Farewell Kigali

Captain Colvin wraps up week one in Rwanda

So it’s now the end of week one and what a week it has been. I’ve really enjoyed Kigali and cannot get over how clean the whole country is and I still have absolutely no idea in which direction we are travelling 95% of the time due to the endless hills in the city centre.

We’ve now coached over 5,000 children and more importantly had them screaming the ABC.. Ts on the top of their voices. The word ‘CHANE” (meaning louder) has become extremely overused, but to great effect.

We have a team of fantastic coaches, so much so that’s we’ve been able to split the group into two to cover more schools. Some of my highlights have included the mass of 500 children was had yelling the ABCs at Gahanga as break time erupted chaos. Coaching FAWE school, which is an all girls schools and were so keen to improve their skills. Rossy and I donated some shirts, bat and bag between us so they could keep playing and have some team kit to play in. My final highlight was coaching St Esprit school who were fantastic kids but it was the first time the whole team had coached together which made it special. Being sung John Legend by some of the girls during break time was an added bonus too.

I’ve really enjoyed working with the local ambassadors Eric, Mary and Audi this week who are all fun-loving, brilliant and exciting coaches. We’ve also had Jackson volunteer his time with us because he wants to improve as a coach which I thought was fantastic.  The work that they do in the schools is absolutely crucial to the sustainability of our trips. This was made evident by the schools final on Friday where the preliminary rounds had already been played. The standard of cricket has come on hugely since we started coming to Rwanda and the participation rates have soared. It was incredible to see.

Now it’s on to Huye and I can’t wait to see what the next week brings.