{"id":96,"date":"2012-09-26T20:39:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T20:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/?p=96"},"modified":"2012-09-26T20:49:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T20:49:44","slug":"day-3-gulu-the-sir-samuel-baker-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/2012\/09\/26\/day-3-gulu-the-sir-samuel-baker-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 3 – Gulu (The Sir Samuel Baker School)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCWB first-time volunteer Mat Danks' news radar goes off the scale with a particularly juicy bit of progress from Northern Uganda…..<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, it’s James’ turn on the blog round up tonight and you can read all about the fun and games of today over there.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut I stumbled on this little beauty of a story, my news radar went haywire and I just had to share it.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst thing to observe is that as far as cricket's concerned, Northern Uganda is virgin territory. Nobody plays, nobody watches. Ok, there's plenty more in the south but in the north… nothing.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile we’ve been in Gulu, we’ve worked with a number of schools and missions of different types and they’ve all been an absolute joy.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of them is a boarding secondary school just outside Gulu called the Sir Samuel Baker School which is home to about a thousand boys from around the north of the country.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe school dates back to 1959 and is named after the Devon-born explorer, politician and game hunter who did a great deal to spearhead the abolition movement in the late 1800s.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile visiting the school this afternoon, we found out a little about the school’s history.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in the 1960s and 70s, cricket was a key part of the curriculum.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe school regularly played matches against schools locally, nationally and even across eastern Africa.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, as a result of what many Ugandan’s still politely call ‘the instability’, cricket completely fell off their radar for decades.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the best part of 40 years, cricket was all but forgotten.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is until very recently when the Cricket Without Boundaries team arrived and inspired what is already a wonderfully sporting school to seriously set about restoring the school’s old cricketing glories.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a matter of weeks, the progress is astounding. They clearly have a host of naturally gifted sportsmen who have grasped the new sport they’ve been introduced with both hands.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir aspiration is to be able to play competitive matches against schools in Kampala within twelve months.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a huge, huge ambition but one which, watching the enthusiasm and talent of the boys who have been involved with the CWB sessions, could certainly be achievable.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the CWB vision of helping cricket take root in the north of the Uganda is to become a reality, you have to look for tangible progress.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a matter of weeks, this school is already blazing a trail, providing real inspiration to the volunteers and, hopefully, providing inspiration to other schools in the area.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBring it on.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CWB first-time volunteer Mat Danks' news radar goes off the scale with a particularly juicy bit of progress from Northern Uganda….. Now, it’s James’ turn on the blog round up tonight and you can read all about the fun and games of today over there. But I stumbled on this little beauty of a story, my news radar went haywire and I just had to share it. First thing to observe is that as far as cricket's concerned, Northern Uganda is virgin territory. Nobody plays, nobody watches. Ok, there's plenty more in the south but in the north… nothing. While we’ve been in Gulu, we’ve worked with a number of schools and missions of different types and they’ve all been an absolute joy. One of them is a boarding secondary school just outside Gulu called the Sir Samuel Baker School which is home to about a thousand boys from around the north of the country. The school dates back to 1959 and is named after the Devon-born explorer, politician and game hunter who did a great deal to spearhead the abolition movement in the late 1800s. While visiting the school this afternoon, we found out a little about the school’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/uganda12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}