I am Coach Matabishi Bumba

Coach Matabishi Bumba '' As a former international basketball player and instructor, I have had great experiences during my career, which began in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Rwanda, in Tanzania and then in Uganda.

I am happy to have had the chance to discipline, educate, train and correct children and young people, not just for that but for everything else as well. I believe that in addition to what we can bring them through sports, cultural and creative activities of all kinds, the most important thing is to help them understand why they must love everyone, help them, empathize, being altruistic… also teaching them to love God, his word and to understand life. That is why we must not neglect these activities, nor the benefits that our children can derive from them. These activities convey educational values, health, team spirit, fair play, notions which are also part of the values of modern civilizations.

During all these years, I have learned a lot about the importance of working with children and young people, but I have enjoyed all the years spent with refugee children and young people. Just watching him use their natural talent in the midst of other Ugandan children the same age as them got me excited and reminded me of the days when I played like them. I never realized that sport could heal wounded hearts or sometimes also require more than just being a coach-educator, a counselor, a friend and in the joy a contributor to bring back happiness. Curiously, the groups of children and young refugees showed me overnight an intelligence that always seemed to me to be ahead of the children of the same age that I had had the chance to train elsewhere. In some cases, I found it amusing to see how very advanced some of them were, especially when I learned that they had never been front-trained. May God bless all the activities undertaken by the Kyaka Youth Refugee Center, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all who have chosen to persevere in our struggle, I promise them that our commitment to this project will be followed with the greatest attention and the fruits of our labor will be recognized, I hope, in the years to come.