Stone cricketer Sarah Hickman, aged 17, went out to Kenya in October with Cricket Without Boundaries, an Aids awareness charity that uses cricket coaching as a tool in the battle against HIV/Aids. Sarah has played cricket since she was eight and currently plays for Aston Cricket Club. She helps to coach the junior and disabled players at the club, having completed her Level 1 coaching certificate and the ECB young umpires’ course last year. Here’s Sarah’s story…
In October this year, I was privileged to be part of a team of six volunteer coaches, 4 male and 2 female selected to go out to Kenya on behalf of Cricket Without Boundaries, a world leading cricket development and AIDS Awareness Charity who use cricket coaching as a tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Their main aims are to develop the game of cricket through coaching children and teaching adults how to coach, and linking the sport to HIV/AIDS awareness by incorporating these messages into everyday coaching sessions.
Evidence has shown that sports coaches are in a unique and privileged position to impart positive messages within a fun and trusting environment. I worked with an incredible group of people which included our project leader who’d been an ICC/ECB Sky Sports European Young Cricket Coach of the Year and a current England women’s player who had just come back from the Twenty20 World Cup Final in Sri Lanka.
As well as my role as a Coach I had an additional role, that of monitoring the impact of the Cricket Without Boundaries HIV/AIDS awareness messages that we were delivering in our coaching sessions, During the two weeks I chatted to returning coaches, new coaches, and young people from which I had to draw from them at the start of the day what knowledge they had of HIV/AIDS. At the end of their cricket coaching sessions I then had to re-establish their new knowledge base for HIV/AIDS.
What I hadn’t fully appreciated about the trip, or probably hadn’t really thought through too deeply was just how much of an emotional rollercoaster I was embarking upon, ranging from the sheer beauty of the African outback and it’s incredible wildlife which we saw on our daily commute to our coaching sessions to arriving at a girls rescue centre where the events in their short lives were truly harrowing.
One of the reasons I applied for the project was that I wanted to share my passion for the game of cricket but also I saw it as an opportunity to offer young people less fortunate than myself the chance just to have fun. The huge smiles on the children faces and their gratitude are something that will say with me forever.
We coached in the Rift Valley area to the wide open plains of the savannah in the Masai Mara region, where our daily commute was over two and a half hours along almost virtually impassable tracks, we visited some of the poorest schools where the children retained their quiet dignity even in such poor, humble surroundings – but those smiles were always there to greet you and say goodbye. We even had a Maasai cricketer walking for six hours just to have the opportunity to participate in the coach education sessions we were delivering.
The second week I personally found the most physically demanding and emotionally challenging, due to the language barriers and the huge cultural differences. We learnt a few key Swahili words but most of the time we demonstrated or acted out our instructions.
The cultural differences in this region were immense, deeply ingrained and accepted by senior members of their tribal communities. Most girls were married by 13 to much older men who had numerous wives and were often treated very badly, alongside this FGM often carried out in unsanitary conditions – this was hard at times to comprehend given our western viewpoint.
I personally related this to my own circumstances, in the tribe culture I would have been married off approx. four years ago and certainly not treated as we expect partners to treat each other.
On a positive side, at the weekly schools tournament the project for the first time provided three HIV/AIDS testing stations and during the day almost a 100 people, mainly children from the tournament went for testing. Although it was a sobering experience to witness, seeing a group of young school children freely and voluntarily queuing and waiting to be tested for HIV/AIDS, it at least showed the impact the Cricket Without Boundaries HIV /AIDS messages were generating.
In the two weeks, we coached just under 4,000 children and trained 56 new coaches. At one school we were scheduled to coach 50 children however approx. 450 others were watching, waiting at the gate, so what did we do – we coached them all, all 500!
Adaptability was certainly the name of the game. It was at times chaotic, great fun but an inspiring session where we all had to improvise and utilise every coaching skills we had ever learnt and adapt a few new ones besides.
We coached in schools, orphanages and a girl’s rescue centre. The latter was particularly hard emotionally, as I’ve mentioned the girls had been rescued from some of the worst kinds of treatment imaginable, reasons which included escape from forced marriages, mutilation and abuse. One young girl having HIV/AIDS being forced into marriage at the age of five.
One of the Trustees who came to Kenya for a week as the BBC were filming a documentary on the Cricket Without Boundaries Trust and the Maasai Cricket Warriors Team said’ It was most one of the most intense, difficult, frustrating, humorous, inspiring, maddening and sad weeks in all my years coaching cricket in Africa’
For me, being selected was an immense honour especially as I was one of the youngest volunteers ever to be selected for the project and the first young person ever from Staffordshire to be chosen.
The opportunity to go to Kenya with CWB was a chance of a lifetime and I’m so glad I didn’t let it pass, it was a truly amazing experience albeit very humbling. This experience certainly made me realise just how superficial some things really are in our lives, and how even a small positive imput from us can help enrich other people’s lives. I hope that my experience will inspire other young people to consider doing something similar in future years, you can do it, never turn opportunities down
Whilst we couldn’t categorically say as a group we had changed the lives of those who we made contact with, I hope we imparted a brighter future. We definitely can say without hesitation, we gave the young people an unforgettable and fun experience whilst at the same time highlighting Cricket Without Boundaries HIV/AIDS messages. It was certainly the most profound, moving and rewarding experiences I have ever encountered.
Nelson Mandela said: “Sport has the power to change the world, it has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination.”
I recently read the following statement ‘we all sleep under the same sun just walk a different path when we wake up’, just how true this is. Needless to say my path won’t stop here; I’m delighted to say that I recently heard that I’d been selected to go be back in Kenya next October. Hence the fund raising starts again.
If you feel you are able to support the continuation of this work in Kenya and feel you are able to give some money then I’ve set up a just giving page under the name of Sarah Hickman in readiness for the Kenya Autumn 2013 project. The website can be found HERE. I appreciate that money is tight but if you can spare something towards this excellent charity it would be greatly appreciated. Any money donated through my page will go directly to the project and can even be gift aided. For further information please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at hckmmic@aol.com
Finally, many thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my experiences with you.
Sarah Hickman
1 comment
Jill Hood
Sarah is an inspirational young girl. I’ve met her on a number of occasions and have been so impressed by her and with what she has done. She experienced the horrors of Aids/HIV which taints the lives of almost everyone in Kenya and tells her story of how the young have to endure such horrors in their young lives. Sarah is working hard raising funds to go back out to Kenya, she stood all day in Stone High Street in the freezing cold on Saturday getting her message over about Cricket without Boundaries. I wish her luck .