Day 9 – Adaptability

Project lead, Jonathan Todd reports on the days activites down South…

Today was the first time the team was coaching outside of the beautiful city of Kigali, which is our base for the full two weeks. We had an early start even though the locals said it was only one and a half hours drive to our school for the day, Hanika primary and secondary in the Nyanza Provence. We would be coaching the primary children first then the secondary in the afternoon.

When we finally arrived at the school taking a total of two hours (good job we allowed for two hours) I quickly found out where we were coaching for the day, which turned out to be a further 5 minutes drive away (TIA). Once we arrived at the ground and over took the children on the way, with many shouts of muzungo from smiling happy primary school children looking forward to taking part in cricket we quickly set up some skills and games. In total we had around 100 children taking part in cricket drills and learning their ABC's and T and why it is important we need to remember them not only playing cricket but also in life.

After a long wait for our lunch at a local restaurant/bar it was time to head back for our afternoon session with the secondary school, where we were expecting 40-50 children in our first hour and another 40-50 in the second. Typically in African fashion the children were not ready for our two o'clock start and we later got cracking around 2:30 where this first group would be leaving us at 3 o'clock for another to arrive at three, we were just about to dismiss the group for the other which had started arriving but they had no class to go to after and we only had about a dozen for the next session. We decided to merge the two groups together for the final hour where we did sessions on fun catching drills and then finished with games of kwik cricket and quick fire cricket. A big wrap up on the ABC's to finish with and the usual photo, we finally said fair well to Hanika and hope to see them at the festival on Friday.

As I write this we are travelling back to Kigali through heavy rain with most of the team asleep and me trying not to look at the steep drops, beside the roads. Tonight we are heading to sundowner bar for something to eat and a few Mutzigs. Ready for an even earlier start tomorrow where we are heading off to Lycée de Nyanza in the morning and then ETO Gitarama in the afternoon.