Back three weeks so far and right into the thick of it! Luckily day one was a public holiday, allowing us time to remove the thick layer of dust on all our belongings, plus organise the cleaning of our clothes that had moulded slightly! Would have had more time, however, if someone had informed us it was a holiday…!
Things took off quite quickly after that. Teaching, a wicked VSO party in Musha and a very successful schools tournament organised by the Buffalo Rugby Club.
This was a great 7s tournament in which 9 Kigali and Gitarama teams participated. It was an awesome display of the strength of schools rugby in Rwanda, and the passion for the game amongst the youth.
However, by far the most spectacular display came in an exhibition game of the Under 14 team, the Mountain Gorillas who played a short game against St Joseph’s Kabgayi, U14s. The Mountain Gorillas have been selected top attend a tour to the UK in September and have been training hard since June. They will be appearing in the touraid Nations Cup in London, the final of which is to be held at Richmond Rugby Club on Sept 29th. Please suport these young guys, who showed many of the schools teams a thing or two about rugby! A testament to their coaches Philip and Vedaste.
So, life continues, we are working on developing University rugby with 1 active club, 1 unknown entity and KIST who had a lot of help from FoRR volunteers Kate and Toby and seem to be ata stage where they are ready to play.
Finally, we continue to strive for Girls rugby! We are researching which female teams exist, what level they are at and how we can help, it is a long term aim! There seems to be one extremely active girl, Ernestine who trains with the boys at GS Shyogwe. However her team is far in the bush near Gikongoro and with school committments, getting there to see them will be challenging. At least there is always next year….!
