Hasheem Manka

Most of you have probably heard the name Hasheem Thabeet. He's the Tanzanian player selected #2 overall in this year's NBA draft - the 2nd highest African taken in the draft behind only Hakeem Olajuwon. Quite a feat and one that required a lot of help along the way. If you check his wikipedia page it notes that he was discovered by "an agent" while in Nairobi. Over the weekend I heard the real story.

Now, first a caveat. Truth in Africa is not like truth in other places. I'm not saying things aren't true, I'm just saying that the bar that must be reached for something to be declared true isn't quite as high. It's not traditionally a part of the culture to do investigative journalism on all rumors. Instead people just trust authoritative figures to be truthful. So while I can't exactly verify this story, it's the one I heard from an authoritative source, in fact the person who claims to have found Hasheem.

We'll call him Moses. He's a decent basketball player with good foot speed and a quality jumper. But Moses's biggest talent is his mouth. The man can talk, and will, non-stop. Even on 3 hour bus rides through Africa. This talent has served him well and he's doing well for himself now, but that wasn't always the case.

Moses's story actually starts in America. California to be exact where he moved with his father at 7 months old. His father, also a Cameroonian, was working on a PhD at Stanford in Economics. Moses spent several years in America, but was soon forced back to Cameroon when his father's studies finished. People in America tried to convince his father to stay and get a job at the World Bank or IMF, but his father has a passion for his country. As a result, he has spent the rest of his life trying to develop Cameroon, with little to show for his efforts. Instead the family was always low on money and respect. Moses's father, always mindful of the importance of education, managed to send Moses to Nairobi to finish his college degree. But Moses had other plans.

Moses began associating himself with a Cameroonian named Oliver (mentioned in this article) who had made quite a lucrative career out of sending boys to the US to play basketball for high schools and colleges. Moses told me that Oliver typically gets $50,000 for every boy who goes over. The boy's family is expected to pay a large chunk of that, and, if not, will be in debt to Oliver. Moses was anxious to start a career of his own in Nairobi and not fall into the same poverty trap his father had tripped into. Oliver told Moses that if he could find some tall players in Kenya then they could do business. Months passed without any luck for Moses and he was running low on money. Oliver fronted him some money to maintain a residence and for food. Finally Oliver grew disgusted and gave Moses an ultimatum - find talent or find another job.

Around that time Moses had been hearing rumors about a 7-footer who had just moved to Nairobi. After asking around basketball circles he heard that a guy named Sharif was attending a local private high school. Moses visited the school that day and at the gate asked for a tall guy named Sharif. The guard looked puzzled but eventually made the connection to Hasheem and pulled him out of class. Hasheem had never met Moses, but acted as though they were friends so the guard wouldn't ask questions. Moses explained why he was there and what he could do for Hasheem. Hasheem talked it over with his mother and then agreed to let Oliver and Moses help them.

Oliver dropped Hasheem's last name which was Manka, leaving him with just his first and middle names - Hasheem Thabeet - because he thought it would be catchier. They measured Hasheem and found him to be a solid 7'2" and of legitimate age (it's almost impossible to believe either size or age for most African basketball players - remember our lesson on truth?) He then called up Marvin Menzies, who was at the time an assistant coach to Rick Pitino at Louisville and is now head coach at New Mexico State. Marvin, through Oliver, agreed to pay for Hasheem to attend high school in the US where he was moved to three different high schools in order to find the highest bidder for Hasheem. It was around this time that Moses and Oliver had a falling out and Moses was no longer included in the business plan for Hasheem. Although Oliver tried to convince Hasheem to attend Louisville, Thabeet chose UConn instead. Moses believes that no money was exchanged for Hasheem's services.

In the next few years Hasheem tried to distance himself from Oliver who kept wanting Hasheem to turn pro so that Oliver could cash in sooner. When Hasheem finally did turn pro, stories about Oliver's underhanded dealings began to crop up and Hasheem severed all public ties to the Cameroonian businessman. That being said, Hasheem's current agent has been linked with Oliver and most believe that Oliver is still pulling the strings. Moses thinks that Oliver is asking for a payoff that will probably keep growing as Hasheem's career does.

Eventually Hasheem distanced himself from Moses as well as he tried to sort out whom he could trust. Moses says that he spoke to Hasheem two days before the draft and Hasheem said that he would eventually like to help Moses out once he's comfortable with the situation.

