2.12.13 Monday. Anyone for Rounders?

As our guests are keen to see some of the country we decided to take a delivery to a school down the coast today.  Nyofelleh, is about 25 miles away in the rural area to the south, the Lower Basic School there we have twinned with St Peter’s school in Wakefield and they donated many items of sports equipment on the last container; most of which we had delivered last season.  This morning we were taking the remainder of the equipment from the storeroom and were anxious to see that they were using the items donated.  Most of the items we delivered last time have been well used, particularly the footballs which are universally loved here.  Today we had some rounders equipment and small stilts, used by holding string whilst moving each foot.  The head teacher and the sports master were out today, but we managed to persuade the duty teacher to bring out two teams for rounders.  There were two young teachers and the deputy head, who was probably about 50.  He was the only one with any idea of how the game should be played, so it was hard going trying to get a game organised.  The children had never played before and some could not grasp the idea of getting the opposing team out by touching either the player or the post.  One boy in particular kept throwing the ball back to second base instead of on to 4^th!  We tried for half an hour and eventually got some semblance of the game going.  We had more luck with the stilt game.  4 teams one representing each house in the school, red, blue, yellow and green were assembled to do a relay around markers using the stilts.  This proved to be a great success, despite the children never having seen anything like the stilts before. We had a great time, shouting and encouraging them up and down the field.  The younger teachers were really enthusiastic and were going to introduce the game to the rest of the school.  We finally left after a trip around the school, which has increased the roll this year by 100 as all tuition fees are now free for school children.  They still have to buy uniform, shoes, books and pencils.  We returned home and all had a swim in the pool in the afternoon before going to meet Jean at Yashmine for dinner.