Day 6 – An unexpected journey

Day 6 through the eyes of Adam McWalter…

Our day started an hour earlier today and the team made their way to the first school for coaching with a bit of a sing song. Bob Marley seemed to wake everyone up a bit ready for another good session. We arrived at the school to be welcomed into the headmaster’s office (which had a very ‘powerful’ door) only to be told we were expected in the afternoon. However, he still managed to round up a great number of kids for us to start coaching on the local field which is shared by a couple of schools. It was at this point we realised coaching wasn’t going to be pretty standard due to the mix of break times. 

This however didn’t deter the team and we got all the stations set up and we allowed Sam and ‘Big Eric’ to take a couple of sessions while we hit a couple of balls in the air for the other school kids to chase. We finally got some proper coaching and ABCs going and it was amazing to see the talent that a lot of the kids had. Although they were older, they still had some raw talent and it was great to see the enthusiasm, not only for the cricket, but also for the ABC messages we were passing on. We managed to get a ‘kwik cricket’ tournament going at the end and the competition started to heat up between all the teams. This competition led to me leading a bit of a charge around the field after being announced my team was the final winner! We left the school with high hopes that cricket was going to be continued to be played there and that they knew and understood all the ABCs.

This afternoon we experienced some adult coaching in the way of members from the Population Services International (PSI) who do a lot of work with HIV/Aids within Rwanda. They had a great time and were intrigued to see how CWB work and how they pass the ABC messages through the team. It was also good to hear about the work they do and how we can work together in the future. While the PSI guys were involved in their coaching, we also managed to get a few local guys who mainly play tennis together and teach them some basic cricket. The talent that these guys had was astonishing and if any of these guys manage to carry on playing then I’m sure they’ll go quite far in game in Rwanda. This great session ended with a few photos with PSI guys (once ‘Brains’ had removed the lens cap) and a quick Mutzig with them to talk over today’s play…

As I write this, the guys are getting ready and looking forward to what should be a great night out at ‘Car Wash’.

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