Wow! Over 1000 children coached today, bringing our total for the trip so far close to 2000!
This morning we returned to the large football pitch, stroke running track, slash basketball court as Murang’a Teacher’s College. After another night of epic rain showers and thunderstorms, the pitch was a mud bath! We soon had an extra sole of mud on our shoes. It must be the first time cricket has ruined a football pitch!
We had three different groups from two different schools (College Primary and Ndeera) and Nicholas (Kenya’s CWB Ambassador) quickly got them into groups after some fun “HIV! ABC! CWB!” chanting. The team then delivered the well practiced coaching drills with further ABC’s. The kids had great natural talent, especially in the field where their throws from ‘the deep’ were incredible. And there were many more songs sung between our coaching stations including encouraging the children to shout out the names of the coaches on the next station in the circuit leading to happy mobs of approaching children!
In the afternoon we left for Karaguini Primary and were originally expecting 50 children but soon found out we were to have 812! No problem for this awesome team, the more the merrier! True coaching soon went out the window with this many children, but they had a great time and one of their teachers said the kids will always remember this day.
Both the morning and afternoon sessions were concluded with a cricket demonstration that links the sport directly with HIV Aids messages. Tracey (CWB Kenya Manager) and Gary (HIV lead Kenya) and later Leigh and Cameron (2014 volunteers) led these demonstrations. A cricket bat was used to represent “C – condom or protection” and Leigh and Gary were very sad when they were bowled and had to walk off having not ‘used protection’.
So, we are sat in the bar at the hotel, hoping for an early night for tomorrow. No chance in Kenya! Food an hour and a half later already. Repeat of last night on the cards? Whatever happens, we are all really excited about the trip to meet and play the Maasai Cricket Warriors tomorrow with all the wildlife we hope to see on the way too. It’ll be a great blog tomorrow so take a look!