Today, we headed out to the same school as yesterday to complete our second day of coach education with the same teachers. The team bus was a slightly more pleasant place to be in the morning with Paul full of his normal good humour and charm (His words…) and we departed on time(ish).
On arrival, we set up more advanced cricket related games for the teachers to have more options in their repertoire for use with the children with our resident Will.I.Am look-a-like performing particularly well in the sessions. Once again, food was arranged at the same hotel so with some low expectations, the team made sure that they had supplies in an emergency. At the hotel, we were met by a delicious Full English Breakfast much to the surprise of many CWB volunteers as well as the teachers themselves. By this point, the day was certainly going better than yesterday…
Whilst the majority of the team got together with teachers for the assessment, Gemma, Carl and Sam went to their pre-arranged meeting with the guys from Top Banana. On this trip, they visited a local secondary school where Top Banana had donated a trampoline (the same sort you would find in your back garden) where children were playing on their break time. They then went on to visit an elderly gentleman in the local community who was blind and before Top Banana intervened, had no care arranged. As is part of a lot of the work that Top Banana do, they stepped in by sanitising his single roomed home (approximately 5 x 5 metres) and his belongings and providing a carer who would visit for 2 or 3 hours a day to help make sure he was fed properly and could be transported to get his benefit vouchers in the post. They then travelled to the Top Banana local community centre which consisted of an HIV/AIDS testing centre, a gym, library, playground and a pre-school centre. They also had set up a garden centre where local volunteers were growing various plants and vegetables. Every facility mentioned was very basic and in comparison to what you in-visage a gym to be like in England, this was on a whole different level.
After the meeting, contacts were exchanged and HIV Lead Sam will hopefully keep in touch regarding information of projects in the future.
In the afternoon, we travelled to a school in Tsamaya with some of our newly qualified teachers putting their skills to the test. I'm reliably informed once again that we had 116 children regardless of the fact that Clement had 'reliably informed' us that we should expect no more than 40.
After another long day, we made the journey back to the lodge and thanks to a fantastic couple of meals in the day-time, Chef Paul was let off chef duties and a team decision was made that individual portions of baked beans and cheese on toast would be made by volunteers.