The first day in Buea and we awake to a cooler climate, and the top of Mount Cameroon shrouded in cloud, hiding its full extent and reach. It is known locally as 'the Chariot to the Gods'. It's not difficult to see why!
Yesterday's 8 hour bus drive from Yaounde was many things, hot & long being the two main things! However, it also gave the team the chance to sleep, take scenic photos of traffic jams, stare in awe at the stupidity of overtaking manoeuvres and have a bit of a laugh;
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What would you three course death row meal be?
- (Garlic mushrooms, roast lamb, jelly/ice cream-Ed)
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What three bands/artists would you like to see play, reform or bring back from the dead?
- (Queen, CCR, Guns n Roses – Ed)
It also gave us a chance to discuss Week 1 and reflect on the coaching and HIV message delivery employed and we devised a 'new' approach which we took into today's Coach Education session.
Starting with an 'unscripted' knock about for local teachers to see the game in action, we then set up three carousel stations, one for batting, one for bowling and one for fielding. Our aim was to concentrate on delivering one of the ABC plus T messages at each station with the idea to then bring all four into play in a session ending match.
- A – abstaining from bowling with bent arm,
- B – being faithful to self and team mates when fielding and catching,
- C – condom; protecting oneself from the ball and protecting the stumps,
- T – each station incorporated a test of the skill learnt in the form of competitive mini-games
It worked superbly for coaches and students alike. It made it easier to coach and concentrate on one aspect of health/skill development, provided opportunity for a test of status and provided the opportunity for a Q&A on that one aspect of the whole message that students too found easier to comprehend. From the Q&A's it also reinforced to us that abstinence is the single cornerstone of schools HIV education and the reliance on an almost total assumption that no young persons have sex before 18?
In bringing all three together in a gameof pairs crcket at the end each health/skill element was reinforced through 'testing', and students left with three focused examples of the rudiments of cricket and the transferability of those skills to an impotant health issue, rather than perhaps remembereing four or five (at best?) of twelve.
The real proof will come tomorrow in the transference to school-based sessions, and the scaleability with larger groups but we've got three days and four schools (at present!) to 'test' it out this week…..once we've had a day off on the beach at Limbe on Sunday.