Day 8 – 1st October

Today started early for Jack, Chew, Bob and Mike as they travelled to see the mountain gorilla’s, also departing early was Dave who was travelling to Uganda. The rest of us travelled to Gitarama (again) to coach some more children.

We arrived in true African fashion, 20 minutes late as scheduled to see football being played on the field we had planned. So the mini bus pulled up at right back, Lee and Tim offered their services but unfortunately were not required. So we did 5 minutes of catching while we sorted another suitable place to play.

Once we found a suitable area, we organised a warm up while we waited for the school to arrive. Once the warm up was finished, we set up four pitches for cricket and played non-stop cricket with about 20 children on each pitch as we only had a small amount of time left.

We departed Gitarama at 12 and travelled back to Kigali in the hope of watching some cricket being played at the Kikuciru Oval, but unfortunately it had already finished when we arrived. With the second innings knocking off 100 in 17 Overs to win the match this was meant to be a 50 over match. Big Eric who has been coaching with us was on the losing team so we will need to have a word with him about what happened when we next see him.

As the oval has had new astroturf wicket we thought it would be criminal not to test it out with a bit of a knock around, in the hope of gaining a few passers-by to coach. We gained a few to play but were pleasantly surprised when the Right Guards came to train.

A Rwandan cricket team’s training session seamed to consist of the adults smacking it while the young ones MAN UP and fielded the ball. We joined in with Tim fielding just behind square leg, Jono in first slip, Lee in at point and Rich taking the easy option of cameraman. The first ball flew past the bowler twice as fast, so we felt good fielding behind the batsman until the second ball when Tim brought all of his experience in demonstrating the more technical aspects of fielding, on an outfield that can only be described as ‘spicy’he moved early to his right to stop a powerful pull shot only to lose his footing and take a nice blow from the ball to the top of the head. A shout of that’s good use all of your body from the Rwandan wicket-keeper sums up the commitment needed to stop a speeding ball on this sort of surface.

We were all offered a bowl with Tim keeping it tight, Lee then picking up a wicket with a filthy full toss that he tried to pass off as a slower ball. They do say bad balls get wickets. Jono then came on to bowl, bowling leg spin against one of the Rwandan national players to get him caught out on the second ball, first slip. Thank god it wasn’t a CWB coach fielding there.

As true northern boys (except Rich) we left once having a bowl to get showered and see how the gorilla trecking went. Once they had finally arisen from their late afternoon siesta we were told that Bob got a powerful backhand from a gorilla, thankfully he is ok. The guy’s that went enjoyed every minute of the trip and if you were to come on a Rwandan CWB trip it is well worth the early morning.

Tomorrow is a short day with us going back to one of the most loved orphanage with those who have been before, Pefar. We shall leave there about 12 with our speedo’s and towel’s to travel East where we shall visit the great fresh water lake to relax and see more of this beautiful country before we start the business of coaching again on Monday.

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