I watched Shooting Dogs yesterday, for the first time since I moved to Rwanda. It is a great film, made particularly poignant by the relationship between the Ecole Technique Officielle – where the massacre the film portrays actually happened – and cricket in Rwanda.
The story of Rwandan cricket is a human one, so it’s only right that I should start with the story of one young boy.
In April 1994 Audifax Byiringiro was six months old; too young to know anything of the genocide taking place around him. While murder and brutality played out across Rwanda, Audifax and his family – his mother, father and three siblings – sought refuge from the violence. By June his father and three siblings had been murdered and only he and his mother remained. For more than a month they faced death daily at rebel road blocks as they fled from their own countrymen.
One day in the same month, on a field in a school in Kigali, 2,500 Rwandans were abandoned by UN peacekeepers and attacked by local militia with machetes, grenades and guns. The massacre took just a few hours, and by nightfall all but 50 were dead.
In 2002 that field became Rwanda’s first cricket pitch. Before a ball could be bowled, the grass, which was two metres high, was cut, revealing the remains of many victims of the massacre. For the next few months it wasn’t unusual for a fielder, when chasing after a ball, to come across a human bone.
In 2007 Audifax Byiringiro, by then 14 years old, played his first game of cricket on that field. Cricket has changed his life. He is now the captain of the national under 19 team; he helps coach the U13 & U15 boys and girls teams and he spends time coaching in orphanages, primary and secondary schools; in 2011 he was asked by a cricket club in Cornwall to be their overseas professional for the season but his visa request was turned down.
Audifax’s troubled past is far from uncommon in Rwanda and while the policy of international aid organisations has quite rightly been to develop basic infrastructure, to lower child mortality and to reduce poverty, cultural development has been largely ignored. But it is crucial to the next stage of Rwanda’s journey from genocide to developed nation. I was even sent a quote recently from Tony Blair’s former climate change advisor and current advisor to Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s President:
“In the hectic and exciting process of poverty reduction and child mortality improvement, alongside economic growth, taking place in Rwanda, cultural developments have taken second place. In my view it is critically important to correct this imbalance. Needless to say, the new anglophone bonds under development with Rwanda in East Africa can only be strengthened through cricket”.
Professor Sir David King
Since cricket first arrived in the wake of the 1994 genocide (brought home by returning exiles who had had grown up in nearby cricketing countries) it has provided education and direction in the lives of thousands of young people. But while participation among Rwanda’s youth may have soared there is still only one cricket ground: that small field in Kicukiro where 2,500 people were massacred.
This dire lack of facilities is why the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation was formed in late 2011. Along with the MCC Foundation, we are building a high quality home for Rwandan cricket, a venue from which the Rwanda Cricket Association can continue to coach children just like Audifax, who want to learn and play cricket.
In May 2013 the RCSF agreed to purchase 4.5 hectares of land – enough for two cricket ovals – on the outskirts of Kigali. Development is expected to begin in early 2014 with completion up to 18 months later. While we have raised £350,000 already, a further £250,000 is needed in order to complete both grounds.
To learn more about our work please contact our Project Director, Oli Broom, at info@rcsf.org.uk.
Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation 