Day Thirteen and in contrast to the breeze over the past two days, the sun rose in a cloudless blue and huge African sky as the team also rose for an early start back at Francistown Vocational College. The temperature was as hot as the previous evening in the Diggers’ Inn, when the resident ‘singer’ seemed more adept at reading the lyrics off her I-phone and “Dancing Queen” Shameelah spent the entire evening stress-testing a bottle of industrial vodka.
Having already coached and related to a huge number of children at schools, orphanages and disability homes and also trained up a growing number of coaches, our intrepid Four Guns of Gaborone had overnight metamorphosed into a slightly weary Reservoir Dogs, with Greig Vardy as the unknown ‘Man with a Plan’, Ali Goddard as Nice Guy Eddie and Nick Cliffe and Malcolm Pressley-Smith as Mister Orange and Mister White respectively, with White being the one who dies, obvs. Stuck in the Middle with you. Having deconstructed “Like a Virgin” and ‘gone to work’, we picked up where we left off on Wednesday with our 42 trainee coaches. By the end of the morning, we had a fully-qualified contingent, ready to ‘get to work’ on spreading their newly acquired cricket skills and the ABCT message. Our resident BCA coaches were also now qualified, having attended at least four days of Coach Education and (Handy Tip No. 44) really should be kept within the CWB family for future trips and utilised to the full by BCA when CWB are not in town. Speaking purely personally, I have to say I found the farewell to the students quite hard to take, knowing that it may be unlikely we will meet again after they had welcomed us with open hearts into their beautiful country. Then pictures will stay on my mental screen-saver for quite some while.
After the morning session, an abbreviated lunch-break followed, where the college finally came through for us with the custard to accompany the black-forest gateau and we were then inundated with requests from the new local coaches from the college eager to put their ideas in to practice in the afternoon. It was then back on Tefo’s bus to the school visit to Ridgeview English Medium Primary school, back in Francistown city centre. It has been noticeable during the trip how some schools, mainly in the city, have pupils well turned-out in uniforms and others, in the country, do not. Despite its clear stability, Botswana still has its social divide, like anywhere else (Guardian readers take note). Preliminary reconnaissance of the playing field established that it had a slope not dissimilar to Lords and so the bowling contingent was sent off to attack down the hill but without the wind. My own station of throwing at stumps quickly changed into a large group of seven-year-olds “Throwing as Hard as You Can at your Partner on the Other Side and Ignore the Stumps” but kept them all very well occupied for twenty minutes and their knowledge of ABCT’s was high, as we probably expected it would be. At the finish the children left us all to depart with a rendition of the school-song, which whilst perhaps not as emotional as at the orphanage at the weekend, was beautifully performed and still had a great impact on us all.
A final addition to the programme, at Greig’s instigation, was a return visit to the Deaf and Dumb School which we had visited at the weekend, this time to run some quick games, leave a pile of equipment and bid farewell to an inspirational institution full of children whose faces will remain in my memory forever.
And so ends the practical side of our trip, at times a hard slog but at all times hugely memorable, in a beautiful country filled with wonderful people, not without its organisational challenges but hopefully also not without its positive impact. It only remains for me to thank the immensely- organised Greig Vardy, Ali Goddard for his brilliant tutoring, Malcolm Pressley-Smith for all his support and the coaches and cricketers in Gabs and F/town for their love and friendship. (Handy Tips Nos 45 and 46 – deffo take a sun-hat and not a cap and Nando’s in Botswana is not a patch on Nando’s in the UK)
Ay rey ye!! (Let’s go to it!!).