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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe majority of the Pirates players who helped us this week started their own cricketing careers with CWB. They have since become coaches themselves, whilst still in the prime of their playing careers, and are giving back to the communities they came from. Together we returned to some of the players\u2019 old schools, hoping to spark the same interest in cricket in the next generation of youngsters, and, most importantly, educate them on HIV and gender equality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The support provided by the local coaches in Nakuru was invaluable to the CWB team. We coached similar numbers of children as in the first week, but now had at least an extra two pairs of hands per group. Our Kenyan counterparts were able to translate into Swahili, identify technical deficiencies in the youngsters still learning the game, and reinforce the HIV messaging delivered by CWB. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At one secondary school, after telling pupils the importance of getting tested so they could get free HIV medication to keep them healthy, a boy came up to me afterwards and told me the medication was not free. \u201cPeople would rather die\u201d, he declared, \u201cthan pay for medication\u201d. Thankfully, the combined assertiveness of Nick and Daisy corrected this myth, which was shared by a much larger number of students than we initially thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The novelty of the CWB team visiting from the UK helps arouse interest in our health messaging, and sometimes enables children to open up about issues they may not want to talk about to their teachers, families, or peers. However, local knowledge and language also play a vital role, with the young Kenyan coaches acting as role models who the students can really relate to, adding power and depth to CWB\u2019s messaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our penultimate day in Nakuru came around all too quickly. Come Thursday evening, four of the national women\u2019s team cricketers were working hard in the back yard of Coach George\u2019s dad\u2019s house, teaching the CWB team how to prepare fresh spinach. As we helped wash and strip the leaves, the players expertly chopped the spinach with knives, the fingertips of their left hands acting as the chopping boards we would rely on back home. Thankfully, no fingers were harmed in the making of this dinner! Meanwhile, the Pirates\u2019 men worked hard stirring the ugali (much tougher than it looks – I tried it!) and the whole team pulled together with George\u2019s dad to put on a feast for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we sat together tucking into our home-cooked food under the cool Kenyan night sky, it struck me how privileged we were to be working alongside these talented young cricketers. A product of their communities and not from wealthy or privileged backgrounds, none of them had lost sight of where they had come from. It was by circumstance and not engineering that there were roughly equal numbers of male and female player-coaches, a living example of CWB\u2019s focus on gender equality during the delivery of our sessions, where so many of this team had first been introduced to the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Friday morning dawned and the CWB team enjoyed a welcome lie-in, our school bus having been used to ferry children to and from the cricket festival George had arranged at the upmarket Rift Valley Sports Club. When we arrived at the ground we found all the matches running seamlessly, the Pirates\u2019 team ably umpiring and scoring the children\u2019s games. The CWB team were free to roam the ground, talk to the children and take photographs, as our Kenyan counterparts took on the lion\u2019s share of the work we would normally be doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Secretary-General of the Rift Valley Cricket Club, a charismatic young women called Charity, told how how she had only started playing cricket with CWB because of the \u201cbread and soda\u201d provided at school cricket festivals. It seemed rather fitting that the children at Friday\u2019s festival sat eating their hard-earned lunch of bread and Fanta after a busy morning of cricket, dished out by the very people who were in their position 10 years ago when CWB started. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kenyan coaches are the ones able to deliver both cricket and HIV education consistently to local schools. In Nakuru we have seen a team of primary school children on some of the first CWB projects rise up to become coaches in their own right, taking on the responsibility of giving the next generation the same opportunities. If this isn\u2019t a measure of CWB\u2019s success, then I\u2019m not sure what is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gabie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a humid Sunday in Nairobi as the dry season draws to an end, and…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya22\/files\/2022\/11\/90350F08-7255-495A-BF44-FEBBE6E25FCD.jpeg\")
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