week second to last: leading off third

This will probably be my last day-by-day recap of this leg of filming. I’ll give a wrap up post at the end of next week before I head back to the states for a month (where i’ll continue to update this weekly with the new videos that we’ll be putting up on the newly designed site and all the other news that comes up.)

First off, no final answer yet on the tournament from Little League. It sounds like they’ll be making the final determination at the Little League congress in Lexington in the middle of March. From what I can gather, if they decide to keep the regional in Poland this year they’ll informally sanction an All-African tourney in Uganda and allocate funds for the winning team to travel to Poland to take on the Middle East teams for the right to play in the LLWS in America. Either way they go, I think Uganda is determined to show the world (and the Little League offices) that they aren’t just going to play as a charity case… they are going to make some noise and just might win their way to Williamsport.

On to the day-by-day…

2/11/10 - I finish editing the commercial spot I mentioned in the last post for NTV and deliver that to their offices on this day which takes up most of the morning. There are some really great people at that station and they are very excited to be showing baseball. They told me their first showing brought in really nice ratings for a Sunday morning.

I meet Godfred at George’s in the afternoon, we had planned to follow George but he wasn’t feeling well and looked to be getting over a bout of malaria. Just as I was about to scrap the day, a few of the younger guys showed up and asked if they could take some equipment over to the field at St. Peters to lead a practice.

It was very cool to watch/film a handful of kids under 12 years old leading a practice for themselves and for a bunch of students at the school who are completely new to the game.

2/12/10 - George invites us along to a meeting with Sheila. Sheila is the president of the Federation. I think I gave a brief overview of the Federation issue in an early post but I’ll recount quickly here. Every country has a Sports Federation that is supposed to be in charge of advancing sport in their country. They basically have domain over any team that is a “national team”. The Olympics, the World Baseball Classic, World Cup, tournaments like that are their areas of power. In Africa, most of the Federations are entirely corrupt. Uganda’s is too but Sheila is one of the better ones there.

This meeting was arranged by George as sort of a peace offering. Tension with baseball and the Federations is common in many countries, mostly because baseball doesn’t usually “need” the Federations and baseball programs aren’t always striving to play in the world cup or similar competitions (or the Olympics these days for that matter). Little League teams competing in the LLWS are not techinically representing their countries, but instead they represent their locally chartered leagues, which is also the reason the jerseys they wear read “Far East” or “EMEA” instead of the country names. If an MLB club wants to sign a player and bring him to America to play professionally, they can go ahead and do it. So, for the immediate goals in Uganda the Federation isn’t incredibly important. But they do have some access to equipment and financial resources and it only makes sense to be friends moving forward, especially if Uganda wants to have a team competing in the WBC in the next few years, which they should.

The meeting went okay and everyone seemed to be peachy. Sheila though, as i mentioned, is one of the good ones. The problem officer at the Federation is a man named Barnabus who from what I can tell is power hungry, petty, and completely corrupt… that being said, I still haven’t met him. He seems to dodge every event that I have a chance to see him in action. In April the Federation holds elections and Barnabus’s seat is up for a vote, I don’t think he can dodge us that time.

2/13/10 - The final league game of the season. Kyambogo has the title wrapped up going into the day at 8-2 with the Fighters at 5-5 and the Rovers at 2-8. The Fighters win both of their games with Benard pitching a complete game against Kyambogo only giving up 4 legit hits, good stuff from him.

Alex and Lillian show up to watch the game together, their 14 year old flirtation continues. The U.S. Embassy pitcher who showed up last month in Kampala comes to pitch for the Rovers and brings some buddies from the Embassy to watch.

There was supposed to be a goat roast at the end of the day to celebrate the closing of the League. But something happened (poor communication) and the goat wasn’t there. So, they decided to propose the idea of having a party on the beach in Entebbe next weekend to celebrate. Kyambogo wasn’t happy about this. The players would have to pay their own way to get to the beach and pitch in about 10,000shs (5 bucks) for the goat and beach. Most of the players cant swing that. As the winning team, they felt robbed of a party and swindled into a party that would be difficult for them to attend. A little argument broke out, nothing major, and I ended up staying late into the evening playing peace maker.

Then Kassim cried to me. I’ve mentioned Kassim a few times, he is the powerpack, jokester, catcher who is a dirtdog baseball player. He didn’t want me to film him crying which I respected, but he told me I could write about it on here, funny how he just didn’t want the image out there.

His father is a struggling electrician who supports him with school fees and whatever else he needs to survive, their family is not well off financially. He was involved in a bad boda boda accident about 4 months ago and his left shin is really messed up. He can’t lift heavy objects or be on his feet for long periods of time, so he has been asking Kassim to help him out at work, which Kassim does happily.

I guess on this morning his father called him and asked him to help him out at work but Kassim said he really wanted to play baseball since it was the last day of the league. But I guess after the 2 games, the drama over the goat, and reflection… he regretted it. He was very choked up about it and beat himself up over it pretty good. It was tough to see him like that, he is sort of the life of the party class clown, but he was really hurting. He asked me what I would have done in that situation, I told him it was unfair for me to answer that, I don’t think I’ve ever had to make a decision like that in my life, especially not as an 18 year old. Africa is confusing.

2/14/10 - MLB game on NTV day. I was hoping to get some locations around the ghetto but it was raining pretty good so I went to George’s and watched with Aaron, Johnny, and Benard. It was an Angels Red Sox game from late in the season. It was the game where the Angels were robbed by a missed strike three call from Brian Fuentes with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th that would have won the game followed by a flair to left that Juan Rivera made an incredibly lazy effort for to lose it. Pretty interesting game though.

