Giving...

I've got the ice-pack on my hand, bags under my eyes and a goofy grin on my face today. My weekend was spent at Shishu Polli Plus, a women and children's refuge in Mowna, about an hour and a half from Dhaka... From the invitation letter sent out to prospective volunteers: In cooperation with Shishu Polli Plus, a village in Mowla, about 2 hours from Dhaka, The Big Bangs will be running a 1-day clinic at the village, handing out t-shirts and basketballs and installing 4 new basketball rims and backboards. The village is a refuge for women and children, with some 350 children, many of them orphans, living on-site. We expect to cater for about 480 kids during the clinic. The Big Bangs have previously run a kids camp in cooperation with Home for Hope, an orphanage and school in Tongi. This camp is yet another big step for the Big Bangs, and we cordially invite you to be part of the experience. It was always going to be an ambitious project; 480 children over a single day, installat...

Pictures thanks to Jez.

I injured my hand 2 weeks ago while playing in a tournament... Sorry about these details mom, maybe you should skip this paragraph... the game was intense; we were playing one of our arch-rivals, a team who were known to play very physical basketball. I had been playing in a way I hadn't in years, coming off screens so close I could see sweat beads forming on my player's face... My center was being beaten by any means necessary, deriving us of our primary scoring option... after being humiliatingly blocked taking a 3, I started to heat up, knocking down textbook-pretty jumpers from all over the court, fighting off my defender who had decided that today was the day to act like my skin and stay stuck to me... slowly we pulled away, needing only 2 more baskets to win... I came off another screen, my defender still holding me as he had the entire game... yet this time, instead of holding my shirt, he was holding my hand... I felt a sharp sting, but kept going... my team-mate del...

Rodrigue and I have barely slept in the last 2 weeks... we try to get some downtime wherever we can, which means we usually nap in vans when we're stuck in traffic, or at friend's houses... one of us stays awake to keep the conversation going while the other snoozes off, then we swap... Seems like there's just not enough time in the day to get everything done for the Big Bangs... Here we are at 8am on a Friday morning, off to another tournament... As a result of all the running around my hand still hasn't had time to heal, and my immune system is so low that I've caught Rod's flu... Still wouldn't trade it for the world...