Today felt like we had made a return to England a week early as unfortunately the weather got the better of us and we were unable to do any work outside on the playing field. A torrential storm started at about 5 in the morning and for around 3 hours all that could be heard was the continuous sound of heavy rain, so heavy in fact that for once the sound of the generator next to my room was drowned out allowing at least for a bit more sleep.
We arrived for a pitch inspection at 9.30 but it was clear that there was no chance of anything being possible in the near future, with this in mind we let the teachers go back to school and asked them to return at 1 with the hope that the weather may clear and dry the pitch. However there was no break and all morning the sky was grey and drizzle fell. On our return to the pitch at 1 conditions had improved slightly underfoot but it was clear that it would still not be possible to do any coaching. Fortunately Grayce our Ugandan coach had managed to secure the use of a classroom in the nearby Primary school.
This allowed me and Rich to go back to school African style with some classic CWB improvisation we ‘Chalk and Talked’ our way through the basics of cricket including umpiring signals, methods of dismissal, scoring and the outline rules of pairs cricket. This also meant that we could really focus on how and why we deliver HIV/AIDS awareness messages when we coach and it was good to see many of the teachers suggest ideas for how they could work in the ABC messages to cricket and other sports that they teach. After around an hour and a half we had exhausted our material and so let the teachers depart early, this may mean we have some catching up to do in the next couple of days but we have Sunday afternoon as reserve should we need it.
The weather finally started to clear at about 3, and with the early finish we decided to walk the 4km’s back to our hotel to sample some more of the sights and sounds of Arua, the walk in all took around 50 minutes but would have been shorter except for the number of times we were stopped by children and adults alike with the now standard ‘Muzungo, how are you’, if only people were as friendly back home.
On a more positive note we discovered on our return to the hotel that our rooms have been moved far away from the offending generator so hopefully a good nights sleep will be on the cards to charge the batteries for tomorrows coaching and who knows maybe a drink or two in downtown Arua on Saturday night.
The classroom that we used for the afternoon, note the signage. These type of messages were all over the school.
Rich in ‘Chalk and Talk’ mode.
Serious note taking was the order of the day as we covered a lot of ground.
We had a frank and open debate about the HIV/AIDS issues affecting the area.