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.