Flown in especially from Entebbe, following a week out with the CWB Uganda team, Lee (Huddersfield’s finest and a CWB veteran) has joined our team. Now our vocabulary this week has been treated to some of Mark’s west-country classics: “ark at eee” (look at that) and “where’s it to” (where is that?) being the particular favourites, but we now have Lee’s dulcet Yorkshire tones of delivering the words ‘odious’ and ‘rogue’ at regular occurrence.
 
During our trip we have been asked by anyone who has seen us wearing our kit or who’s asked us why we are here, what the name “Cricket Without Boundaries” stands for. Over the past two days in Mushishiro there have been two prime examples of the all inclusive nature the charity seeks to promote. For Kevin delivering the HIV message on day one, dealing with the question from one of the kids; “If cricket is a game for everyone, can people with HIV play?” was just a taster for what we encountered today.
 
 
This is Maria, who when playing a warm-up activity with Lee, was ushered back into one of the classrooms surrounding the Mushishiro Oval by one of the teachers. None of the other children had problems with her being there, she was not being naughty (if anything she was remarkably helpful putting balls back on the cones and had a mean throwing arm on her). Yet she was still being taken away when this teacher saw her. On the third time of retrieving her from the classroom, after being smuggled away, Lee asked the teacher why this was happening. The teacher’s response: “She cannot join in, she is a fool”. After some sharp words, Maria was back playing cricket again, the teacher was not seen again for the rest of the session.
 
 
 
 
The close of play entertainment was a divide between a lesson of Salsa dancing (merengue partner work and samba for any officianados) to the beat provided by the kids clapping surrounding the dancing lesson. For those wanting an even more physical spectator sport, there was ‘tyre gymnastics’ to the side of the playing field. We made a note to send a request to the World Olympic Committee to include this as a show event at the Rio Games in 2016…a great chance for Rwanda to bring home a couple of medals if ‘somersaulting after being propelled from a large tyre into the air’ was ever included as an official Olympic event.
 
 
Today saw us coaching 270, which brought our grand total to an incredible 510 kids coached over the period of just two days. Our time in Mushishiro has been challenging at times, the previous sentence encapsulates this, but for a village which had never heard of cricket before to receive this picture from one of the kids at the end of Day two made it all worth it and brought home why we are all out here.