Mythbusting

The day began with a trip to Masindi junior & public school on arrival we expected around 100 children, but ended up with 150+ relay stations were just getting bigger and bigger. We got the relays out of the way and split into different stations. I was doing the batting session with Matt and we had 18 batting stations with 2 or 3 children on. One thing that stood out to me was they couldn’t wait to just hit balls and the sheer fun they were having by just hitting a ball off the cone was eye opening. Me and Matt tried hard to keep it under control and I think we did a decent job saying we had 40-50 kids on the batting station alone.

Looking around the field it was clear to see the children loved playing together across the different stations which included catching, bowling and crossfire. The heat was bearable in the morning and we got through a 2nd session with a similar amount of kids and wrapped up around 12:30 with a typical CWB debrief talking about ABCT and inclusivity.

We stopped for lunch and was quickly back on the road again to the local school in Nyakatooke CWB main man and ambassador and Uganda resident said it would take 20-30 minutes to get there it took 6 which meant we got there 40 minutes early. Luckily we managed to get a early start on the big open field temperatures were in the high 30s and credit to the team on getting through another 2-3 hours in scorching heat. We got the relays in and played 3 mini games of rapid fire and catching. Again it was so refreshing to see the fun the children were having together and enjoying the game of cricket whilst taking on valuable messages regarding HIV. The session went on for about 20 minutes past the finish time.

So 3:30 comes along a lot of tired sunburnt body’s climbed back into the bus taking on nice bottles of hot water that had been left in the sun and off we went to Masindi senior school, which wasn’t far from the hotel.

The team got to work by setting up 3-4 different games for an after school club and got to work. The sheer volume of players and watchers was incredible. Big shout out to all the team for pushing through getting the drills on and delivering valuable medical messages in serious heat. So just as we were packing up and heading back to the hotel, a young lad called Griffin approached us just before we left the school and basically was asking why we were here. We told him we were a charity using cricket as a tool to deliver HIV messages. He had a condom in his wallet but he had been told that he would get cancer from using a condom so basically saying he never uses them. He also said that most of the boys in the school are not faithful to just one girl in the school. After speaking with Griffin about condom use I think he really understood what we were saying and hopefully Griffin uses a condom going forward. It was a very interesting conversation and one we hope that has a impact on Griffin and his friends and pupils in the school going forward. It just shows you that what we are doing and what CWB are doing definitely has an impact on people in Uganda.

Stay tuned for tomorow’s blog and big shout out to all volunteers you are incredible people ❤

Dan