Like I said, I can't verify this story as true. But after spending some time on the ground looking for basketball talent in Kenya, I can verify that those kids would do just about anything to make it to the US and there are definitely businessmen willing to profit from such a business.

Africa finds a way

It's Sunday night and I'm sitting at a coffee house in Nairobi. On Wednesday I sat at this exact coffee house. In between is a very long story. I'll try to condense it here for you and maybe throw out a few thoughts about Africa in the process.

My job this week was to coordinate and manage two basketball camps in Western Kenya. As near as we could tell, there is a little underground basketball movement in Kenya that just hasn't received support from the top of society. This is actually very rare for Africa. You never see kids playing pickup games at a park like you do here in Kenya. It's football (soccer) first, second and last. But Kenya's different. First off, they're specially suited for basketball. Because of the gradual migration of tribes from Sudan, there's a lot of height in the area - particularly from the Luo (Barack's tribe), which traces roots back to the Dinka (Manute Bol's tribe). So the boys are naturally tall and very athletic. Second, Kenya has developed enough to have some basketball infrastucture across the country - mostly at high schools sponsored by churches.

So, like I said, we'd heard that kids could play, but didn't know how popular the game could be. We found out in a big way this weekend that we may just be sitting on a gold mine here. Our two camps were very poorly advertised as we had some troubles with Sprite, our sponsor, and couldn't hit the ground until last week. The kids, therefore, had a matter of days to prepare. On Saturday we were in Eldoret where we expected 75 kids to show up. By the time we finished registration, 190 names were on our list - some coming from as far away as 120 miles in a 5 hour bus ride that morning. It was insane. The court was outside the city, but hundreds of people came out just to watch. We found three good, potentially great players - 6' 5", 6' 7", and 6' 8", all under 17. They're raw because of a lack of proper coaching, but they've got incredible potential. In Kisumu the turnout was slightly less - 140 - but that included 15 kids taller than 6' 6", including three guys at 6' 10". I ran a special big man camp just for those guys and felt like I was training a D-1 bball team.

So the camps were a big success and we haven't even hit the two biggest cities in Kenya yet. Yikes.

Ok, but on to the rest of the weekend, which I've decided to break down into special award categories:

Most Efficient Use of Brainpower:

This one goes to me not because I'm especially intelligent, but because I managed to employ every ounce of wit in my system to pull the camps off. As I mentioned, I became the de facto camp director when it became clear that nobody else on our staff had every even been to a camp the size we ended up with. Mind you I've never been to a bball camp in Africa, don't speak the language, were given coaches that spoke English as a second language and had little basketball knowledge themselves, and ended up with almost 200 kids on just two courts. Craziness. All with the pressure of our sponsor, Sprite, expecting a world class camp that would make the whole program look professional. Don't ask me how, but we pulled two camps out of a hat this weekend without many hitches and even managed to teach the kids a thing or two.

This is a great example of what one of my bosses in Malawi used to say to me -"Africa finds a way". Some how, some way, when it looks like all hope is lost, Africa finds a way. He used an example he had heard of some friends that were traveling overland in a Jeep through DR Congo. They came to a river that had no bridge for hundreds of miles through the jungle. All hope appeared lost until after a couple of days the local villages built a makeshift raft from bamboo and floated the Jeep across. That's kind of how the camps felt for me - floating on a makeshift raft that barely makes it across the river.

Best example of the phrase "Africa Finds A Way" (or simply The TIA Award):

This one goes to Africa. Let me explain my Saturday to you. I woke up early in the morning in Eldoret to try to put together a basketball camp for 190 kids and a nosy sponsor. After closing out the camp at 6:00 and hitting the road bound for Kisumu -normally a two hour drive - darkness fell upon us. It's never a great idea to drive at night in Africa because the cars/headlights are so bad. It's especially bad to do so when it's raining, and it's even worse to do so on a dirt/mud road. So as we were going down the muddy road in the dark during a rainstorm for about an hour, we rain into a scene straight out of a movie - a horror movie. An 18-wheel truck had slipped in the mud and ended up across the road making it impossible to pass from either side with two muddy ditches on each side. We couldn't turn around because it was an hour back to the last main road and we'd have to do it in reverse because there's not enough space to u-turn. Luckily there were several other matatus (mini-buses) in the same predicament. And they knew exactly what to do.

