Today was undoubtedly a day of contrasts. Our first expedition saw us make the trip to the suburbs of Kigali for a session with St Joseph’s Primary School. This was CWB’s first experience of St Joseph’s but judging by today we will certainly back. It was probably the most organised and friendly school we had been to with the PE teacher Olivier an enthusiastic and motivational presence.

The kids were great – and incredibly disciplined, with one of the highlights seeing a group of five year olds marching out of their classroom towards us chanting “left / right / left / right”! Another young boy also adopted the powerful look of a shiny blue party hat and we were overwhelmed by requests for hundreds of handshakes at the end of the session.

Another suprise occured when Olivier asked us if we would like to entertain the whole school during their lunch break – of course the answer was yes and lo and behold approximately 1,000 kids emerged on to playing field – it was quite a morning!

Later on in the afternoon we revisited the Rwandan Orphange Project which I have mentioned in some detail in a previous blog. The teenagers and younger kids here are a delight to work with and we had two proper games of cricket with the boys showing how much they have learnt from CWB’s previous visits.

We then made the short trip to Efotech school were we had a slightly more uncomfortable experience – scores of extremely boisterous teenage lads descended on the cow pat strewn pitch and with the rather ineffectual school coach offerring little help, we were completely outnumbered as a few of the boys made off with balls and other equipment.

Thankfully we turned it around somewhat with a couple of games where a number of the boys showed they had at least taken on some of the values of cricket with some impressive running, calling and sportsmanship.

At least my misguided decision to ‘go commando’ today brought up a few laughs when I made a sliding stop and exposed my pale, English backside to the watching hordes. Thankfully I now have a clean pair of boxers ready for tomorrow’s exertions.