{"id":84,"date":"2016-06-21T18:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T18:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/?p=84"},"modified":"2016-06-22T07:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T07:31:21","slug":"day-one-catching-up-with-old-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/2016\/06\/21\/day-one-catching-up-with-old-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Day One – Catching up with old friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been more than a year since the CWB team were last out in Kenya, and whilst Facebook and WhatsApp has meant that we have kept in contact with the Maasai Cricket Warriors and the Cricket Kenya coaches, to catch up with them\u00a0properly today was\u00a0awesome.<\/p>\n

This weekend\u00a0the Maasai Cricket Warriors have instigated a Last Mans Stand Cricket tournament at Ol Peteja Conservation park in the heart of the Maasai lands in Laikipia. For most of us the most exotic of wildlife we tend to encounter on the way to cricket matches back in England are cows and sheep sauntering around a farmers’ field.\u00a0This is the first time for us all that we all had a Safari on the way to a cricket tournament. As we passed by buffalo, zebra, warthogs and giraffe’s marauding across the\u00a0African savannah\u00a0on the way to the cricket pitch where the tournament was being played, after lack of sleep and a long flight,\u00a0the whole experience was bizarrely surreal and yet at the same time\u00a0amazing –\u00a0certainly not your average trek to a cricket ground!<\/p>\n

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All of the Kenyan cricket coaches involved in the FGM project were\u00a0playing in the tournament, and as we drove up to the pitch we were in danger of causing a pitch invasion as we saw Daniel and Benjamen (Maasai Cricket Warriors coaches)fielding on the boundary.\u00a0The temptation to run over and say hello was huge. We did duly refrain from interrupting play and\u00a0following a tightly won victory in\u00a0Maasai Cricket Warriors’\u00a0final game, we got the chance to say our hellos.<\/p>\n

The final of the tournament for first place was between George’s team Obuya Heat against Nicholas’ team East Africa Cricket Foundation, but not before a pair of rhino’s briefly stopped play as they\u00a0wandered\u00a0about\u00a0200 meters\u00a0away from the boundary edge, before\u00a0disappearing off into the distance. Thanks to the superb batting of\u00a0David Obuya, ex-Kenyan cricket international, George’s team\u00a0won the tournament (and George managed to score some runs which led for a peaceful\u00a0journey back to where we were staying).\u00a0The sighting of a lioness serenely sitting in the\u00a0long grass\u00a0on the way back, was a sight to behold and genuinely added to the bizarreness of the day, but absolutely great to catch up and re-assemble the project team together for the forthcoming project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been more than a year since the CWB team were last out in Kenya, and whilst Facebook and WhatsApp has meant that we have kept in contact with the Maasai Cricket Warriors and the Cricket Kenya coaches, to catch up with them\u00a0properly today was\u00a0awesome. This weekend\u00a0the Maasai Cricket Warriors have instigated a Last Mans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}