Through sheer manpower they lifted the truck out of the ditch and placed it back on the main road. But here's the best part. They moved it only far enough so that the cars couldn't pass on either side without falling into a ditch. Their idea being that if they create a barrier then they can collect money from the cars to help them pass along the side. Our driver got out and negotiated a 500 shilling ($7) fee for the services of the makeshift road crew. We set out alongside the truck and everything was going well until one of the 20 guys holding up our van noticed a mzungu (white person) in the backseat. At which point their boss says that the price jumped to 1000 shillings ($14). I'm actually happy to pay it at this point just to get home since it was 9:00 and we still had two more hours on the road. But our driver, Gregory, drove a had bargain and we ended up only paying 500 shillings and somehow ended up on the other side of the truck. Africa found a way.

TIA

Most Frustrating Travel Moment:

This goes out to the Sunset Hotel in Kisumu. After a full day of running a camp for 190 kids and our 4 hour ordeal on that road at night we got to the hotel at 11:00 at night. At which point the hotel politely informed us that our rooms had been given out. Well, actually it took them an hour to finally confirm that our rooms had been given out and the best they could do was put us in a taxi bound for another hotel on the other side of town. We were never given an explanation of why the rooms were given away, especially since we could clearly see keys for 10 unoccupied rooms behind the front desk. It wasn't until I got back to Nairobi that a theory came to life. The story goes that a month ago 5 British students traveled to Kisumu for a research project, staying at the same hotel we tried to. One of them ended up having Swine Flu, which caused the entire hotel to go under quarantine for 2 weeks thus shutting down their. So one of our friends in Nairobi surmised that when the hotel operators saw a white guy walk in they decided all the other rooms had been booked. What a day.

All in all, though, it was a great trip and I never felt more alive than when I was out working with all those kids or traveling on those backroads through Western Kenya. This is my world. I was actually struggling with all the time I've spent at the office in South Africa and wasn't quite sure how I could handle much more of it...until Africa found a way.

A couple of pics from the camps are at the top. I'll get some more up on Facebook later. Tomorrow I'm gonna try to bring you the inside story of how Hasheem Thabeet was discovered and brought to the United States.

On a midnite train to...

For those scoring at home, the answers to the British trivia questions from the previous post are as follows: A torch is a flashlight, a globe is a light bulb, and rocket is lettuce. I knew only one of those before last week.

So on Tuesday of this week I'm getting on a plane bound for Kenya. Flight leaves South Africa at just past midnite and arrives in Nairobi at 5:30am, Wednesday. Then it'll be a quick jaunt to Java House for a nice blend of Kenyan Arabica and Ethiopian coffee beans and we'll get the day started. We're going to be running basketball camps that serve as talent searches in four cities in Kenya - Kisumu and Eldoret this weekend, then Mombasa and Nairobi a couple of weeks later. The camps are being held in local schools (basically wherever we could find a couple of basketball courts) and will be turned into one big advertisement for Sprite (the main sponsor). The best 5 or 6 players will be invited to a similar camp in the capitol city a couple of weeks later, and then the best 5 or 6 players there will be flown to South Africa for the big NBA Basketball Without Borders camp taking place in Joburg in September. From there most of the kids get offers to play high school ball in the states. I cannot imagine the kind of pressure the kids will be under.

Ok, this is not a typical development project, and it's not something I'd want to do full time. But it is an opportunity to help some kids get somewhere they couldn't reach on their own. I'm going to do my best to look at the faces of the kids who are chosen and soak in the pure joy, but also glance around at the others to see the work that we've still got to do.

So that's my week. Camps take place on Saturday and Sunday with a lot of work to do until then. I'll try to take some good pics and maybe post some comments as it's all going down. Gonna be a crazy month though.

And just so it's not this post is not all about the inanity of my itinerary, here's another glimpse into life in South Africa:

Generally across Africa there's a little cottage industry that has been created around the parking of cars. In most African countries parking lots are "guarded" by local youth as a way for them to make some cash. Sometimes these are provided by the local stores, but more often than not they're just kids out to make a buck. The routine goes like this: They show you an open parking spot (which you would have found eventually), then watch the car while you're gone (although I'm not sure how far they'll go to protect the car from an armed robber), they'll offer to wash the car, and then they help you back out of your spot and you give them 50 cents. While I was in Mozambique with some friends we learned quickly the importance of this system. As we parked and ran upstairs to collect a few items we didn't bother to find a guard. In the 15 minutes we were away from the car one of the hubcaps had already been stolen. We ended up paying a kid $5 to stay up all night and watch it.

