3rd March – day six

We awoke on our last day in Jinja to the news that the local election had passed off peacefully and the crowds that we had seen on Main Street the night before had been kept apart by the security forces. Joseph, our driver and self appointed protector had been a little nervous last night and he breathed a visible sigh of relief when we were back in our hotel.

We had been told to expect more primary school children turning up to make up for the cancelled session yesterday. We were not disappointed, 159 from seven schools were divided amongst the CWB coaches and local UCA helpers. Veronika took the first group to turn up and thought that she may be able to put her feet up for a while once Walakuba West Primary School had finished at midday. Imagine her delight when St Nicholas P/S arrived after their exams had finished at, you guessed it, midday.  Jeremy made the fatal mistake of asking his group how old they thought he was. ‘thirty, forty?’ He then took his cap off – ‘ah, seventy!’

At the end of the session, a gathering of officials including the Jinja education minister and sports minister, Uganda Cricket Association CEO Justine  and cricket development manager John Trust Mayeku gathered at the Jinja SSS ground to present certificates to trained coaches and to distribute Kwik cricket sets to the local schools. As Veronika observed, they like giving speeches in Uganda, and not to be outdone,  team  leader Mike Reeves spoke (for a short time) to thank the UCA for their support and to remind everyone of the importance that CWB puts on linking cricket with AIDS awareness. (A transcript of my speech will be made available on request for a small donation).

We have enjoyed our time in Jinja and it has been made even better in the knowledge that we have tutored 17 school teachers, and coached 312 primary school and 125 secondary school children. A number of schools could not make it to the Jinja SSS ground (Busoga College Mwiri arrived after we had left yesterday) due to transport problems. Hope fully this can be solved on the next trip by CWB going out to the schools rather than asking them to come to us. The facilities at Jinja Senior Secondary School are good and we are very grateful to them for hosting us, but we could do more with greater numbers of children if we went out and coached four or five schools in the same location.

In the afternoon we set off for Mbale – a three hour bus drive away. The journey was interesting as we got to pass through numerous small villages where the local children waved at these strange ‘mzungi’ (white men) bumping along over the countless speed bumps. Speed humps are not required in Mbale itself as the craters in the road do enough by themselves to slow the traffic.

Having settled in at the Mount Elgon Hotel, Joseph ‘ the hustler’ bus driver challenged me to play pool. He tried every trick in the book – talking whilst I was playing my shots, swapping his cue for mine and even snookering me at every opportunity, but I triumphed 2-1. He got his revenge on Veronika, Chris and Richard, but I think that it was his infectious giggle when winning that sealed their fate.

Abraham, the district sports coordinator came to the hotel for a meeting to discuss the arrangements for the next three days. Friday should see 15 teachers turning up at 8am. We will see!

Mike Reeves

Czech: Rano jsme koucovali v Jinja a po velice oficialnim podekovani jsme vyjeli do Mbale, kde budeme dalsi 4 dny.