Day Two was filled with both highs and lows with the thrill of our first training session at Nyakabanda School in stark comparison to the visit to Kigali’s Genocide Memorial Museum.
After a long and deserved sleep, we set out on our visit to Nyakabanda in our cramped team minibus along Rwanda’s hilly tracks with a few near misses with the local’s zipping around on motorbikes. As this was our first session we did not know what to expect and as you can see from the attached photos, the playing surface was interesting to say the least. Over the three hour session we coached 130 children with some novices and most had never even heard of cricket so we took it back to basics with some catching and the enjoyment of hitting the ball. This got us into some trouble as the tennis balls were flying into classrooms which drew some stern looks from the school teachers.
During the school break time there was controlled chaos with children from both the primary and the secondary school looking to use this new exciting equipment and meet the coaches so we employed Jono as cricket bag security which is a role he excelled in.
After a well deserved lunch, we travelled to the Genocide Memorial which was opened in 2004 to mark the ten year anniversary of this tragedy. It was a challenging couple of hours as we found at about the history of this very recent tragedy. It also gave us an opportunity to reflect on the enthusiasm of children and young adults at the school in the morning even with this event that has affected everyone in this beautiful country.
Tomorrow will be a mix of complete novices as well as some hardball coaching with a school team so once again our ever evolving coaching skills of adapting will be put to the test!
Cricket Without Boundaries