The difference in South Africa is that they take the last job the most serious. If you found a spot for yourself and then came back to your car to leave, they jump behind your car as you're trying to back out. They stand about a foot away from your rear bumper and "guide" you out. This is to make plain that you shouldn't run off without paying for your security detail.

This is development happening.

A White Texan in Africa

"Every time you say 'Africa is...' the words crumble and break. From every generalization you must exclude at least five countries. And just as you think you have nailed down a certainty, a defining characteristic, you find the opposite is true in other places. Africa is full of surprises."


That's a quote from a book I just picked up here called "Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles" by Richard Dowden. I didn't think I'd want to pick up another Africa travel book, but a cursory glance at the bookstore revealed some keen perceptions like the one above.

I think that one hit me because I'm onto week 4 of my time in South Africa and I've been having trouble putting into words my experiences. Last year as I was backpacking across Southern Africa I couldn't help but be inspired. Blog posts flowed effortlessly because I was basically just reporting back on the incredible images I saw and people I met. Frankly I just haven't been as inspired by South Africa so far. It's big, (relatively) rich, and (relatively) developed. Which is a good thing, right? I mean, this is what all the other countries in the region are aiming towards. So why am I so unsatisfied by this place?

I think it's because, as the quote above alludes to, I have a picture in my mind of what 'Africa is' and South Africa doesn't live up to it. It doesn't conform to my view of Africa as wild, with surprises around every corner, and most people flying by the seat of their pants. South Africa is orderly, well-planned, and a little boring. The McDonalds is down the street, the nice mall is in that direction (or that one, or that one, or that one). Gas stations have gas, grocery stores have all the food you're craving, and the highways will actually get you where you want to go. There's very little room for the spontaneity and unpredictability of the Africa that I came to know in my previous trips, and I guess I'm just a little disappointed.

Ok, it's not South Africa's fault. It's my own for trying to define Africa from my limited experiences. This is a new part of Africa that I need to learn from as well. Because this is where all those other countries are trying to reach.

So in an effort to get out and learn about South Africa, we made a trip down to Cape Town on Thursday morning for a 2-day training of some South African NGOs. The program is called Ke Moja (Fit for Life) and is devoted to limiting drug and alcohol abuse among youths in the Western Cape province. It's a little like the D.A.R.E programs in America. South Africa currently has an alarming rate of drug abuse among kids - something like double the global average. The government of Western Cape has handed over the management of the program to my organization. The program runs through local NGOs that we manage. It was at this training that I learned my first lesson about working in South Africa.

If you paid any attention to the news in the last 30 years, then you know that South Africa has had a rocky relationship between the races. That's putting it nicely. There's a palpable tension here when it comes to race. I think that's probably true to a certain extent in the US as well, but it's different here. People are much more open when talking about race. It rarely escapes a conversation. "Oh well you know white people are like..." or "You know how the brothas are." Thoughts that could be offensive in the US are spoken of openly here. It's like the races all conform to their proper rols in society and people have learned to accept it. And as long as everyone agrees, then there won't be any problems despite the inherent tension involved.

So I was here about a week when my current employer let on that one of the best things about bringing me over is that I'm white. I squirmed a little bit when he said it. His point is that since he's an African-American and everyone in the office is black South African, that they need a white person in the organization to deal with the white people we have to work with. Immediately I reasoned that maybe he's just sensitive about race in a way that a white person who has typically been the powerful majority might not be.

But the time I spent down in Cape Town with the NGOs gave some credence to his point. Both of the guys from my office I went down there with told me the same story. Apparently one of the government officials we're partnering with congratulated us on picking up a white person. They explained how much more respect we'll get from the NGOs and how much more professional we look. In fact one official said that, in spite of the fact that my coworkers have much more knowledge of the programs at this point, that they should put me out in front to make the presentations because it would look more professional. Then, at the end of the trainings my coworkers laughed as all of the white members of the NGOs crowded around me to get my advice about the project and to explain to me their own programs. My coworkers let on that those same NGOs had had a rocky relationship with us from the beginning - and credited it to the racial gap.

