Guinea Bissau

Guinea-Bissau – Country 35

Guinea-Bissau is a Portuguese-speaking country. Now, this made things a lot more difficult for us, as none of us really spoke more than a few words, so getting what we wanted across was more than difficult and very frustrating!!! The police here are more open about what they want “give me money” (we never did), but thankfully this happened a lot less than in Guinea.

Bissau is a very different capital to the rest of Africa, for those of you that live in Cape Town it is like a very run down Obs, the buildings are very similar in places. The roads are nice and wide (with lots of pot holes) and the traffic is minimal.

Infrastructure all round is quite basic, so we just held the kids tag rugby clinic and a lunch for the customers which turned into our most festive and fun function to date, the guys in Bissau like to have a drink and dance (good job I do too!).

This is the first time we have been in a country that does not know anything about rugby. There was a group of guys invited to the function that heard we were coming a couple of months ago and started recruiting guys to come and learn rugby from us. The only problem with this is we just run simple tag rugby clinics for the kids, just a bit of fun, we are not coaches…

These guys were very keen and passionate to learn and weren’t  pleased that we weren’t here to teach them (really not pleased, translation problem…). We felt really bad that they had gone to all this trouble, so one of the guys played a Tag rugby game with them after the function to show them the rules as we had given them a Tag kit to get them started. During this game it became apparent that they really knew nothing, throwing forward, passing through the legs like American football. We were supposed to start driving the next day to Gambia but instead arranged to meet them at a field (muddy dirt pitch). The guys showed them how to throw and pass the ball, then we got the guys into groups, I took a group (I know, me teaching rugby (I can see the horror on some of your faces…) but you do what you have to and take what’s available!!!). I really enjoyed myself and the guys caught on really quickly, I was delighted (and exhausted,

The guys showed them how to throw and pass the ball, then we got the guys into groups, I took a group (I know, me teaching rugby, I can see the horror on some of your faces…) but you do what you have to and take what’s available!!!). I really enjoyed myself and the guys caught on really quickly, I was delighted (and exhausted, I’m so unfit). The rain came down and flooded that pitch, but they didn’t care everyone was enjoying the morning.

In a couple of hours, the improvement in the guys was huge, and the next game of Tag was in a different league… The guys were really keen to get rugby off the ground and arranged a meeting with the sports Minister to ask for his help in starting rugby in Guinea-Bissau. We donated 250 balls to them and I made a folder of info I printed off the web to help them on the way.

With passion like these boys have they will go far and DHL can be proud they helped start rugby in Guinea-Bissau! After our practice, I was walking back to the car, I passed another pitch of guys playing soccer, they had seen what we were doing and shout “Hey Coach” as I walked past (I liked that…).