Emily our Belgium correspondent reports on festival day in Gulu

Potentially a great start here in Gulu this morning when at 10.15 (the most punctual so far), two local teachers arrived at our “ground” (a large field with goats grazing – and at times unvoluntarily fielding), shame the rest didn’t follow as we only ended up with two of the six schools we had coached during the week. It may have been due to a series of unfortunate events combining a perfect storm and absence of the expected mass of children during the weekend.

DSC_1980

Nevermind, CWB never stands defeated. We still managed to pull 180 children out of various classrooms and give impromptu coaching sessions with our simple (and by now slightly irritating) song, and probably caught another two hundred during break time. We can now confirm that most of Police Primary (1500 children) now know the meaning of ABC and how this approach can help them avoid HIV/AIDS. Not bad for a 2 hour session I say!

The two schools who did turn up had a brilliant opportunity to show off their newly learnt cricket skills during their mini festival. Laura did manage to overhear the unexpected: “Beckham! Come here and swap with Desmond Tutu”. We have to applaud the locals for their creativity!

To top all of this, we also had the great opportunity to interview the region manager of TASO (The AIDS Support Organisation) who confirmed that CWB’s approach, methodology and messages show a great insight into the real AIDS related issues Northern Uganda faces. He also put great emphasis on the role of sport in helping to solve these issues and expressed his appreciation towards all CWB’s efforts. He also observed a coaching session where he was able to see how well the ABC message was being implemented.

In this 5min video Robert and Judith talk about how sport can help in the battle against HIV/AIDS and in breaking down stigmas.

We then finished our short day at 12.30pm with one final “Cross fire” games which indeed went down very well with all who participated. It was then time to shoot back to the hotel to grab our bags, and leave for our final destination 3, Lira, 3 hours away.

DSC_2035