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.
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.
posted by Michael, aka Tex, aka Jett | 1:57 PM
2 Comments:
Oh my, what a way to earn money watching / protecting a parked car! Is the job ever dangerous or is there an honor code among the car bodyguards?
That's a good question, and I'm not sure I have the answer. My assumption is that it just acts as a deterrent, i.e. a car thief would rather go after an unguarded car than a guarded one. Kind of like how security systems in the US don't really prevent car thefts, just kind of deters them.
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