Friday 12th March - Last day of coaching As our time in Uganda drew to a close, we headed back to the Nyakasura School to host a tournament for the primary school children who had been with us during the previous two days. Four zones - each with four teams were set up to play a round robin format. Fortunately, the teachers had listened to instructions given to them the day before and we had about 140 children only. The winners of each group were to be decided according to the number of catches they took whilst fielding in the continuous cricket games. The standard of catching in my group was outstanding, and in one game the score was 12-11. However, during the drinks break, there must have been some serious team talk on tactics because ... read more

Hello, Veronika here. Yesterday we travelled on our beloved bus with our jolly driver Joseph (some call him Tyrone) from Mweya lodge to Fort Portal. As we made our way along the dusty roads and over hundreds and thousands of speed bumps (they like to put five of them about half a meter apart - not joking here!) to the west of the country, the landscape gradually changed from green but dry dusty towns and villages to very green rolling countryside. The trees are taller, the cassava plantations are more lush, the streets are cleaner and the cows and goats much fatter. The view out of the window is of a fertile green paradise. Except for the car exhausts, of course. They are as smelly as they come and the drivers seem to hoot the horn ... read more

Monday 8th March Not a bad life... day off, drinking a local beer (tastes better than usual as Clare finally got the drinks in!! Joke before she beats me!) Anyway ... on a balcony looking over on to a savannah full of local wild life which we will get to explore tomorrow ... so possibly my first and last beer then with a 5 am wake up tomorrow!! Firstly I must comment a touch more about Rich - after all I feel he was too brief with himself yesterday!! Rich Davies - lead tutor, excellent organiser and has plans a-z for every possible scenario. He is happy talking and sharing all his experiences. He is much better with some explanations after 1 or 2 Waragi (the local gin substitute!!) Anyway on to today. We arose (some ... read more

SUNDAY 7 MARCH 2010 Tutor blog Hello everyone, Rich Davies here, lead tutor for the Uganda project. But enough about me. Who are the rest of the group? Scott, our project leader. An extremely good organiser of everybody else but forgets to organise himself. Always 10 minutes late, hence, “Where’s Scott, here in 10 minutes” Mike, experience of CWB project in Botswana last year means he isn’t fazed by the vast number of children that arrive every day. He has discovered that a Ugandan power shower consists of running around the shower catching the drips. Veronika, Mike’s wife, hasn’t had time to organise everybody’s water as she did in Botswana, as the number of children each day keeps her very busy many wanting a hug. She has taken a particular shine to luminous drinks in the ... read more

With a reasonable nights’ sleep under our belts we, as per usual, sat around the breakfast table looking quite unenthusiastic, the only difference being Mark and Scotty were not last but in fact first out of the normal crew. Obviously Rich beat everyone by a solid hour!! We arrived at the Mbale Municipal Council stadium and as usual had a few minutes on our hands until our scheduled 9am start was pushed back till 9:45. Our mission today (which we accepted) was to watch the coaches deliver the skills we taught them yesterday to their school pupils. We had a full 25 coaches (all from different schools) return back today with 202 kids in total. Parry started with great initiative and started to set up his games only to be called back by the group as ... read more