champion, Justin had been a quarter-finalist on The Ultimate Fighter, a reality-show vehicle for UFC prospects. But the underbelly of mixed martial arts became too much for the promising heavyweight. Justin left the sport, on a three-fight win streak no less, to save his life.

In 2013, Justin launched Fight for the Forgotten, an initiative to aid disenfranchised Pygmy slaves in the Ituri rainforest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Pygmies had lost their main food source with deforestation and become dependent on their slave masters to survive. The oldest people group in the Congo, the Pygmies were denied medical care and other basic needs, as they were not recognized as citizens. The slave masters called the Pygmies their “animals.” Through FFTF, in conjunction with Bunia’s Shalom University and Water4.org, Justin and his colleagues negotiated the release of hundreds of “the Forgotten People” in exchange for water wells. Those that were freed moved onto 2,470 acres of land bought by FFTF and Shalom on their behalf. Justin and his well-drilling team dug 12 life-saving wells during his one-year stay between 2013 and 2014. Since his return to the States, the Shalom drillers have completed 27 water wells and started farming programs to teach the Pygmies how to survive on their own again.

After a five-year layoff and a rough road getting back into fighting shape, Justin returned to the Bellator cage on 28 August to raise awareness for the Pygmies’ plight and to deliver on the promise he’d made to give them a voice. Justin won a unanimous decision and donated part of his earnings to FFTF. He plans to give his win bonuses to FFTF for the length of his MMA career. He’s pledged to help the Pygmies for the rest of his life.

Photograph: Howard Books

In his new book, “Fight for the Forgotten: How A Mixed Martial Artist Stopped Fighting for Himself and Started Fighting for Others,” Justin describes his life-threatening fight with malaria just a few weeks into his mission in the war-torn Congo. Thirty-three percent of the book’s sales will go to Fight for the Forgotten.

Am I dying? I asked myself, while the doctors argued with each other as if I wasn’t in the room at all. I was bedridden in my Shalom dorm room in Bunia only three weeks into my yearlong trip to the Congo. Was it malaria? No one could seem to agree.

How did I get here? That’s actually a long story for only three weeks time. I remembered landing on Halloween at Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport. During that first week, a Water4.org representative and I combed the busy streets of Kampala, searching for water-well parts. We rented a truck to carry hundreds of 20-foot pipes and 20 heavy-duty canvas duffle bags full of drilling equipment. I followed in a beat-up taxi for what was supposed to be a six-hour drive to Bunia, but with the muddy roads and the “traffic jams” that came with them, it took us 25 hours to get there.

Bunia, the city closest to the Pygmy tribes, was a mecca for peace-driven NGOs and has a UN presence, so it drew lots of missionaries, humanitarians, and aid workers from all over the world. News spread among us very quickly, especially when someone got ill. I was alarmed when I got word from Frank, a Norwegian missionary, that he’d come down with Typhoid fever. We’d eaten lunch and dinner together a few times and had been drinking the same juice. Not to be impolite, I ate a salad, a well-known no-no in the third world. We’d gone to a local, traditional Congolese place, where they could have made the juice without boiled water. When I went to visit Frank, the doctors had put a port in him for multiple IVs. I hoped I wouldn’t get sick.

The first thing I’d noticed was the throbbing joint pain in my fingers. It felt like the sore knuckles you get the day after a grizzly fight, but this aching spread to my finger joints, knuckles, and wrist. At least it wasn’t in my shoulders. Frank had told me that if the pain traveled into my shoulders, neck, and back, then I had malaria. Suddenly, my elbows felt achy. It was a Friday.

Wren left behind a fighting career to aid the disenfranchised Pygmy slaves in the Ituri rainforest. Photograph: Agung Fauzi/Seizetheday Photography

On Saturday, I woke up feeling off, but I tried to push through it. I didn’t have a fever; just body aches. I seemed to be sweating a lot as well. We heard that some other missionaries had gotten some kind of a virus, and chalking it up to that, I spent the rest of the day in bed.

On Sunday, I slept completely through my alarm for church. I knew I had a fever, as my bed was soaked in sweat. I bounced from hot to cold sweats all of Sunday until the guys thought it best I head to the clinic. The Bunia clinic had four rooms all packed into a one-room building with a small reception area teeming with sick children and the elderly. The doctor pricked my finger and let a couple of drops of my blood drip into a cartridge that worked like a pregnancy stick for malaria. It would only tell you yes or no.

