Team Talk Mara Diary: Days 4 & 5

What do education, healthcare, sport, and wildlife conservation in Kenya have in common? Find out in the latest updated from the Team Talk Mara project. For background on Team Talk and the project partner organisations see here.

DAY 4

The coaches started the day going over the Tag Rugby Trust competition rules and organising the draw for the Tag competition with Ronnie and Raymond. We reviewed some of the more fundamental aims of Tag Rugby Trust, and what benefits we would like them and the children to gain from their exposure to Tag Rugby – in particular sportsmanship, discipline and care of the equipment.

The children spent a long morning playing TAG and getting to grips with the final rules of the game in preparation for the tournament.

We were thrilled to see the girls still wearing their bracelets proudly on their wrists. We were also given a message that the year 8 girls would like to see us about the bracelets – and by the end of the day we had met with them and explained what they were and given them each one.

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In the afternoon we had a discussion about Sex, STI’s and sexual health, which the children contributed to well. Before the afternoon TAG session, we handed out the bras to the girls, which caused big excitement and hilarity amongst them all.

Over the week, the student participation in class has improved dramatically. We ended the education by completing the POST – Tea talk Questionnaires. I think evaluating them will be interesting as there was clearly a greater understanding by the end of the week of the questions and what was being asked, and the PRE questionnaires were probably not accurate due to a lack of understanding.

In the evening we joined the Mara Lion project to show a film about lions, which was another huge success.

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DAY 5

The final day tournament day… lots of excitement as the brightly coloured T-shirts were handed out, and everyone headed down to the field for the main event. Ronnie and Raymond took charge and all the teachers supported their teams and refereed the games.

We had an exceptional turnout for the presentations, lots of parents, children from the guest schools and a number of VIP’s from the Narok County Council. The Mara Lion and Cheetah Projects sponsored a lunch for all the guests, which was very well received.

Tag Rugby Trust donated a set of equipment to the coach of each school that participated in the project.

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We were concerned that the whole emphasis on closing was focused on the Tag Rugby and that the “female empowerment” aspect of the project had not made an impact at all. However, on talking to Mr Samson Lenjir afterwards he said to me:

“The girls played Tag Rugby with the boys – they were able to compete and they also won prizes at the end – this in itself is a big achievement. Please don’t underestimate what you have accomplished this time…”

This was without doubt the hardest group of children we have had to work with in Team Talk so far, but at the end of the week we can definitely say that we have introduced both girls and boys to a new sport. We have made some great friends and we are proud to have worked with the Mara Cheetah and Lion project and so look forward to doing more in the future.

Thanks go to ENDONYO – ERINKA school for hosting all the guest teams throughout the week, and to all the schools a that participated and to the community for supporting the project so fully throughout.

We drove back to Sala’s Camp exhausted, ready for another wonderful evening of good food, good company and a very comfortable night before hitting the road for the long drive (9 hours) from Sala’s Camp to Solio Lodge for part two of the project.

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