Our last day of coaching, sob.
Our last day of seeing happy children, sob.
Our last day at the lodge, SOB!
It’s a strange feeling today. I sense a degree of satisfaction around the group as we gather for breakfast, knowing that we’ve all but completed this project, we’ve come out of the other end largely unscathed and we’re all proud of what we’ve managed to do out here. From my perspective as a coach, I’ve become more adaptable which I know will help me when I get home, and the other non-coaches have picked up so many skills they are now comfortable taking a large group of children and entertaining them for an hour or so. This is a quite remarkably achievement really, there are lots of coaches working in England that might freeze when put under the pressure we have been, and these ladies & gents have really got to grips with it. It’s a bit like the England philosophy of ‘train hard, play easy’ and I wonder if any of the group will try their hand at coaching back in the UK; they’ll find it very easy in comparison!
Most of this day would be spent travelling back to Nairobi, there was talk of a 6-hour journey to whet the appetite. Before that though, we had another 2-hour drive to a cricket festival. Once again fantastic driving from our man Linc getting our big bus over some dreadful roads, and we arrived only a few minutes late…which on Kenyan time is practically 2hrs early!
Our well-oiled machine went straight in to action as each coach went off to set up a Kwik-Cricket pitch in a bit of space and Rich organised the teams in to groups and pitches. We were expecting 10 teams, but ended up with 9. At one stage we though the 10th team, made up entirely of goats, was the 10th team. But no, these goats were obviously just off for a stroll right through the middle of matches. Seriously, just imagine a child turning to run for a tennis ball and running straight in to a goat. A ruddy GOAT! I don’t know what the umpiring signal is for that, but somehow it worked out in the end.
After a couple of hours we finished the tournament and the winning team got some great little bat/medal things that Aliya had put together. As the trip had gone on we have been giving away equipment to various schools & organisations but today was the big payload as we shipped out everything we had remaining. Everybody got something and equipment was left so that future festivals can go ahead. One lad asked for my watch, which I thought was a bit cheeky, so he got a sweet instead.
We hadn’t had much/any time over this trip to go shopping for souvenirs for loved ones on this trip so it had been arranged for some Masai ladies to come along to sell us some hand-made jewellery. The bright colours and intricate detail is quite astounding on some of these things, Soloman told us that individual items can take up to a week of hard work to complete. Next followed one of my favourite memories of the trip, the respective bartering skills of Rich (experienced) and Tim (inexperienced), it goes something like this:
Rich: How much is that?
Woman: [doesn’t matter what she says]
Rich: Oufff, that’s a bit expensive. What about that?
Woman: [doesn’t matter what she says]
Rich: Oufff, that’s a lot of money. I don’t know about that.
[pause]
Rich: What if I take that AND that for [value of lowest priced item]?
Woman: Yes
Rich: [smug] Thank you very much.
Bravo bravo, he did this over and over again and ended up with some right bargains. Tim saw this, and decided to have a go:
Tim: How much for that?
Woman: Three-hundred.
Tim: Two-hundred.
Woman: [showing 3 fingers] Three-hundred.
Tim: [getting out 200 cash] Two-hundred.
Woman: [looking confused] Three
Tim: [waving money in front of woman’s face] Two-hundred?
Woman: [silence]
Tim: TWO-HUNDRED!
Woman: [calls other woman for help]
Other Woman: She said three-hundred.
Tim: [getting more cash and giving it to woman] Two-fifty?
Woman: [silently accepts money]
So after that daylight-robbery, we got on the bus and started the long journey back. We arrived back in Nairobi about 7pm back to our first hotel and most people were feeling fairly reflective as they drank their drinks. Mac promises to arrange a group reunion in the future, I hope she sticks to that because it’ll be interesting to see how the trip changes people’s lives. For example while we’re doing all this in the 2nd week, Tracey is back in Southampton retraining to be a Nurse with the desire to help others after her previous visit in the autumn.
It’s very hard to summarise the whole trip, so much has happened it’s incredible, most of us can’t remember what we did on particular days and it takes some concerted thinking to try to encapsulate it all. Maybe I’ll post an update in a couple of months having spoken to everybody again. In the meantime, there are more Cricket Without Boundaries projects going on, check out:
www.cwbuganda.co.uk and www.cwbrwanda.co.uk
To see how these guys are getting on right now as I speak. Wish them luck!!
