Devon's James May Returns From Coaching in Rwanda

Devon Cricket's County Safeguarding Officer, James May, has returned from a fortnight in Rwanda with Cricket Without Boundaries (CWB) as part of their mission to grow the game of cricket around the world and use the sport as a platform for health education and social change. Below is his summary from his time in Africa:

This time last week it still would have been lunchtime. Lunch would have been eaten either sitting outside in the shade or on a minibus travelling to our next school somewhere in and around Kayonza, Rwanda. This was my first trip with Cricket Without Boundaries to Rwanda. I have been to Rwanda a couple of times before, and even done some cricket coaching there, but I was not prepared for the full-on experience of cricket CWB style. If there was an average day then it would have been 5-6 sessions a day with 100+ children at each. Each child was offered the opportunity to have a go at some batting, some bowling and something a bit like fielding as well as encouraging the children to think about issues relating to equality and health education.

For me, the joys of coaching bowling was a particular challenge. I think some of the finer points might have been lost in translation and despite many encouraging versions of "karamburay" (straight) whilst pointing at an arm as soon as the stumps appeared in sight any sense of a straight arm being at all relevant to the activity vanished and the balls would hurtle across the playing area at ever-increasing speed. There were moments though where individuals would nudge closer to a fluent bowling action, and I guess that’s part of the joy of coaching; seeing clarity emerge from chaos. As and All Stars Activator it’s a familiar story of just about struggling to sustain enough structure for the session to be safe but relaxing into the chaos that makes it fun.

On arriving at a school we would often be greeted by children, curious at who we were and what we might be there to do.  Depending on the school children might be there and waiting or they might emerge from classrooms. Either way, the number of children would ebb and flow through a session, a particular highlight being a session for 100 children swelling to 250 with another 300 or so watching on as it coincided with break time at school. On another occasion, we were just set the task of providing some sort of games for children during a 20-minute break between lessons. As they seemed to be enjoying themselves this got extended to 90 minutes at the end of which there were still the obligatory high fives to be dispensed and a few requests for tennis balls to politely decline.

But then most of the days weren’t average. Add into the coaching the joys of travel around a country where the roads sometimes just stop and give way to earth with a most navigable route outlined by the tyre marks of the last vehicle. And then add in the heat, the humidity, the lottery of pasta and meatballs at a breakfast buffet and the enthusiasm of so many children wanting to give the game of "strange baseball" a go.

CWB has been working in Rwanda for over a decade now. Around half of the Rwanda U19 Girls XI will have had their first contact with cricket through CWB. At the first festival day, we attended 5 of the current men’s squad also joined us and talked about their early encounters with cricket through CWB too.  ur task for the two weeks we were there as a group, 8 people from the UK, to support the Rwanda Cricket Association Ambassadors who are working in schools across the country, to work in areas where at the moment there is little or no contact with cricket. After a couple of days in the capital, Kigali, we spent time near Nayamata and then Kayonza, both an hour or two away. Each week of coaching culminated in a festival where the schools we had been working in were invited to attend and compete against each other in games of rapid-fire cricket. Suffice to say that these were enthusiastically contested, to the extent that in some games teachers were “asked” to use the technical areas provided to reduce their influence on the games.

There should be a legacy of more cricket from our two weeks there. Many of the schools were keen to invite us back.  That’s where the RCA Ambassadors come in as they will be building on these opportunities to go back in and offer further sessions at these schools.

Overall it was a real privilege to be part of this group and to have the opportunity to meet and share cricket with so many people.  As a group, we met with in excess of 5,000 children over the two weeks and some of them even managed to sneak in a couple of coaching sessions with the national side.

When the dust settles I will look back on this trip with memories of being part of a great team working in an amazing country. Just don’t ask me quite yet if I’d do it all again!

If you would like to find out more about the trip then we completed a tour blog.

If you would like to support CWB then please check out my Just Giving page.