An hour before it went dark, Ian and I took ten of the older boys up to the school grounds to play touch rugby. We had been planning to watch them take part in another basketball match, but the dates got confused and it turns out their next fixture isn’t until next week.
The group hadn’t played rugby before and I spent a while before we started trying to show them how to throw the ball. They gradually got the idea, although most of them span it all wrong and got their arms caught up in their chests. We’d cut some ribbons up into strips to use as tags and soon the group was split into two teams and starting to play. The game was very stop-start. To start with, they couldn’t get the idea that you couldn’t pass forwards. Some of them insisted on hanging around upfield and their mates further back would eventually give-in to their calls and chuck them the ball. Then they started to hide their tags. One lad tied his to his pants so it couldn’t be pulled out. Eventually though, they got the hang of it and by the time the fading light ended the game, they’d all had a good workout.
On the way back to the flat, Randy lagged behind. I watched him jump high into a tree, then come running down the hill towards us carrying an object just a bit bigger than the rugby ball. The boys crowded round the spiky green thing, which they told us was a fruit. Randy tore it open to reveal a fleshy white pulp with small black seeds. He asked us to try some but we made the boys go first to prove that it wasn’t a trick. They laughed at us for being so frightened. And they were right. The fruit was lovely. Although it looked a little alien and squidgy, it tasted like a mixture of peaches and passion fruit. Randy had given us quite a large chunk, so I took some back for the rest of the group to try. Ten hungry looking touch rugby novices devoured the remainder of the fruit in seconds.
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