The Maasai Cricket Warriors

Maasai Cricket Warriors batting for HIV awareness

Maasai Cricket Warriors batting for HIV awareness — The Maasai Cricket Warriors visited the School and met with Professor Peter Piot to discuss HIV/AIDS prevention, during a trip to the UK where they have been taking part in the Last Man Stands amateur cricket world championships.

The team, made up of Maasai from several remote Kenyan communities, use cricket as a method of spreading information to young people in their communities about important health issues and women’s rights, addressing topics like female genital mutilation and child marriage, as well as HIV/AIDS. The team have been in the UK for a week, playing cricket matches in the tournament to help raise awareness of their work.

The Maasai Cricket Warriors and their South African coach, Aliya Bauer, who introduced cricket to these remote villages, were given a tour of the School’s library and labs and met with Prof Piot.

Team captain, Sonyanga Ole Ngais, explained part of the team’s philosophy, using cricket to adapt the ABC HIV prevention technique: Abstinence (in cricket the batters must abstain from hitting the ball in the air otherwise they’ll get caught out); Be careful (the batters must be careful with their shots or runs as they may get themselves of their partners out); Condom (refers to protection; the batters are aiming to protect their wickets so they can stay in as long as possible).

Professor Piot joked: “I don’t know anything about cricket, but luckily I know a lot about AIDS.” Praising the team for their great work promoting HIV awareness he said: “I must congratulate you on what you are doing. Young people in Africa are at particular risk of HIV, especially through unprotected sex.

“Sport offers a great way to reach young people, and the message is even more powerful because you are young people yourselves. What you are doing will ultimately save lives. Every time somebody uses a condom because you say ‘protect your wicket’, you may have saved a life.”

Prof Piot presented captain Sonyanga Ole Ngais with a copy of his book, No Time to Lose, which tells the story of his work leading international AIDS initiatives, both in the field and as Director of UNAIDS. In return Sonyanga Ole Ngais gave Prof Piot a miniature ceremonial cricket bat with a Kenyan flag grip.

The School is a leading organisation working on HIV/AIDS research, and Prof Piot outlined some of the current projects that aim to give people living with HIV a better future, as well as preventing as many new infections as possible. He highlighted work on sports based interventions to prevent HIV (page 5), including the MCUTS trial in Zimbabwe – assessing the impact of a project that uses football as a tool for increasing uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision, and also the GOAL trial – looking at the impact of a sports-based HIV prevention intervention among young people in Cape Town, South Africa.

Cheryl Whitehorn, Senior Scientific Officer at the School, gave the Maasai cricketers a tour of a lab and showed them some specimens including spiny caterpillars of the saturniid moth from northern Nigeria, a warble maggot in the skin of a reindeer, and camel spiders from Sudan. The visitors were also of help as they identified a previously unknown specimen from the School’s collection – the horns of a female kudu. Finally they posed for photographs at the entrance of the School before rushing off for another cricket game at Lord’s.

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