Today we’re half way through our time in Kenya. We’ve visited 13 schools and coached 2,900 children! Today was different though as we ran a tournament attended by 3 local schools (250 children of primary and early secondary ages), all playing kwik cricket. Tim manfully agreed to organise the league format with the help of 3 notebooks and an abacus – everything ran like clockwork with 8 teams coached by me, Hannah, Derek, Mandy, Benjamin, Matheus, Daniel and Nicholas (some of whom even knew the rules!).
The children enjoyed it massively with some impressive batting and fielding. In the final presentation ceremony, the teachers from the schools all said they wanted to continue the spirit of cricket and arrange a regular tournament. Cricket inspires everyone!
At the same time, Big Jon, Khush and George, a local coach, were over at a teacher training college running a coaching day, educating 49 teachers to play and coach the game as well as deliver HIV prevention messages. Hopefully, the trickle-down effect will kick in and in a few years’ time cricket will be as alive and well in Kericho as it is in other areas visited by CWB.
Today we said farewell to Gary (“I’ll have a Tusker”) Shankland, our team leader (or as Nicholas calls him when he introduces both me and him to children “Gary Squared”). Gary has done a number of CWB trips this year and could only do a week with us in Kenya, leaving us in the capable hands of Nicholas and Big Jon! Thanks Gary for your leadership, humour and boundless knowledge of local alcohol brands.
So what are my reflections on week one? A week spent in good company and working in schools where the positive attitude and work ethic of the teachers and children is amazing to see. A week of smiles and laughter and of children discovering the game we love.
But each day we also see reminders of the scourge of HIV/AIDS which has been ravaging Kenya. Most of the children we have coached will know someone in their family who have AIDS and teachers tell us many of the children themselves will also have the disease, although hopefully treated and controlled with medication. While the older generation has struggled to combat it, I’m genuinely hopeful that by now acknowledging the danger it presents and educating children from as young as 5 with the key messages of Abstain, Be Faithful, Condom use and Testing (ABCT) they can stay safe as they grow up. Open, continuous (and loud!) discussion of the subject (even in cricket matches) must be the way forward.
As our new friends, and great dancers, Daniel and Benjamin from the Massai Warriors cricket team say in their must-see film Warriors (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=otCQ0Je3pIQ) “this is about more than cricket”.
Tomorrow we leave Kericho and take with us lifelong memories of a community competing in its toughest match and starting to win.
Gary
Be First to Comment