4th March in Mbale

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With yesterday having been such a great success for all involved, a lot of planning along with some lengthy discussions went into ensuring today’s kwik cricket competition followed in the same positive footsteps. The day began in a more eventful way than previous mornings, starting with a meeting in the dining area consisting of delegates from different aid supplying organisations/charities and members of the Ugandan army in relation to the devastating landslide. News came alongside this of today’s main man, Richard and his antics during the night, consisting of heavy drinking with an old friend of his and Uganda’s funniest man John Mayeku, as a result of which Richard had got no sleep at all after returning from Mbale’s finest watering holes at 5am.
With both John and Richard in a pretty hilarious state we set of for the final time to the Mbale Municipal Council Stadium along with a depleted team from the previous days, with Charles away in Kampala. We had a scheduled start of 10am, and had been told we would have the entire field to ourselves, which was a vital part of the day being a success, but in typical African fashion we arrived to find it was in use by the football team until 10.30am. With a delayed start time and Richard having to put his sleep starved mind to work in the blistering sun, the session could finally begin, after a fantastic reception from all 25 schools and coaches who started the tournament by singing the Ugandan national and school anthems which was done in spectacular fashion.
It was a round robin competition with 10 pitches set up on the sports field, with 5 groups of 5 teams split up across them, with each team consisting of 8 players, all from the same school. Each coach then got a pitch allocated to them to supervise alongside the teachers from each school, each team then had a 7 minute innings in which to bat or bowl, with the team scoring the most amount of runs winning the game, and the overall top run scorers in each group, winning that group. Not all fixtures unfortunately could be carried out due to schools getting worried about their children not getting to eat because of missing lunch and so a few games towards the end had to be missed out. Never the less some amazing mathematical work from the team (except Clare obviously) made sure that the scores were all made to be level, and any team playing more games than any others would not benefit from doing so when it came to the amount of runs scored. Each of the winning teams were then presented with CWB t-shirts for each team member, and every student who turned up got a Kit Kat courtesy of the big boss Scotty K.
The whole event was a brilliant success yet again, with the children really taking a liking to the coaches, a few more so than others. Clare had two of the young strapping Ugandan males asking for her number, whereas I had a marriage request from an 12 year old girl I had nicknamed ‘Smiler’ the previous day. She had earned the name by having the biggest smile I had ever seen, and not once throughout the 2 days had I seen her with any other expression. But due to the contrasting ages and climates between sunny old Yorkshire and Mbale, and the same with Clare and her male followers, each had to be declined.
For me personally Mbale has been the most stand out and enjoyable place visited yet, and I am sure I am not alone in saying I would love to come back here just to see the excitement on Clare’s face when she thought she would finally get to show the group the two zebras she saw each day, which when we all got out turned out to be one single concrete model. I also need to mention Veronika Reeves (Czech Republic’s best cricketer) for her use of the Yorkshire accent. Also Mark ‘Beetroot’ Herring, as over the last 2 days he acquired batting figures of 7 runs scored from 6 balls, but cleaned bowled twice, with the first time been cleaned up by the Bradley Wright-Phillips look alike Charles who even though he is an International bowler was bowling under arm!
Peace out from CWB’s Yorkshire man turned Ugandan Tom Rich

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