Today we travelled to the town of Jwaneng which is famous for its Diamonds. 9 members of the team went on the 2 and a half hour drive to the school whilst HIV/AIDS specialist Sam had meetings arranged with various contacts in Gabarone to discuss strategies on how best to convey the message in Botswana. The journey involved a trying on session of the masses of t-shirts by Gem and a quick stop off to talk to the local police as to why we were travelling so quickly… One speeding ticket and some sun cream applying later (thank you welfare officer Carl), we arrived!
We were expecting 26 teachers but we were not informed how many children we would have. When we arrived, we were greeted by a couple of very keen teachers and school break time. Whilst we waited for the rest of the teachers, we made use of the time we had by setting up various impromptu catching sessions. Whilst Scott and David took charge of the playground smashing balls in the air (not always in the direction of the children and often over the fence), Tracey had the children in a line throwing balls back and forth, meanwhile Gem had taken over a P.E group and started her own game.
After a while, we realised that we weren't going to get the expected 26 teachers and in fact we would just have the 4… Although this was not ideal, we were able to have one to one sessions with them and ask them individual questions to make sure that the message was getting across.
After a quick muffin and some juice for lunch we headed out to the playing field once again to get going with the children. Slowly but surely they all filtered out of various sections of the school, some of them even coming through a gate from outside the school grounds. After a brilliantly led warm up from Carl some chanting from the kids (as well as the coaches), each coach took a group and started a station which involved either a batting drill or a bowling drill. While this was going on, Adam was putting his maths to the test attempting to count the numbers in all four stations. We are wisely informed that there were 142 children however seeing as some of the children were moving in between stations, this number is very approximate.
When the organised chaos came to an end we almost had to leave Gem behind because of how attached she had become to some of the kids! A typical CWB day (if there is such a thing) had been a massive success and to back this up Tutor Adam described it as an "EPIC session!".
On the bus home, stories from the day were shared and the 6 CWB debutants (Andrew, Carl, Tracey, David, Paul, and Gemma) all agreed they had had a brilliant day!
In the evening a quick team meeting in the Gabarone Sun Hotel was held where we discussed what went well in the day and what we could improve on. Next, it was down to the Botswana Cricket Association for a very enjoyable meal and some drinks with Ravi and the gang.
A quick update on Andrew's bag and the two kit bags is that there is no update… Some at the airport say that they are in Johannesburg, others think that they still haven't left Amsterdam! All we know is Andrew is getting very anxious and is rumoured to have started borrowing Gemma's underwear.
Tomorrow, we travel to Kanye, only half the distance of Jwaneng with the team back to full strength with Sam making the journey!
1 comment
PJ Warren says:
Oct 27, 2013
Team Bots! A Blog!!! Fantastic! Sounds like you've had real trouble in getting the blogs up and running from down there. Hopefully you might have better luck from Francistown. Enjoying the heat? Better Big Heat than the Big Wind that's coming our way. Keep up the good work. PS – Tau Lodge looks incredible. PJ