Our last day of coaching in Fort Portal was marked by the commitment of children and schools to their cricket – and much singing! Tomorrow is tournament day – which will mark the end to our project in Uganda for Spring 2012. We are grateful to Nyakasura for kindly hosting these sessions on their playing fields for local schools.

In the morning session, we had one school – Green Circle Primary School – just send a single child to training. This showed real commitment from 13 year old Balinda Alexander Arthur – and he was rewarded by taking back a complete kit to his school of balls, bats and a couple of shirts for him. (see below)

In the afternoon session with the secondary schools, two of the schools arrived by pick up truck. You can see 21 girls and 2 teachers from Kalembe Girl’s School packed in the to the truck.

The girls were brilliant athletes. Neil and Claire – who coached the session – agreed it was the best group of youngsters they had worked with on the whole trip. You can see then showing off their singing and dancing skills to Neil.

The youngsters from the secondary school enjoyed their afternoon session – and as you can see from the picture, we had some local youngsters join us and play cricket with improvised wickets and bats (and a ball we gave them!)

The sessions often end with a game of “Head, Shoulders, Ball”. You can see Yusuf adding a music and dance interpretation to this most popular CWB game for the kids from Nyakasura School!

The final session was marked with Richard delivering his last ABC (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomise) message to the youngster. The coaches took the opportunity to throw the balls a little harder to illustrate the “Be Faithful” message!

At the end of the day, we took a 40 minute drive to visit the Nkuruba Orphanage. CWB (thanks to the efforts of Veronika Reeves and Mike Reeves) has built up a relationship with the orphanage – which houses around 25 children in a remote part of Uganda. We took clothes and gave balls to the children. They had very little. The children entertained us with song and dance again. It was a moving experience to finish what has been a very musical trip.