Thursday morning saw the team split into 2 with Team 1 of Karl, Ed, Alpha, Dan and Tom heading to Bwala secondary school. Team 2 of Lee, Manny, Matt and Julie headed to the Police Primary School.
Team 1 had a difficult session in trying to get the teenagers to engage and open up but the team used their experiences over the last 2 weeks to get the children to stay involved and engaged and by the end all the children were having fun, smiling and Joining in with the ABCT messages.
In team 2 Lee and Matt soon had the primary children running around enjoying themselves especially the animal impressions and dancing but they were also good at getting the health messages across. Lots of ABC CWB chants were heard across the field.
The teams met up at lunch to discuss the morning sessions and the different difficulties each team experienced and how we were able to overcome them to make sure everyone had a good time and left with a smile but also understood the health messages.
In the afternoon the group headed off to St Gerald’s secondary school to deliver 2 sessions. After a late change of plan Lee and Manny headed back to the hotel to hit the telephones in an attempt to move the festival from Saturday when we think it will be difficult to get primary school children to attend to tomorrow, leaving Saturday free for another smaller festival with the 4 secondary schools we have worked with.
Session 1 was for the slightly younger children and they were all engaging and open to both the cricket and health messages. They certainly enjoyed the relays and rapid fire.
The 2nd session was for the older children who’s ages ranged from 17-22 so we decided not to use the relays and to play a couple of games of the fastest game in the world. Karl also invited them to talk to us and ask questions and that everything would be completely confidential.
The session went well but as we were leaving a few of the young adults refused to high five, fist pump or shake hands with any of the team saying they weren’t able to as we were white and they were monkeys.
This came as a complete shock to the group and when we tried to explain that this wasn’t true and they were no different from the rest of us and we are all equal. One young lady then asked why all Europeans come to Uganda and Africa to exploit them.
Unfortunately history has proven this to be partly true and we tried to explain that times have changed and the way people and countries now relate and react to other countries is completely different and in our case we definitely aren’t here to exploit them and we only want to deliver AIDS awareness health messages and cricket sessions.
The whole team the gathered back at Masaka Secondary school to once again join in and assist the training of the school team there under the watchful eye of Ugandan CWB veteran and school cricket master Yusof.
Julie
Be First to Comment