So race is definitely out in the open here, and I definitely haven't figured out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. As I put it to a friend earlier this week, on one hand they don't hide their racial tendencies like we do in the United States which makes it less of something that can be ignored. On the other hand people seem to expect you to conform to the predetermined tendencies that have been ascribed to each race. I think this is a matter which is going to take more research on m part before I can get across a conclusion. Luckily everyone seems more than willing to talk about race.


And now for the fun stuff. I've finally been able to upload some pics from my first few weeks here. They can be viewed here.

And here are a few more British vocab words for you to try to figure out: Torch, Globe, and Rocket. I guarantee you won't get all three. Good luck!!

And finally, I didn't get to do much touring of Cape Town on this trip, but there's a little pic to give you a taste of how beautiful the place is:

Alright, pencils down. The answers are as follows:

1) The "pound" symbol

2) traffic light - way to go Wellsey

3) pop the trunk

4) I still don't know - look it up.

5) quit working for the day

6) get fired

7) dead battery

Finally left the office on Monday and got a little dirt on my shoes. We've got a basketball program in one of the townships (slums) in South Africa called Soweto. The program's pretty basic because our funding ran out a couple years ago, but we maintain it with a volunteer staff. Right now we're just in two orphanages. So we take the kids for a few hours each week and see if we can pass on some basketball skills. It was great to get out there and put my coaching hat back on. The kids are middle school-aged and down and aren't that great of athletes. So it's more like a PE class in the States with slightly less structure.

They've been working on skills for the past couple of months and have been begging to play their first scrimmage. So after an hour working on defensive shuffles, dribbling, and shooting, we chose teams and let them run up and down. I coached one team, and my coworker Tsakane took the other. Tsakane played some D-3 basketball in the States and is currently on the South African National Basketball team. Plus his uncle is known as the King of African Soccer so he's pretty well known around Soweto. But in the end my little guys and girls won two out of three games and were jumping around like they had just beat the Lakers for the NBA Championship. I realized that it was the first basketball game they had ever won. I thought that was pretty cool.

Beyond the basketball, it was really enlightening to drive through Soweto with a South African. He showed me the church where all the ANC martyrs were buried, and the spot where the white militants would hide and wait for mourners to come out of the church so that they could pick off the next top leader. It made me think about the fact that a white man had just returned to Soweto, drove by that same church, and worked with some of Soweto's forgotten youths and they never commented about my skin color. Things aren't perfect in South Africa, but they've been worse.


Not much else going on this week, so I thought it'd be fun to give a little quiz about some of the quirks about being an American in a former British colony. How many can you get right?

1) What's the "hash" button?

2) If I'm driving and see a "robot", what am I looking at?

3) If a cop asks me to "pop the boot", what is he asking for?

4) Without looking it up, what's the fahrenheit conversion for 15 degrees Celsius?

5) If I'm about to "knock off", what am I about to do?

6) What does it mean to get "sacked"?

7) What's a "flat battery"?


5-7 right = Congratulations! You're ready to go on holiday at a cold, sloshed, cloudy British beach!

3-5 right = Good, but better brush up with some episodes of Are You Being Served?

1-3 Right = Congratulations, you're now an honorary Texan!!

For posterity's sake I like to keep a running tally of some of the things that strike me as I wander through this new culture I'm immersed in. So in no particular order, here are some of the things that have struck my new eyes:

- My previous experience in Africa has very little relevance with my present circumstances. Living in Joburg is like living in any large European/American capitol. I pass Porche's and Audi's on the streets, everyone's got on better clothes than me, and the highways/roads compare with any place I've been. I've heard that 10% of all the wealth in Africa is within 30 minutes of me.

- One thing that does translate from one southern African country to another is a universal preference for old country music. Especially Kenny Rogers. WHY?????? It was the same in Malawi, the same in Zambia, and now has followed me here.

- Every person I talk to asks my how I'm handling Michael Jackson's death. I'm not really sure how to handle that one. Last night I went to a niteclub downtown (yep, you can imagine how comfortable I was) and they played MJ songs for a solid 30 minutes in tribute. Other American artists on the playlists included Puffy, 2 Pac, and LL Cool J.

- South Africans complain about money (or lack thereof) more than most cultures I've been in.

- One of my coworkers took me through one of the poorer townships in Joburg last night. Although there's definitely high crime and too much population density, the living standards are higher than all but maybe the top 5% of the population of Malawi - running water (sometimes unsanitary), electricity (with rolling blackouts), and digital satelite.