While we waited for the results, a nine-year-old girl ran by and bumped the table and my quick test slid across the table, but the nurse caught it before it fell to the ground. I’d been told that it takes about 5-10 minutes to get the malaria test results, but my answer came back in about a minute. “No.” The nurse told me to sleep and I should be better the next day. I wondered if the bump could have messed with the results, but I left that up to the professionals.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and sweat and shivered. It was uncontrollable. In fighting, I’d always been the only one to get in the ice bath without chattering my teeth. I could control my body from shivering. This I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t just in my teeth or hands; my entire body was shaking. I put on extra blankets. I threw them off later. I took a fever reducer, and tried to get my mind off the shaking.

I woke up Monday with my Congolese friends standing over me in my dorm room. I told my team that I felt worse – way worse – and they prayed over me. They brought in a nurse, and from my symptoms alone, she could tell I had malaria. At this point, there was no doubt I was sick, but with the contagious virus that the other missionaries had circulating, they didn’t really want me coming back into the hospital and making others sick. Throughout the day, I became extremely nauseous and started vomiting. By now, my Congolese guys knew – they’d all battled malaria many times. My temperature skyrocketed to 103.5 Fahrenheit. I’d eaten two bites of a banana the whole weekend. My team brought me three meals a day and I’d tell them I couldn’t eat it. I love my food, but every bite was like a chore. My body was telling me “no.” I was given a second quick test and got a second negative result for malaria.

On Tuesday, my team brought Dr. Jean to my room, who drew blood and started a port in my arm for multiple IVs. He started giving me a medicine called quinine, which fights and kills the malaria parasites in the blood. An hour later, I started vomiting violently.

To all of our surprise, the blood test results were negative for malaria, but I did have low-grade Typhoid fever. Dr. Jean started treating the Typhoid very aggressively. My guys insisted I had malaria, but Dr. Jean kept pointing to three failed tests that showed otherwise. Dr. Jean did, however, keep me on the malaria medication just in case, though I vomited violently every time they gave it to me.

I couldn’t keep anything down. My body felt like it was on fire; I was profusely sweating and was so, so thirsty. But I just vomited up any water I drank. The waves of hot and cold continued. The shivering and sweating continued. My temperature dropped from 104 to 95 degrees.

Wren and his colleagues negotiated the release of hundreds of ‘the Forgotten People’.

That night, I needed of 24/7 care – I was that sick. When the nurses went to change my IVs, the power went out. The hydroelectric dam in Bunia had failed, which was a normal happening. My team stood around me with their cell phone lights. A doctor was holding a flashlight in one hand, trying to stick a needle in me with the other and he wasn’t very steady. I had already been told my veins were hard to find because I was so dehydrated. He finally figured out that he should put his flashlight in his mouth. The nurse, her son, and my friends, Ben and Patrick, laid mattresses on the ground and slept in my room that night.

I woke up Wednesday to full medical care. They drew my blood and gave me my fourth malaria test, which came back negative. There were three different doctors rotating in on me, none of them in agreement on just what I had. One doctor told me to get malaria out of my head. “It’s only making you sicker.” Each of them gave me different dosages of quinine, or none at all. I guess there was a discrepancy because I was twice the size of a Congolese man, so maybe I needed a double dosage. Anything and everything they gave me, I vomited back up.

You think I’d have been in a panic by now, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew there’d be obstacles and hurdles. Big things trying to stop me from what I was supposed to do. But the hurdles didn’t matter—the victory is always worth it.

When I was told I had dysentery, as well, I realized I was battling three of the top sicknesses that killed the Pygmies, all at once. I realized it was another opportunity to connect with my family. This is what I’d come for. I came to learn, not with statistics, but with my heart, mind, body, and soul. I had to learn what the Pygmies went through by going through it myself.

At this point, I was throwing up blood and bile. My mouth tasted like a rusty bucket of pennies. The smell was almost as sour as the taste. It got so bad, that I could hardly swallow. Tears started streaming because my throat was so raw.

On Wednesday night, the room started spinning. I felt like a ship rocking on stormy, ocean waves. I started to have a bad feeling. These doctors were going to kill me because there was no unity among the three of them. They all disagreed with each other.

Am I dying? I asked myself again that night, because if I was, it was time to do something about it.