I am engaged
I am engaged.
I am engaged to marry Louise Kane--a fantastic Jesus-loving, Holy Spirit enlightened and enlivened servant of God from Northern Ireland with stars-at-night eyes and a smile always eager to laugh and real and honest love always ready to share, with anyone from anywhere willing to acknowledge they need it.
I am engaged in nursing and nurturing and trying to feed a baby Athletic Department at Uganda Christian University--trying to get the kid from the womb into a muscle and discipline driven sprint that accepts nothing less than the best of itself.
I am engaged in teaching Moby Dick to a new group of third-year Literature students. My engagement in the Athletic Department was supposed to keep me from having to teach anything, but they asked and I asked if I could cut the reading list down to the one book (which I haven't read yet) and they said yes so I said yes.
I am engaged in balancing these engagements and meeting and learning from and especially enjoying all the challenges that accompany each of them. It was a lot easier a few years ago when I was driving a fork-lift during the day and writing a book at night when the Cubs weren't on. But this is a lot more fun.
I spent the second week of September in South Africa at the American International School of Johannesburg, with a couple dozen African coaches and a couple dozen NBA coaches and players and the best 115 male basketball players in Africa under 19 at the Basketball Without Borders camp. For about a thousand reasons it was one of the best weeks I've had in Africa. One afternoon I stood in the air-conditioned halls of the Apartheid Museum with 5 Arab kids over 6'6" from Sudan and Egypt and talked about the pit-falls of contemporary developed societies. The most vocal one (who can jump like crazy and shoot from anywhere) referenced the prominence of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Established historian that I am, I looked up at him and said, "Yeah, they were doing great until Pharaoh made the big mistake." "What was that?" he was looking down at me, but with no trace of a threat. "God asked him to do something and he didn't do it," I said. I'm not sure if it was good or not that our South African tour guide came up and told us we had to get moving. We shuffled down a hall, then came out of the building and talked about the NCAA Tournament and then they laughed at me trying to pronounce their names. I hope to be coaching in Uganda 3 or 4 more years, and I hope to attend this camp every year I'm here.
We just hosted the MTN League All-Star Game at UCU on Saturday. The top 20 players from 2nd Division (the division we're in), the Ladies Division, and 1st Division all came out to UCU and played ball and dunked and shot from noon to 9 p.m. I coached one of the 2nd Division teams and Robert Mugabe, one of the two brothers here on scholarship from Mombassa, played for my team and was MVP of the game. His brother Geoff won the 3-point shooting contest. The highlight of the day was the 1st Division game--about 25 dunks, virtually no defense at all and it was close the whole way. But the biggest thing was that it was played entirely under lights. We now have the only basketball court in the country with adequate lighting to play league games at night. Everyone thought it was great, but only a few of us thought it was miraculous--only a few of us knew that the poles holding the adequate lights weren't in the ground until 7 p.m. the night before.
Louise brought two groups of kids to the All-Star Game and we gave them a tent where they all sat together in the shade. One group of 15 or so was made up of children who live up the hill at a physical rehabilitation center called Cherub (where Louise's sister Denise works) that provides specialized treatment for kids with limbs damaged in various ways. They come to Cherub and stay up to a year having arms or legs straightened or lengthened by braces tightened with a pair of pliers every day. They love getting out of the clinic and they're starting to love basketball. The other group of 25 was made up of children of various ages found alone on the streets of Kampala and brought out to an orphanage and school where they're cared for by a dedicated Ugandan woman named Flavia. The highlight of the day for the street kids was the fifteen minutes we gave them to play their own music over the sound system and dance. They stretched it into 20 minutes and no one complained. No one enjoyed it more than Louise.
You've all got to meet Louise. Most of you will. Louise and Denise are coming over to spend Christmas in America. A wedding date will be announced soon.
God bless everything.