Day 1 – travelling up the Pearl of Africa

A team filled with youth, experience and passion reached Kampala on Saturday evening for our one night stay in an unfortunately named hotel.

After a short sleep and a traditional Ugandan omelette breakfast we travelled to the National Cricket Stadium with our newly adopted team; namely Joseph our bus driver and Jackson and Emmanuel, 2 local Ugandan cricket association coaches who our joining us along this journey. After meeting Henry, the country’s cricket development manager for a chat, we enjoyed watching the start of a local premier division T20 match with a former national opening bowler on show coming back after recent back problems.

On a walk round the ground we met Robinson who set up his own cricket academy that runs all year round. They play abou8 matches at the ground. He claims 90% of the country’s under 19s squad have come through his academy; and from what we saw a few more will progress. Jamie bowled the ball onto the top of the Nets which the boys enjoyed, and they were very excited to be given CWB wristbands.

Check out the CWB Africa Twitter account (@CWBafrica) for a video of one of the bowlers.

Leaving the action with Premier CC 40/1 off 7 overs, we hit the road for our long journey from Kampala up to Soroti. The journey took over 7 hours, during which we were treated to such scenery that it was easy to see why Uganda is described as the “pearl of Africa”. We travelled across the Nile near to its source and saw Mount Elgon on our trip.

According to Joseph’s speedometer we travelled at speeds of between 0 and 20kmph and as we went faster the gauge went the other way. For those who the Uganda episode of Top Gear last year, you’ll know the speed bumps are frequent and large. We were joined on the way by ‘Rocket’ Ronnie, who Jamie knew from a previous visit. Now we just need to see if he lives up to his nickname.

It was Chicken and chips in a basket for lunch and tonight, at the hotel, we will have a nice meal and debrief before the morning’s main activities begin! Tomorrow we start with teacher training and it should be a busy and hot day.