Apparently, white men CAN jump

I’ve had several experiences here with basketball. The first happened to be at the local high school, which has been well documented on this site already. Another one came when some guys were taunting me when I was passing by the court one day. So I decided to destroy them, dunking on them and insulting their momma’s the whole way. I don’t know of that’s what is culturally appropriate here, but it’s what you do back in America. And dunking? you ask. The hoop was about 6 inches shorter than normal, which was just the little bit I needed to send them home crying.

Well, Victor was at a meeting with the Social Welfare big wigs the other day with a few other orphanages. The conversation went like this:

Big Wigs: We want to sponsor your orphanages to enter a youth basketball tournament for kids ages 10-12. It starts in exactly 5 weeks.

Other orphanage directors: But nobody from any of our orphanages has ever played basketball before. How will ever find somebody to teach them in time?

Victor: Hey, we have a white guy from America at our orphanage. I bet he can do it. They play basketball in America.

Other orphanage directors: Are you sure he knows basketball?

Victor: He’s really tall.

Directors: Hallelujah, we’re gonna win it all!

And in case you think I'm taking artistic license with the coversation, that is literally what Victor told me happened almost word for word. Now, their assumption of my knowledge of basketball is about as stereotypical as asking that black guy in the movie “Office Space” about money laundering. But in this case, they got lucky. And I was more than happy to teach the kids basketball. After all, it’s not like after rounding up all the kids we’re gonna get to the court to practice and find a group of kids that have been practicing for over a year all doing conditioning and situps and pushups.

OHMYGODTHERESAGROUPOFKIDSTHATHAVEALLBEENPRACTICING-

FOROVERAYEARALLDOINGCONDITIONINGANDSITUPSANDPUSHUPS!!!!

After we pulled ourselves together emotionally, I got to talk with the coach of these other kids, who’s parents had hired him to coach their kids after they heard about the tournament last year. Well, our kids jumped right in and started right in.

After a long time of just watching dumbfounded.

Coaching kids from three different orphanages is kind of tough. Lucky for me, I had a lot of help from my friend Tomo. He is great at helping the kids and also great at defense. Here he is just before stealing the ball from not one, but TWO kids who have never ever played basketball before in their lives.

It’s going to be a long uphill road, but I do have a few aces up my sleeve, two kids that I like to call Hakeem Olajuwon and Akeem Olajuwon.

That is if if H/Akeem Olajuwon was 12 years old, Mozambican, two of him, and towered over everyone else by a head and a shoulder.

Anyways, after a hot Saturday morning of practice, as we were driving away every kid was asking me if there’s practice before next Saturday, because they really want to do it sooner. And I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated on how progress is (or is not) coming along.