Francistown Finale

Andy B on our final day in Francistown

Team Botswana showed their usual resilience following the disappointing news that our primary school festival had to be postponed. Our day began with a secondary school session at Lethabile school. It was fantastic to have the whole team together again and the session was expertly led by Greg and the whole team were able to pull together to give the children a cricketing experience to remember.

The excitement and enjoyment of the children is always our focus but we should be proud of the fact that within the space of a week the whole team is confident to deliver both out cricketing and HIV/AIDS awareness messages to the children.

The afternoon saw the team split in two. My team was at The Mandunyane Primary School where we entertained approximately 160 children with games of Rapid fire, The Lords Game and Diamond Cricket. To accommodate the volume of children we adapted all of the games to ensure that all of them were able to have a batting experience.

The session at Mandunyane gave a perfect opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our labours from the coach education in the early part of the week. David, one of the teachers from the ‘Coach Ed’ session, participated in full and engaged other teachers with the afternoon activities; David plans to run teacher training sessions at the school.

Despite the 38 degree temperatures our spirits were further lifted at the Francistown School for Children with Hearing Impairments. Lee led us in an inspired session which saw them engaged in catching practice, a game of rapid fire and a crossfire throwing game. The rest of the coaches were somewhat concerned with his newly invented target practice; but all was well and the children were once again fully engaged.

Our final session took us to the local orphanage where we expected 10 children but were fortunate enough to have 30+ children with us. The energy levels of the team remained high and the children loved the activities that we put on for them.

As a first time volunteer I felt a massive sense of achievement with the news, in the evening, that we had delivered to around 2,000 children in a small region of Francistown. Furthermore we have given teachers outstanding Coach Ed sessions so they have the knowledge to deliver more sessions to their children which can only serve to put in the foundations on which to build a thriving cricket community in the region.