By Steve
Under grey cloudy skies and a slight chill in the air, the team gathered for breakfast at Storms Resort to hear that today was in fact “Heroes Day” celebrating Kenya’s independence 53 years ago thereby limiting our opportunity to get around as many schools as we had hoped given that it was Public Holiday. However, we had planned to visit Ilpolei school and despite the fact that the pupils were in on a Public Holiday to revise for exams the next day, we suitably gate crashed the party and gave the children a welcome break from their studies with a number of stations set up for batting and bowling drills and catching etc.
The drive to the school was eventful in itself as our journey along the red sand rugged terrain encountered a herd of elephants in their natural habitat, a family of giraffe and a herd of zebra. Who needs safari when you can meet some of the Big 5 by the road side?
This was my first CWB trip and though I’ve lived in Africa previously and done some coaching with school children, nothing could have been farther removed than what I experienced today. An oasis of smiling faces savouring the cricket and clamouring to be involved was wonderful to be a part of but simply interacting with the children and drawing on their enthusiasm and weaving the ABC messages into our coaching was something that we all loved.
Possibly the most unnerving yet unique experience for me today was being a human exhibit as a group of children swarmed around me to stroke the hair on my arms and poke and prod me, perplexed by the fact that white skin turns red momentarily if pressed. This culminated in a series of high fives that got progressively harder as the children tried to make my hands red much to their hilarity.
Our afternoon was spent at a festival / rally where the Masai Cricket Warriors received a presentation from the local MP in front of hundreds of spectators . All seemed to be going smoothly until two opposing political leaders decided to remonstrate with each other which caused the crowd to surge forward, security to draw their weapons and ended with a huge crowd running helter skelter around us to flee.
The evening was fairly peaceful as we sat down to dinner only to be greeted by the arrival of the local MP who had seen as at the festival earlier and wanted to meet us to understand more about our purpose and the work of CWB. An interesting conversation ensued about some of the challenges currently faced in the province and the country generally, particularly regarding abuse of females. Dialogue has been struck and I’m sure that there is an opportunity for CWB to work closely on the ground with the respective authorities going forwards to tackle these issues.
So an eventful day and we are all looking forward to tomorrows sessions with three schools lined up. There are many memories to take from my first day of coaching in Kenya but the over riding one will possibly be of Simeone; a young boy of 8-9 years in age. En route to the school as our bus pulled into a nearby village to pick up CWB Ambassadors we had the opportunity to disembark the bus. Spying a group of street children who viewed our arrival with great interest Anouck and myself started a game of close catching with them. As ever the group grew and the game got bigger but one child, Simeone pulled up on a ram shackled bicycle with two lightning conductors strapped to the handle bars and a seat that flapped in the breeze. He joined in and proceeded to catch every single thing that any of our team threw at him, either one handed or two handed, high or low. It was as if he had Velcro attached to his hands. Incredible!
A fantastic day and can’t wait for tomorrow.
Day 3
So ladies and gentleman I can honestly say the the rookies have truly experienced a proper day of CWB chaos.
The day started off at Doldol primary and after some negotiations with the head teacher he gave us pretty much the whole school. In true CWB style of course they didn’t all come out at once, so PL Sellers sacrificed himself to crowd control and took a group of 120 “spirited little tearaways” for a little hokie cokie.
The afternoon session was a bit whirlwind with brief sessions at a couple of schools including Doldol high school for boys, former home of Masai Warriors superstar Daniel. The session was wrapped up with the usual talk. As these were older boys we tailored the chat a bit more and I had a wonderful conversation with my group. Some of the boys had very good questions about the prevalence and discrimination of HIV/Aids in the west including whether condoms cause cancer. Questions as CWB you love to be asked and more importantly put peoples misbelief to bed.
The school by the airfield was also a fantastic session of rapid fire games on every flat piece of turf. The best part was also when the teachers told us about the issues the school has to deal with. Firstly Elephants, crashing through the fences and outbuildings and also the issues of drought. During the dry season the families move to find the water for farming which can mean that kids can be in school one day and gone the next.
There you go folks
Mac Daddy signing off