It was another early start to make our way up to Kinihira but this time it was the whole team going along with tall Eric and some of us took the opportunity to get some more sleep on the bus on the tarmacked roads before we got on to the bumpy roads nearer to Kinihira. There were 2 schools planned for the morning and an exhibition game in the afternoon.
Tall Eric, Lesley, Rich and Myself were dropped off first at one of the most scenic setting I have ever coached cricket. The school in question was Mirwe and it is situated at the bottom of a hill within all the tea plantations. Landroy had told us that we would be doing 2 sessions at the school for around an hour each with 100 children at each session…. The first session stared with 154 children which soon rose to around 200 by the end of the first hour having done 4 stations with all the children. As we finished the session we found out actually all the children for both sessions had come out at the same time, so we quickly sorted them back into 4 teams and played rapid fire with them for the second session. During the games the 5-6 year olds at the school came down to the ground and wandered onto the pitch where balls were flying everywhere. Not an ideal spot to be so I ended up taking them off to do some catching on the side along with a bit of copy what the muzungu does. The whole session had proved difficult as they spoke very little English and we only had 1 local with us. We have been very lucky over the past few days to be able to have some other local coaches and players come up to Kinihira with us and help translate and run sessions to gain some confidence themselves.
Meanwhile Landroy, Ben, Lee and Greg had headed off to Mutara school about 20 minutes away to their session where they introduced cricket to the school through relay stations and fun seemed to be had by all.
It was then off to the Sorwate Tea Plantation guest house for some excellent lunch once again and the stunning views that are provided by the rolling hills of Rwanda. It certainly rivals the Lake District views from where I live that is for sure.
After lunch we then made our way to GS Kinihira and the Sorwate sports ground to play our exhibition match of 10 overs per side against the school team. It was discussed over lunch that if it was an exhibition match wouldn’t that mean had to be good? We shouldn’t have been so worried. Our team was made up to 11 players by some of the local teachers that had done the Coach education on last year’s CWB trip, Tall Eric and the our CWB team. Having lost the toss we were bowling on what can only be described as a sporting wicket. We started well in the field taking some early wickets thanks to some outstanding wicketkeeping by Project Leader Lee (we haven’t heard the end of it!!). Wickets were shared around between a couple of the teachers, Ben and Lesley. Rich even took career best figures of 1/5 from 1 over! I think there are some hidden cricketing talents in our team which will be used to good effect in Saturdays match against the RCA. The school team ended their 10 overs on 54 which we thought was a reachable score given the conditions. With rain coming over the hills I sent out local lad Tall Eric and one of the teachers as they would know the conditions the best. After one or two swing and misses Eric got into his stride and hit some lovely shots in particular a flick over square leg and over the grandstand the stand out. After 4 overs the rain came and we were 33 for the loss of no wickets so we were claiming victory. There were some very talented players in the school side and it wouldn’t surprise me if in a few years’ time some of them are playing the national sides.
After we had said our goodbyes to the players, staff and Landroy it was back to Kigali and after some local knowledge digging from Lee we had our evening meal at Bamboo. We had been told that it was the best Chinese in town and so it proved. The Manager even came across to us after we had ordered to ask if we really wanted all the food that we had ordered. Yes was our answer but it turned out the manager was right as we had quite a lot of food left over but we had a good go at eating it. The evening was finished with 3 frames of snooker as the restaurant had a full size table in it. The challenge was where to put the balls as there were no lines of spots on the table so it was a guessing game.
Jono