Engineers Can Be Heroes Too

I asked Andrew what I should write about here, what he would like to hear about. All he mentioned was that he wanted me to write about how bad "The Ghost and the Darkness" was. His major complaint with the film (and I call it a "film" here rather than a "movie" intentionally) was that Val Kilmer's character, who was the mastermind behind the search parties which eventually saved the village from the lions, was in actuality a civil engineer. The error inherent in my brother's line of thinking is that civil engineers cannot be lion-hunting heros. Andrew, I must remind you that this film was based on a true story. Therefore, at some point in time, this engineer must have truly inspired the natives of the village to face their fears and hunt the lions. Engineers can be heroes too, Andrew. Engineers can be heroes too.
But this is a digression from what I was planning on writing about today, the coaching of basketball. The school managed to purchase two balls from town somehow, so beginning last week we started playing again. We practice three days a week, usually for about two hours or so. I suppose that my biggest problem is that I simply do not know how to coach basketball. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I was never a highly skilled player. In fact, I have forgotten most of what I knew about the fundamentals of basketball, such as where a forward is supposed to stand and what he should do. My students who come to play, they have a surprising amount of raw talent, and they keep asking me to teach them new abilities. Now, the real challenge here is keeping the respect of these students who have this natural skill when I myself am lacking a bit. Yesterday there were about 20 of us who spent an hour practicing shooting, I was trying to teach them to "shoot like Mike". The unfortunate part of all this is that I myself am unable to shoot like Mike. Now, because our school has 600 students and because there are so few diversions for them, many students come just to watch us practice. In America, we called this the "peanut gallery", and here they behave the same way. They sit on the sides and mock the players who are less skilled or make errors so that it makes many students afraid to try out. What should I do about these rascals? Its nice to have an audience, especially during scrimmages, but not one who is insulting the players. In fact, when I was attempting to teach them how to shoot yesterday, the commentators began trying to harass me, the coach. They were saying I should show them how it was done, if I knew so well. How do you respond to that? I took a ball and shot the best I could, but it rimmed out. Then, they started heckling me in Swahili. Here I must go into an aside. For those of you who have ever known a language being spoke around you that wasn't your first language, it is almost like eavesdropping. Especially when those speaking this second language assume that you don't know it. When I am coaching I use English, as is mandated by the school. The players on the "court" whom I have spoken to in Swahili started laughing, knowing that I understood everything that these others were saying. I listened to them saying how "the white man can't even score himself", "we need an African coach, he is no good", "this technique for shooting is bad" and so on. I had to laugh myself, and finally I told them I understood what they were saying. They got embarrassed and quieted down, except for one who seemed intent on challenging my authority and continued running his mouth. I am not an authoritarian by any means. I think these kids could probably learn to play almost as well without me, and I won't demand their respect just because I am their coach. But it does bother me to be disrespected, so I told this little rapscalion, in Swahili, to put up or shut up. He sauntered onto the court, took his time to set up his shot, making sure everyone was watching him. Then he took one of those shots that little children take, throwing the ball with both hands from behind the head. He airballed, badly, and it was glorious. Once the laughter had subsided, I proceeded to tell him that, if he wanted, I would teach him how to shoot sometime, but that for today I wanted him to leave. I think he would've left anyway, he was pretty ashamed. Then we continued. What do you think, did I handle this correctly? I don't want to be a harsh coach, making the spectators leave if they aren't playing. A little good-natured jabbing helps to inspire sometimes as well. So I don't want to always run these kids off, but I hope the situations won't continue to exacerbate like that. What if he had made his basket? I suppose I got lucky. Anyway, I guess I wrote that little story just to see if anyone had any advice on being a coach, especially with the particulars in basketball.
That's it for today. I'll try to do something hilarious this upcoming week so that I have a funny story to write. One last thing, if any noble person has desired to call me since I've been here, but hasn't due to cost, my mom emailed me the name of the phone card she's been using. You can buy one at the site Alosmart.com. The name of the card itself is "Desert Express" (glamorous, no?) and it is something like 12 cents a minute. If you forgot my number, in its entirety it is 011-255-748-254-271. I got one or two random calls before, but I think they were direct from a cell phone and quite expensive. My phone gets pretty good service here, but it cuts out now and again, so if you try and fail, perservere. Take care, peace out.