Playing for Peace
This morning I got a rejection letter (well, it was an e-mail actually) from the only other international job I had been seriously considering. The job was with this interesting NGO that starts basketball leagues in regions with histories of ethnic and/or religious conflict - bringing children from both sides of the conflict together to play on mixed race/mixed religion teams and participate in a seemingly well-designed life skills curriculum. Coincidentally, they run a basketball league in Durban, SA and I was initially very excited about the possibility of working with them as a Program Director. However, as things came together with this public health position at the McCord Hospital in the past month, I had almost given up on the NGO job. But it's still never fun to get rejected.
I'm actually thinking about writing back to my contact at the NGO and letting him know that I'm going to be in Durban anyways. I wonder if they might let me volunteer some of my time to help them out with their programming. We discussed it briefly during my interview when I mentioned that there were some public health positions in South Africa that I was also looking into. It would be really great to see the work that they are doing, and I would love to have the opportunity to meet a group of other young Americans to hang out and hoop with. I don't have any idea what my daily schedule will be like when I get to Durban, but I can't imagine that there's any harm in asking if they might be able to use some free labor.
These first few posts have been pretty formulaic, I think. I can't tell yet if it's a good thing or a bad thing. At Amherst we have a blog-esque site called PlanWorld and I had done some writing on that, but this seems to be a different beast altogether, and I guess I'll just figure it out as I go along.
Finally, does anyone have any good digicam suggestions? I need a new camera before I leave, and I can't figure out what kind I should get; the only things that are important to me, i think, are the size of the camera (very small) and the lapse between pushing the button and the picture actually being taken (very short). My brother has a Cannon Powershot Elph and he seems to like it, but that's about all I have going for me at the moment. Thanks for information you guys can share.
Audioblogging will commence tomorrow? Saturday? Stay tuned...
Labels:
basketball,
camera,
Durban,
international NGO,
South Africa
2 comments:
Beers, I have nothing but time on my hands, so I can help you with this digicam search. I've also coincidently been helping my brother out with the same quandary before he packs up and leaves for Australia. Canon is a good brand, and some of their models have decent shutter lag, and of course as you know their ELPH line is ultra-compact. This thing with shutter lag and ultra-compacts is that you will be hard-pressed to find a camera that is that small and has a shutter lag under 0.5 seconds. It isn't until you get in DSLRs and spending upwards of $1500 that you get nearly instantaneous image capture when you press the shutter button. Anyway, check out these two cameras...
Canon PowerShot SD600 ELPH, a bit above $200, average of 0.7 second shutter lag
Canon PowerShot SD700 ELPH, around $300, average of 0.5 second shutter lag
Even though the SD700 is the latest model, I'm not sure that the 0.2 difference in shutter lag is worth an extra $100. One other difference is that the SD700 has 4x optical zoom while the SD600 only has 3x. Not that huge of a difference, but it's something to note. Give me a call on my cell if you have any questions. Good luck bro.
Thanks, Drew. You're a gentleman and a scholar. I'll let you know what I decide...
Post a Comment