Everyone was up early today to have breakfast at 7.00am. That is everyone apart from Danny who had a sleepless night after having seen a gecko in his room that had kept him awake.
After breakfast all of us, including a bleary eyed Danny, headed off to our first session of the day at a school. Once the lock on the school gates had been opened, which took some quite some time before Eric, our driver, managed to force the lock open, we entered the school to find a small playing area, about the size of a five-a-side football pitch with our eager trainees raring to go. Rather than the vast numbers of yesterday, we were presented with a far more manageable group of about fifty students.
Some batting and bowling drills were followed by a very swift game of continuous cricket before we had to speed off to our next destination, a teacher training college.
This was the first time CWB had taught prospective teachers in Cameroon. This is however a very efficient method of getting the game of cricket along with the associated HIV/AIDS messages out to as many children as possible as when these students qualify this summer they will then take up jobs in many schools across the region thereby allowing these important messages to expeditiously be spread far and wide.
The majority of the drills were expertly led by our two female Cameroonian cricket coaches, Lavette and Geraldine, giving them the opportunity to show off their excellent cricket skills along with some fantastic ABC and T messages. Having been invited to meet the college principal after the session she informed us that Buea is a region where women are particularly empowered so having Lavette and Geraldine lead the sessions seemed to have been an excellent plan.
A hiatus in today’s training allowed us to pop to a local shop to buy lunch which was consumed back at our hotel. There then followed a drive out into rural Buea to visit an orphanage that housed seventeen children. The orphanage building was very good by local standards but beyond this it is extremely impoverished. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that the running water supply that the orphanage once had has been disconnected by the local villagers as they do not like the fact that the orphanage director is a Francophone whilst the rest of the village is English speaking. I personally find it so depressing that even in an area where the majority of the population are united by a common level of poverty, some people still find the need to show hatred to their fellow man because of such small differences in culture.
We all spent time playing with the orphans and looking round their compound, where they kept chickens and a couple of pigs. We left the orphanage with some balls, balloons, toys, football kits and a large sack of rice before heading off to our next session back in town close to our hotel.
Having arrived early we hung around for the best part of an hour, before deciding to call it quits as we only had one of the students from the college show up. To be fair this wasn’t entirely down to miscommunication but also to the fact that the students are currently busy sitting exams.
We returned to the hotel for our daily de-brief and to sort out the cricket kit bags.
A quick shower and then off to a rather smart hotel right at the foot of Mount Cameroon from where I am sat writing this as they have Wi-Fi (a rare commodity indeed in this part of Cameroon).
A fantastic, extensive menu was provided to us on our arrival in the restaurant, before we were informed that they basically only had three dishes available today.
Everyone seems really tired and the conversation is muted at best. I’m sure after food and a couple of cold drinks our beds will beckon, hopefully leaving us refreshed ready for another busy day tomorrow.
Clive.