It’s halfway through our visit to Rwanda and the rest of the group have all gone on an early morning safari with a start time of 5:30 am … and this is a rest day!
I’m back at the hotel, where it is currently pouring with rain and has been for the last 45 minutes – so I’m wondering how this will impact the grounds at the schools we are due to visit this week… We will find out in due course!
We have had a great week, a typical CWB week as anyone reading the previous blogs would have seen. Particular highlights for me was yesterday’s festival, with some of the Rwandan Men’s team sharing their stories of when they played in a similar CWB event as they were starting their cricket journey. Also, I’m amazingly proud of how the team delivered great sessions when, due to illness, we were three people down: a third of the UK project team. (Thankfully all are now recovered and raring to go for the second week.)
The role of project lead (my role) for a trip is a mixture of admin (which mostly happens before we leave the UK), cheerleader, willing participant in jokes about my age (showing by demonstration that old people and young people can play cricket together) and, most importantly, supporting the amazing work our ambassadors put in to make the trip a success. As a charity, we are very conscious that turning up in Africa for two weeks to run large mass-participation events where everybody has great fun and we endeavour to promote our health and change messages would mean so much less unless it was part of a sustainable programme.
As an example, this week we are in Kayonza in the east of Rwanda and less than 100km from the Tanzanian border. It is also home to one of our ambassadors, Eric Ndanga, who has been working over the last few months to get cricket started in this area. Eric has been with us all week and is very much part of our team. He has worked with the schools and set out an itinerary for the coming week, when we will visit as our team and hopefully put a lot of smiles on the faces of many children, but then we will return to the UK. Eric will then build on what we hope to achieve this week in smaller groups as he makes regular visits to the schools before next year when we hope another CWB trip will visit this area.
Eric is jointly funded by CWB and Rwandan Cricket, together with the other ambassadors we have working here. There are also a number of other coaches who have been working with us, which has been really useful as the local language (Kinyarwanda) is not easy and, although English is widely spoken, the help has been invaluable, especially in the primary schools.
Our ambassadors are the heartbeat of CWB and their enthusiasm, their love of cricket and its ability to change lives inspires me every day. The fundraising that all of this team have undertaken is vital for this work to continue – so thank you for reading and thank you for supporting CWB by responding to requests for money.
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And thank you to our coaches and ambassadors here in Rwanda: Eric, Fredy, Gislaine, Ismail, Joseph, Justin, Ndanga, Patrick, Samuel and Solange,
To finish up, here are some nice photos that the team took on their mini-safari today to the astonishing Akagera National Park, less than an hour’s drive from where we are staying.
Animal count: velvet monkey, baboon, hippo, crocodile, water buffalo, water buck, African fish eagle, gazelle, zebra, warthog, giraffe, elephant and monitor lizard.
Chris Hind (right!) – Warwickshire over-60s; lost my two front teeth to a slip cradle
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