K.I.C.K. Ball

One of the first weekends in Kigali, I met a few people and we went out to dinner. During dinner and a few beers the idea of kickball came up. Not exactly sure how. I think we were trying to figure out something fun to do during the day since there isn't much else to do in Kigali. We came up with KICK (Kigali International Charity Kickball). The intention was to get people to give a few francs to play and the winning team would decide where to donate the money.

We figured it would be a fun thing to do on the weekends - play a relaxing game, drink a few beers, have fun. Like softball in the U.S., kickball basically has the same rules as baseball. The only difference is of course you don't pitch and hit a ball. Instead you roll a big playground ball, and the 'batter' kicks it. The defense is set like baseball. After kicking the ball the runner runs the bases just like baseball.

So after talking it up for a few months, we finally decided to play last weekend. The game was set for 2. After about 20-30 minutes, we only had about 10 people - all expats. We were playing in a large field outside the Cerc de Sportif and there were a bunch of kids around. They were probably in between 6 and 12 years old. I asked them in Swahili if they wanted to play, and of course they did. They thought we'd be playing 'football' (soccer) first. I told them we weren't playing soccer and that I'd try to explain the game as we went along. Try explaining baseball to someone. Its extremely complicated. Especially when you're using Swahili.

So what we did instead is split up the kids and try to teach them as we went along. The game was a huge success and everybody had a great time. I was yelling in Swahili the whole time, either telling the kid to run, catch, go back, stay, kick, whatever. I really think the kids on my team started to pick up the game towards the end - and I think it was because nobody on the other team could communicate with their kids.

We ended up playing a 9 inning game and my team won 25-19. Next game is set for January.

The kid at the bottom in the Phillies shirt made my day. He didn't really understand why I thought he was so cool. It was an old Billy Wagner shirt.

When I lived in Kenya, the kids had a lot of problems. There were tons of street kids and most of them were hooked on sniffing glue. They would just have these little blastic bottles hanging out of their mouths at all times, constantly breathing in the glue. Sometimes I would trade the kids fruit for their bottles to try to get them off the glue. I remember the first time I did it. I took the kids bottle and gave him a banana. I then threw the bottle into a trash can. As soon as I was 5 feet away, the kid jumped in the trash can and grabbed the glue. From then on, I started collecting glue bottles in my backpack like a regular Johnny Appleseed of glue sniffers.

Rwanda is not like that at all. Infact, theres no street people at all, even less than Philadelphia. I wonder why. This place is still a mystery to me.