How cricket helps ease rwanda’s pain
Charles Reynolds in Kigali discovers how ethnic and gender divides are being tackled at Rwanda’s spectacular new cricket ground
Rwanda – the land of 1,000 hills, gorillas and, now, cricket. If the last one sounds surprising, perhaps one day it won’t. The country this week celebrated the opening of a brand new national ground – the result of a £1m fundraising and construction project from British charity, the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation (RCSF).
Cricket can lay a claim to being Rwanda’s fastest growing sport. Scarcely existing there before the horrific 1994 genocide, it was brought back to the country by those returning from years in exile in nearby Uganda and Kenya.
Its lack of association with pregenocide Rwanda has been a huge factor in its popularity, going hand in hand with President Paul Kagame’s aim that Rwandans be united as one nation, not divided into Hutus and Tutsis.
Kagame himself attended the opening of the new Gahanga cricket ground, propelling cricket onto the front pages of the Rwandan newspapers – although not for the first time.
That honour belongs to Eric Dusingizimana, Rwanda’s national team captain, who in May 2016 broke the Guinness World Record for the longest ever cricket net, batting for an unbelievable 51 hours straight and turning himself into something of a celebrity overnight – well, strictly, over two nights.
“That was the moment that cricket was really born in this country,” says Alby Shale, RCSF project director. “Everyone wanted to know what this game was and were stopping Eric on the street.”
Shale is the son of former prime minister David Cameron’s constituency chairman, Christopher Shale, whose vision of building a new cricket ground for Rwanda inspired the founding of the RCSF when he died unexpectedly in 2011.
Alby is the charity’s project director and it is thanks in no small part to his relentless drive in organising and fundraising that the construction project has now been completed.
Sitting on the only flat piece of land in sight, half an hour’s drive from the centre of the capital Kigali, the ground is absolutely stunning.
Looking out over picturesque Rwandan countryside, it features a huge sweeping grass bank for spectators and a spectacular three-domed pavilion, built to mimic both the bounce of a cricket ball and the country’s infamous hills, and will also serve as an HIV testing centre and restaurant for the local community in the future.
All in all, it could scarcely be any more different from what was previously Rwanda’s only cricket pitch, which, once seen, gives the instant impression that it’s incredible that the sport ever took off in the country at all.
Located at Ecole Technique Officielle, the site of a notorious 1994 massacre as well as the location of the film Shooting Dogs, it is an incredibly uneven and rocky field with an artificial wicket and several cows grazing on it – the treacherous nature of the bumpy outfield highlighted to me by someone pointing out the large dent in the sightscreen they had made earlier in the week as they stumbled chasing a ball over the boundary.
It is a ground deemed so inadequate that until now the Rwandan national side have been forced to play all of their fixtures abroad. Those days, however, are set to be a thing of the past thanks to the star-studded opening of cricket’s newest ground, the inauguration attended not only by the President, but also Michael Vaughan, Sam Billings, Herschelle Gibbs and Kenyan all-rounder Steve Tikolo.
“It feels surreal,” says Shale on the eve of the inauguration. “What’s so exciting for me is how this game is really playing a part in the healing process and how this new facility – just two days ago the Rwandan team beat the Kenyan U19s here which was a huge victory for them – is bringing these guys together in perhaps a way that wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago, and it’s that that is truly inspiring.”
With construction of the ground now complete, the work of the RCSF is done, however, as far as Shale is concerned, this is “just the beginning”, the charity morphing into a new enterprise called Cricket Builds Hope, whose mission is to change the lives and long-term prospects of vulnerable young people in Rwanda through cricket.
In particular, the charity is aiming to make a significant impact on the lives of Rwandan women, and in fact the country also holds the women’s record for the longest cricket net as well, Cathia Uwamahoro batting for 26 hours straight earlier this year, a feat that was very important to achieve in Shale’s opinion.
“We decided to break the women’s world record as well because what is really interesting about women’s cricket in this country is that not only does it not have any negative connotations because it wasn’t really around before the genocide, but also because men and women play on the same pitch – there was only one pitch – you’ve got this equal playing field in Rwanda which is truly unique I think all over the world.
“It was important to demonstrate that women can do the same thing that men can do and our focus going forward with our community programmes is specifically towards women and trying to use cricket to empower them so they can challenge gender stereotypes and gender-based violence because cricket has got women on the back pages of Rwandan newspapers and that just doesn’t happen with other sports.”
The Rwandan women’s national team is in good hands as well, under the leadership of wildly enthusiastic captain Mary Maina – who has been involved in the work of the RCSF and will continue to be a part of the work Cricket Builds Hope does in the future.
Both she and Dusingizimana, who as a civil engineer was perfectly suited to serve as the general manager of the RCSF during the construction, are excellent examples of Rwandans who have seen their lives changed through cricket – the exciting thing as far as the country is concerned is that now it seems they will be far from the last.
Charles Reynolds was a guest of RwandAir. To book visit www.RwandAir.com or call 01293 874922
The facility is bringing people together in a way that wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago, it’s truly inspiring