6th March - our leader's entry (?)

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Saturday 6 March 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAYS AND INTERNATIONAL CAREERS BLOSSOM
Day 8 of our journey saw the sun rise over the town of Mbarara, which was to serve as our headquarters for the next 3 days. We were now in “real” rural Uganda - far out in the West of the country. With Uganda’s national borders shared with Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo only a relatively short distance to the South and the East respectively, we were now a very long way from the urban centre that is Kampala.
In the colonial era Mbarara was a quiet backwater, its newly appointed district officer commenting in 1955 that he found himself “choking in the dust” of what “seemed to have the atmosphere of a one-horse town”. The same could not be said today, with the whole town bustling with the noise, fumes and activity of passing freight trucks laden with tons of green bananas, hundreds of boda-bodas (motorbike taxis) swerving in and out of the traffic, merchants plying their trade from run-down and makeshift buildings and street vendors offering everything from used shoes to freshly slaughtered chickens to passers-by. The comment about “choking in the dust” is still very much relevant though with the constant activity stirring up thick red clouds!
On the coaching front we split the day into two, working with several local primary schools in the morning session and two secondary schools (including the nearby Ntare School’s first XI) in the afternoon. In between these two sessions we took some time-out to conduct our first ‘CWB Rest of the World Touring XI’ training session. Highlights included Rich Davis’ textbook demonstration straight from the Mike Atherton school of test match batting (“well left Richy, lovely stuff” repeatedly echoed across the field) and both Mark Herring and Parry Moore each securing their first international wickets with unplayable deliveries to Ugandan national team players Fred Isabirye and Charles Waiswa respectively, both of which deliveries saw the nationals’ stumps (off stump in Mark’s case and middle stump in Parry’s) performing graceful cartwheels before finally coming to rest. These bowling performances auger well in the lead-up to this Saturday’s ‘CWB Rest of the World Touring XI’ vs ‘Past and present UCA XI’ scratch-match to be played at the national cricket ground, Lugogo in Kampala, the HQ of Ugandan cricket. Needless to say, we are quietly confident about our prospects.
6 March was a special day for another reason - Mike Reeves, an esteemed CWB veteran having toured Botswana in 2009, celebrated what he assured us was his 25th birthday today. We celebrated this feat with a sumptuous meal of traditional Ugandan fare, which included Matooke (cooked green bananas), fluffy corn bread and tasty beef stew.
Another highlight of the day was our appearance on the national evening news with a story about Ugandan cricket and CWB’s involvement in helping to publicise the game. Footage of our reception with the UCA executive in Kampala (taken the previous day) was supplemented with a lengthy discussion about the growth of cricket in Uganda and the enormous “untapped cricketing talent” we had encountered in our travels.
In conclusion, our project rolls on from one success to another. We are bonding well as a team and working seamlessly with John Trust Mayeku, William Kamanyi, Charles Waiswa and Fred Isabirye from the UCA and national team.
Many thanks to blog subscribers for their comments too, these are read out to the team in the evenings and it is fantastic to see all the messages of support from back home. Keep up the good work!
Scott Keown

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