Africa, so far.

We got into the airport at Johannesburg around 8 in the morning, apparently only 2 hours or so after the South African National Swim Team got home from London (damn). We drove to Pretoria, where I'm staying, and got settled in our house. Highlights of the living spaces include the big painting of Marlon Brando next to the TV and the fact that there are 4 glass walls than slide open completely to form 15 foot doors. Pretty cool stuff.

After a few weeks of reading, watching TV, and learning to do headstands I finally took the initiative and found some productive stuff to do. I started by working for my dad doing date coding and entry at the University, which I still do on Thursdays. I also am taking a class on Thursday at the University's Centre for the Study of AIDS, and will likely volunteer there once the course is over.

For a full-time job, I started volunteering at the Viva Foundation of South Africa. Viva has several branches, but I volunteer primarily at the Viva Village in Mamelodi, a suburb of Pretoria. Mamelodi is basically the hardest place ever to live. Dirt roads. One room, aluminum houses. No trash collectors, so people dump garbage by the lone stream through town. What Viva has there is a small complex consisting of offices, a preschool with a playground, a kitchen, church, and mini-mart. Behind the church (which is really just a space with a makeshift pulpit) is a safe house for orphans and at-risk kids and young adults. 

What I do at Viva consists of odd jobs like building a sandbox for the preschoolers, planting a garden, and helping haul stuff, as well as a long-term mission to get local youth involved with a basketball team. A lot of young boys here have too much free time and get in trouble. The justice system here isn't fair to them (a few weeks in jail before people take a look at who they are and decide that breaking a window doesn't merit 6 months), so keeping people my age occupied is a big priority for Viva. I'll go into more detail about my work at Viva soon.