The closing stages of the Tour Du Rwanda allowed the team to start our very own Tour with a multi-sport weekend. After touching down early on Saturday morning we took the opportunity to watch the riders as they came past Gahanga Cricket Stadium.
An impressive site and more signs of the development in Rwanda that it is turning in to such a big event attracting the likes this year of four-time Tour De France winner Chris Froome.
We swapped yellow jerseys for the more familiar CWB blue and in the afternoon headed to Ndera to work with Tall Eric and the other coaches at the Indatwa Cricket Academy. Five of the u19s squad that participated in the recent cricket world cup in South Africa came from the work started here and it was a pleasure to be there again with the younger members, hopefully some seeds have been sown for the next generation of players to come from Erics production line.
It was also nice to see how the academy has grown outside of just cricket with education also being provided for the players, this work funded by female players from Hampshire Cricket is a model that we would love to see roll out across more cricketing hubs here and in the other countries we visit.
Sunday is typically a quiet day on a CWB trip with church taking priority, however thanks to some pushing by Landry the Development Lead for cricket in Rwanda we did manage to get in 3 sessions at 3 different schools. The highlight being a visit to CECYDAR a rehabilitation centre for street children. The RCA have been sending coaches recently to the school and it is always a great honour to be able to spend a couple of hours playing games with people who typically face too many barriers in life to be able to enjoy the simple pleasure of playing sport.
A first look at the whiteboards from one of our integrated learning sessions provided a stark reminder of some of the issues that these children face.
All in all, a great first couple of days to begin our 2 weeks here, a big thank you to everyone at the RCA for the usual warm-welcome and support in arranging the coaching sessions. A special thanks to all the coaches who have been with us this weekend, their help / support is always welcome and is one of the things I enjoy most about these projects. The ability to share coaching tips is always welcome and I have already picked up a couple of things from them that will be going straight into my coaching toolkit.
The next few days will see our schools programme begin in Nyamirambo an area in the west of Kigali, before we then head south towards Huye.
Lee Booth
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