- The bus system is interesting. First off, they call them taxis which is confusing. Then, none of the "taxis" are labeled. So I asked my friend Base how he knows which taxi to take. He said you just have to ask. But if you can't find someone who knows, then you use hand signals to the drivers of passing taxis to let them know where you want to go. So for instance:
- If you want to go downtown you stick one finger up in the air.
- If you're only going a short distance you point your finger down for "local".
- There's one district called Orange where you hold out your hand as if you are holding an orange.
- If you're going to the train station then you hold your elbow at a 90 degree angle while making a fist and then move your arm in a circle as if you're mimicking a train. This is a fun one. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait..............................................

- My work gave me a blackberry that sends emails right to my hand. I didn't even have this in the States.

- There are like 13 official languages in South Africa, which is very confusing for someone who wants to pick up some helpful words. For instance, there are three network tv channels - SABC 1, SABC 2, and SABC 3. The first uses Zulu, the second uses Sotho, and the 3rd uses English. And then Afrikaans is interspersed throughout.

- Coffee is great here and reasonably priced - $3 for a 12 oz coffee and cinnamon roll. That's my breakfast just about every morning.

- Boys II Men are coming to Joburg on August 9th! I just might have to save up some cash for some good ol' End of the Road, It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, and I'll Make Love to You. Do I really have a choice?!

When you're jetlagged, everything is surreal...

I have finally arrived on the African continent and settled into my new house. It’s been a long strange ride since my days doing middle school boys’ laundry and cleaning up vomit as a high school coach back in Texas. The current moment is not quite reality yet, but it becomes moreso everyday. I had a particularly odd moment before my flight left the US as they were finishing up the Confederation Cup championship game between the US and Brazil which was taking place in Johannesburg, my final destination. Watching it on tv, it seemed like one of those far off places on the other side of the world that you’ll probably never visit. But for me it was my new home.

So far my first couple of days in the office have been busy enough that I don’t have much time to notice my surreal surroundings. It’s when I turn the lights off and lay in bed by myself that my mind tends to wander back across the ocean. Of course overcoming jet lag does not help put a restless mind to sleep.

But so far things have been very positive. I have the shortest commute to work in the world since our office is a converted house, of which I have the back bedroom. The good part of that is that I get visitors to my home everyday; the bad part is that I don’t really get to assert much of a boundary between my work and my home. Although I suppose I could build a fort in front of my bedroom door and wall myself off if I feel like having some good ol’ American space. Of course since I don’t really know anyone or anything to do in this city, I don’t really mind the company.

The biggest goal for my first week is to become comfortable with the projects I’m going to be working on. So for the viewing audience back home, here’s what projects I’m becoming acquainted with(in no particular order):

1) Sprite/NBA Basketball Without Borders – If you’ve ever watched an NBA game you might have seen advertisements from the NBA showing smiling happy African children being coached by NBA players. Well, my organization is in charge of one of the programs which is taking place in Kenya, Uganda, and Angola. I’m helping out with the Kenya/Uganda sites, which will necessitate me flying out and helping to identify the campers, coaches, and sites. And during the camps I actually get to do a little coaching which will net me some free swag. This will take place at the end of July or early August. We’re working on what NBA player(s) we’re going to have come out, which is a bit of a secret right now. That’s called a tease!!

2) Cape Town Consultant project – In this project we’re helping some local NGOs build up their capacity. They’re getting money from the South African government to combat drug abuse in the province, which is rampant. Basically the government gave the money without really being able to keep track of how well the NGOS are using it. That’s where we come in. The bottom line for me is that I’ll probably get to make a bunch of trips out to Cape Town to work on my tan…er, make sure the project is running properly.

3) New Zambia proposal – We just finished a program in Zambia using basketball to help teach life skills to kids in collaboration with the US’s anti-HIV campaign. So now we’re having to reapply for funds for the coming year. This is the one that is more in line with my own interests since I want to be out there implementing this kind of a project. The cool part now is that I get to kind of inject some new ideas into how we actually do the project. I get to use some of those smarts I picked up in grad school.

4) Soweto Basketball program – In the famous Soweto Township (the one where some major freedom rebellions broke out in the 70’s) we’re helping to develop basketball by running leagues and camps. This one’s cool because I should be able to get out there and do some coaching in close proximity to my home. Good times.

Alright, well this post was more informational than entertaining, but wanted to get this out there so you have a better idea of what I’m working on and what’s coming up.