Picked up by the bus at 7.30 for an 8 start at Greenhills Academy, it was great to get out with the cricket kit and actually start coaching and delivering the HIV/AIDS messages. Greenhills looks like being the top school in Kigali and we were made to feel very welcome by the two sports teachers, Scott and Hermione.
We were typically coaching 2 classes at once which totalled around 40 -50 kids playing cricket at any time. A good indication of the status of the school was that in the first class that we ran the presidents son was taking part. We had morning break which consisted of doughnut style buns and African tea which will definitely take some getting used to (think of a cup of hot milk with about 4 spoons of sugar). We also had lunch in the same canteen with all the children which was an experience in itself.
In the afternoon Dave, Tim and Sally left the rest at Greenhills and went to Apade school, which was the first real test of the trip as the field there is far from ideal for cricket as there is very little flat ground only really a volleyball court and the rest of the terrain is very uneven and has lots of rocks dotted about. The real difficulty however is that the same field is also used by the rest of the school during break periods and so a controlled class of about 30 suddenly turns into the chaos of around 130. The good thing about this though is that hundreds of children are at least getting see cricket and hear the HIV/AIDS messages being delivered.
Apade has a school team that enters the local tournaments so there is some understanding of the game and it will interesting to see how we can work with the team as well as the school in general.
For the rest of the week at 4.30 we are splitting up and visiting 2 schools to run their after school clubs, Kagarame and Nyragunga. I was at Kagarame today and the sports ground is pretty good they have a ¾ length flix pitch and it is clear that a fair amount of cricket is played there. We split the kids into 2 groups, the school team and those newer to the game. Nyragunga in contrast has no exposure to cricket and even things like stumps caused much interest the group started relatively small but soon became rather hectic.
Most session throughout the day were similar with a simple warm up followed by hitting of tees and finishing with a game of non-stop cricket. Everyone seems very comfortable working with the children and I think the AIDs messages got better and better as we all got used to this different method of coaching.
It was then back to the apartments for a shower and out to the nearest restaurant which happens to be a very nice pizza place so we ordered and sat down for a few beers and debriefed on the day in which we were out coaching for over 11 hours in which time we worked with over 300 children.
Click here to view all the videos from the trip on our YouTube Channel.
