Week II - Day 6

Basketball at Seguku & An 80^th Celebration at La Bonita – 7/29

We drove from Kampala to Seguku – about 25 minutes – to visit and some young South Sudanese kids who are very interested in playing basketball and coming to the US. Michael’s long-time friend, Ed Bona, asked him to pay a visit to a young man that he’s working on getting an academic and sports opportunity for him to go to school in Connecticut. While we were there, Michael was impressed and saddened at the same time.

The young men live in the area away from parents and with very little possessions: I could see the pain in Michael’s eyes when he watched the young men play. Some of them with shoes falling apart and tattered clothes.

What impressed him was the drive that all of the guys had to teach themselves how to play basketball. Lacking a coach, these young men watch as much as they can of NBA and teach each other what they’ve learned. I saw one young man showing two others how to dribble and cross the ball over. He would dribble the ball in front of him and right before crossing it over, he would have the other young man slap his hand so as to signal the time to cross. He was so patient and the other young man eventually understood how to employ the newly learned technique. Michael also let me know that the language they were speaking was a mash-up of a few dialects and how that pleased him to witness guys from various ethnic backgrounds getting along so well.

Of course, just as it wast time (in my mind) to go, Coach Mading decided that he’d had enough of seeing the guys play so sloppily. He rounded them all up, introduced himself properly, and commenced to putting those youngsters through some serious basketball drills. Did I mention that it was about 80 degrees and that the guys had been out on the court for about 3 hours before we got there?! Anyway, they did not complain and were encouraged by the lessons and extra practice.  It was the first time in a long time that I witnessed my husband get so involved. He was happy.

After leaving the ballers in Seguku, we road back to Kampala to get ready for an important event: Engineer Wassanyi Serukenya’s 80^th birthday celebration!