By Veronika
First day in Tororo, if you don’t count the long time that we spent avoiding the pot holes last night. We had a reasonably late start this morning; we were to leave The Rock View hotel by nine o’clock. Despite the luxury of being able to sleep until eight, James and Michelle still needed a personal wake up call. After a very short blame moment James established that it was Michelle, who messed up with the alarm clock.
Breakfast was a suprisingly good considering the dinner last night. We filled up on eggs and toast and bananas with pineapple and bravely boarded the bus. Joseph , our driver, was already ready and waiting.
Because we are in a town dominated by a great big rock, all places seemed to have ‘the rock’ in their name, little bit like an episode of Flinstones. We were looking for The Rock View school. We found it and the children found us. There are over 2000 children in that school and when they spotted us, they wanted to play. So we played and played and before the teachers turned up, we were feeling pretty hot and not in the least in need of a warm up.
Twenty teachers did have a warm up with James and the children found it hilarious, watching their teacher being bossed about. We spent the morning coaching the teachers how to field and bowl and they all had a go at coaching their peers.
In the meantime Hannah, Michelle and Graham walked to the town to get lunch for the rest of the team. We thought that they got lost, but suddenly we were greeted by the sight of all three of them bringing back bags of food. You do get thirsty in Africa, but we were a hungry lot also.
Graham was the mother and made a peanut butter or jam sandwiches for everybody. There is nothing quite like eating on a hot bus surrounded by hundreds of hungry children.
On the whole, we spent a very good working day and everybody got involved in coaching and even mentoring! James was in charge of front foot drive, Graham was the technical model for bowling, Alan explained wicket keeping and Veronique demonstrated her legendary pull shot. Michelle spent most of her lunch break being stalked by little children, who enjoyed the Hokey Cokey, well, the shortened version anyway. Later on she guarded our kit against the mob, who were trying to get the balls and bats – by sitting on top of a big pile of bags and fending off the kids.
Four o’clock and journey back to the hotel. A few of us braved the swimming pool and as luck has it, it started to rain. That didn’t stop Michelle, apparently a water baby, who swam through the rain while the rest of us watched with cold beer in our hands.
Tonight we are going back to the famous hotel restaurant and have another go at ordering food.
Keep following us and hope to see many comments!
Veronika
CZECH:
Prvni den v Tororo, trenovali jsme dvacet ucitelu, kteri, se behem dne naucili, jak nadhazovat, palkovat, hazet a chytat. Rychly obed v autobuse, zatimco nas pozorovaly hladove deti. Vecer jsme nasli bazen a zacalo prset. Ted sedime v hotelove ‘restauraci’, ktera je uzasna. Pokazde, kdyz si neco objedname, behem deseti minut nam prijdou oznamit, ze to nemaji . Dobrou chut!