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...