Reflections on day 2 at Gulu by Nadeem Ahmed….

"In France a skinny man died of a big desease with a little name….." sang Prince on his 1987 song Sign of the Times. A quarter of a century later and sadly, In this part of the world, people are either still dying (200 per day) or living with this desease (7 per cent of the total population).

Having spent the last 8 months or so, totally committed to raising funds for CWB and getting here. Today was the first real day for me to support the lead coaching with the days activities as a new/first time volunteer.

Following the discussion on time keeping yesterday with the teachers , we were impressed when the secondary school, turned up on time, and changed into their smart kits. What was even more staggering for me was
the teachers who we had met only yesterday, now took on the role of coaches and started the warm up drills without any prompts. Lee was so delighted with this result that he then spent the morning putting the kids through their paces. As more schools slowly arrived, we were able to split up and coach different aspects of cricket with different schools combining the ABC messages within the game. All the children were eager to participate, polite and shy in equal measures and we were lucky to have teachers translate in the local community languages, so the coaching drills and HIV messages were understood by the children. Being tri-lingual and left handed I only know too well how difficult this can be, as I demonstrated this difficulty with ease, by continuing to demonstrate the long barrier stop left handed when requested by Mr Morton to demonstrate it right handed!!…..As all you left handers will observe I was of course using my right hand!! More importantly, All the children demonstrated a veritiable cornicopia of skill.

In the afternoon, I spent time with the teachers going through the importance of scoring and umpiring, we skimmed over the rule of LBW….,well we are not really here to create any international situations, besides , it was another scorcher of the day. Encouraging the teachers to change changing the format of the games the children play within their own schools but ensuring that the basic rules of the game are applied. Again we were impressed how quickly the 5 teachers were able to remember and learn the rules of signals required, bearing in mind that they had only picked up the game for the first time in July 2012!!

the not so serious bits:
JB seemed to have developed a new a rare desease which the team are now referring to "Senior Tourette Syndrome'..symptons are as follows:

1) blurting out a sentence to summarise a given situation or conversation.
2) sudden changes in personality, and outbursts which result in chortles of laughter amongst the rest of the team.
3) Impressions of these may be forthcoming, alas we are far too slow in the heat to picture them on video yet, but there is time!

All In all, this is what I signed up for, and well, more please.