Saturday morning in South Africa, Portland Trail Blazers forward Al-Farouq Aminu will be one of 19 NBA players playing in the league’s first ever game on the African continent.

“To play for Team Africa and this being the first NBA game in Africa, it’s amazing,” Aminu said in a conference call from Johannesburg on Thursday morning. “You just hear a lot of people saying ‘welcome home’ and ‘this is the motherland.’ I feel like everybody has a different connection to itâ€”to Africa.”

Aminu, the son of a Nigerian immigrant father, Aboubakar and a mother, Anjirlic, from Queens, New York, is making his “sixth or seventh” trip to the continent and his second trip to South Africa.

Aminu also brought Anjirlic with him on the trip and it’s her first visit to Africa. He was there in 2012 and since, the basketball infrastructure has greatly improved.

“It’s so much more infrastructure that is up,” Aminu said. “I think we were playing in outdoor courts last time and now we are in indoor courts that are very nice. It just changed from top to bottom. It’s running like a well oiled machine by now. I guess that’s why they’re able to play an NBA game now.”