Tennis instructor Henry Lamb recently travelled to Uganda to promote his love of tennis to local children in conjunction with his mother’s charity CRESS UK. CRESS UK was founded back in 2010 and is a Christian Charity which seeks to bring relief and education to the people of South Sudan so that they can help themselves to emerge from poverty to a sustainable living standard. CRESS works under the invitation and guidance of the ECS (Episcopal Church of Sudan). As a charity it is strongly relationship based so that key individuals in South Sudan are supported financially and physically to enable them to be effective in their work. CRESS educates over 80 children and has recently embarked upon an exciting sustainable farming project. Caroline Lamb (Henry’s mother) and CRESS founder said, “I am quite amazed with how much we have achieved in such a short space of time. The South Sudanese have responded extremely well to the relief and along with the continued and ever growing support back here in the UK we are hoping to make a real difference.”
Henry tells us about his recent trip:
You may firstly ask why the trip was to Uganda and not South Sudan. The main purpose was to visit as many of the sponsored children as possible (incidentally they are all educated in Uganda rather than South Sudan due to the better standard of schooling) and put plans in place for the development of a sustainable farming project. During the week we were travelling and working alongside two of the’ father figures’ from the community that CRESS works so closely with in South Sudan. This as you can imagine, was extremely helpful especially when arriving at schools who showed no acknowledgement of any contact prior to the visit (it would be a long way to go to have not pre-organised the visits) which we found to be the case more often than not. The schools we visited were far from what I had imagined, some schools had over 1,000 pupils with classes of 80+, goodness knows how they keep the large scale dormitories quiet after lights out…
I don’t want to paint a picture of a boarding school similar to the likes of Eton and Harrow, as the only real similarity is that they both have boarding pupils. The campuses were small and chalk boards in the classrooms, however I was impressed with the IT access in some schools along with well stocked libraries. We were lucky enough to browse through work books and the level of academia was impressive and very presentable work. Most schools had a football pitch of sorts; athletics was also taken quite seriously. It was most exciting to be able to introduce the game of tennis as none of the children at the three schools we ran coaching clinics had played the game before. We ran hourly sessions (that was long enough in the midday heat) with groups of eight or so children on the playground/dusty court at a time. We provided everything from pop up nets, tennis balls and racquets (these had been so kindly donated from CRESS sponsors in the UK). All equipment was left at each school and it was marvelous to return to one of the schools the day after our session to see the net still out and children continuing to play. The headmistress from Triple P Primary School in the Mukono district said; “we are so grateful for all this sport equipment and these inspiring tennis sessions, whilst it is a brief introduction I know my pupils will continue to play. Thank you so much to Henry Lamb Tennis and CRESS UK.”
Whilst this was the smallest introduction to tennis in Ugandan schools we found the children hugely receptive and quick learners. This has certainly inspired me to think about further and larger scale projects for the future. It would be fantastic to work with such a nation that is gripped by sport, which was so clearly evident from every taxi driver desperate to talk about football even though they had recently struggled to qualify for the sports pinnacle of the Africa calendar, namely the African Cup of Nations. I wonder what could be achieved with such a passionate, receptive and quick learning nation when avenues are opened to other sports such as tennis….
About the contributor:
Experienced West London tennis coach and entrepreneur Henry Lamb has recently announced the launch of his specialist tennis tuition business, Henry Lamb Tennis. Under its previous guise ‘Menace Tennis’, the company built up a strong presence in the inner London boroughs. Henry Lamb Tennis will continue to cater for school children in boroughs right across west and south-west London. Book Easter classes now!