Oh, and the commercial I cut ran which got a nice smile from everyone there followed by a few phone calls to George by people who wanted to join baseball. Cool.

2/15/10 - This was a travel day up to Benard’s hometown of Soroti.

2/15/10 - On my first trip to Soroti way back, Benard and I were bored one evening and wanted to throw a baseball around. We saw a nice flat field by a school near our hotel and they let us use it. While we were throwing a teacher came out and watched and said “hey, we have this equipment here but we don’t know how to use it.” So, Benard said we would come back and show them. Benard is a man of his word.

We went to the school, called Soroti S.S. and the same teacher, Solomon, met us and showed us what they have which was a bag of small gloves, a tee, about 10 soft training baseballs, one small bat, and some rubber throw plates. I asked where they got the stuff and they said a school in Sweden had sent it to them. Huh? Yeah, they are going to try to get me the name of the school so I can see what is up with that.

Benard wanted to lead a little training that same day, but its Africa so there are these hoops to jump through. He had to meet with the headmaster who told him to draft a letter to submit to him stating who he was and what he wanted to do and they would review it and decide.

So he wrote a letter… sitting outside the head masters office… with a pen and paper that the headmaster gave him.

The headmaster said it was okay to train the kids and gave him a time 2 days later and that was that.

2/16/10 - I was hoping to climb that mountain that Benard lives under on this trip again but as we were going to the district office to get permission Benard got a call from his Mom that his Dad was in town and at his house. We changed our plans and went straight to the house, Benard doesn’t see his Dad often.

We get to his house and his Dad is bathing. When he gets out he changes into a suit and sits down with Benard. They have a really awkward meeting that only lasts about 5 minutes. Benard asks him for a letter of recommendation for jobs and his Dad, named Emmanuel, says he will draft one then he says he has to go to a meeting somewhere.

So, they walk down to the main road and Emmanuel gets on a bicycle boda and away he goes. After he leaves I ask Benard when the last time he saw his father was. He thinks about it and says “2004.”

We walk over to meet his Mom at the hospital and have a good talk on the way where he tells me about the anger he has towards his Dad, how he’ll never write that letter, and how he asked for it just to be able to tell his Mom he is looking for jobs since she is still worried about the baseball thing.

2/17/10 - Today we go to a small village just outside of Soroti where Benard’s childhood friend was abducted. It is one of the more visually “war torn” places I’ve seen in Africa, even though there has been relative peace since about 2005, there are still many broken homes and burnt buildings.

The filming is a little tricky as we happen to run into a few locals who don’t want to be filmed, but Benard talks to a very friendly guy named David and asks if he would know Vincent’s family or if they are still in the town or even still alive. He doesn’t know off hand but he says he is going to investigate and ask around for us and call Benard if he finds any info, he thinks he’ll be able to if they are in town.

A few of the other locals tell some pretty awful stories about how the LRA and Joseph Kony’s army would burn these houses down and kill anything not worth abducting.

After that we go over to Soroti S.S. where Benard is set to lead that practice he got permission for. A teacher came out and gave a great quote about Benard when he learned he grew up in Soroti. He called him a “son of the soil” and said “he will go down in the history books.”

The guys really enjoy the basic throwing and hitting drills Benard leads and they show some pretty good natural talent for it. The people in the north of the country tend to be a bit taller than in the south and if they ever get a steady baseball community going I could see a lot of interesting talent coming from that region.

2/18/10 - This is travel day down to jinja to interview a few more of the u12 guys.

2/19/10 - Today we interview Arthur. Arthur is a 12 year old third baseman from Lugazi. He is the young boy whose father died just before a league game in December that I blogged about a while back. He didn’t really want to talk to me that day and I didn’t push the issue. He came to the baseball field to not think about it, and I didn’t feel right making him think about it. It’s always a fine line. His mom didn’t even know at that point, his Dad had been dead for about 7 hours.

He is able to talk about it a little in this interview and its really heartbreaking. He tells me that it was just him and his two sisters in the room with him when he passed, he had been sick, they don’t know with what, sounds like maybe T.B. or a bad case of malaria. He tells me that he prepared tea for his Dad and when he brought it to him he was already gone. That’s when he lost it.

Beyond the really sad stuff he is able to smile and talk about baseball and his hopes to play in the LLWS and somehow make a future in the game. He is a really talented (and strong) young player who I always like to root for since he plays so hard.

He goes to a pretty nice school up in the hills that provides some nice scenery. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to go to this school again this year since his Dad was the one who always payed the school fees, but his aunts were able to raise some funds and get him back there. I sat in on a class and it definitely was one of the better ones I’ve seen.

From there we go to Saint Noa to interview two identical twins names Peter and Paul. They are awesome kids who both like to talk and goof around a lot. They grew up in Gulu surrounded by a lot of the violence that Benard did, probably worse in Gulu. They moved to Jinja with their family a few years ago to get away from the violence and found baseball at Saint Noa.

Peter is a really good catcher and Paul thrives at shortstop and second base. I get a lot of fun talk about what its like having an identical twin. One day, they got fed up with people going to Paul when they wanted Peter and vice versa. The solution was Paul taking a compass and scratching a “K” into his left arm. Whenever people are wondering who is who, Paul just rolls up his sleeve. I have to use it too.

We sit in on their class for a bit and that’s that. We head to Lugazi and spend the night there.

2/20/10 - I was planning on filming with Ogama, Kassim, Watero, and Benard who I consider to be the 4 most “scoutable” players in the country right now but it rains from 5 in the morning until about 1 and Watero and Kassim can’t make it anyway. So, I’ll have to put that plan on ice and I head to Kampala for the last week which will be very light on filming while I prepare to head back. Later.