Colston’s in South Africa 2019

It’s not every year you get the opportunity to travel 8000 miles to a different country and experience a completely different environment and culture. Indeed, I believe there are not many of our parents who have had the opportunity to go to Southern Hemisphere countries when they were younger, let alone for the period of two weeks with 40 other teenagers. So when offered the opportunity by Colston’s, we all were keen to take the opportunity with both hands.

And the other thing we accepted with both hands was “the stash”! At a meeting to brief us and our parents we were also given our tour shirts, number ones and casuals, and our crested bags with our own initials. They were clearly massive and were going to be great for keeping all of our tour kit together.

The tour began, as every tour does, with the travel. We spent 2 hours from Bristol to Heathrow on coach before setting on a 10 hour flight to Dubai. This was followed by a flight from Dubai to Cape Town which took another 8 hours. Every stage of the tour allowed us to practise lining up our bags so that initials could be clearly seen and we could claim our own bags. We got very good at this!

Once arriving in South Africa, we headed straight to Stellenbosch. What struck us all was the shanty towns and areas of poverty, still filled with children playing in the run down parks and kicking around half pumped footballs. From the off we saw the heart and character of these young children who, with nothing, were still gleaming with smiles.

Our first stop in Stellenbosch seemed to be one of the favourites. We spent 3 nights in a bed and breakfast hotel who looked after us very well, despite the trip to A&E that was necessitated when a light fitting in the lift fell onto Jack’s head on the first evening. Stitches before we’d even picked up a rugby ball or made our first tackle!

Before we reached the Hotel we visited Table Mountain to take in the world famous view of this famous city. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the best day for this trip and the “table cloth” was very much down. Still, we enjoyed exploring what we could see and the “suicide moles” (Or the rock hyraxes as we late discovered.) were out in force. Our first meal was Ox tail and mash, and this was the first time we experienced the amount of South African meat you get every meal! Several of the tour party ate steak twice a day!

We trained in preparation for our first match and also travelled to the cheetah reserve to learn about the new methods used by farmers to keep cheetahs alive whilst also protecting their cattle. We also all got the chance to get into the enclosure with the cheetahs and take photos whilst stroking them. Mr Berry and the rest of the teachers on tour however felt safest outside of the enclosure and kept their distance!

Next we played rugby against Gordon’s High School. They played fast paced and chaotic rugby moving us from side to side and testing the lungs of our entire team. We played with an extraordinary backdrop and, as a team who pride themselves on pace and chaos, we were definitely shown the true meaning of unstructured rugby. The Senior Side were comfortable winners but the Under 16s lost in the final play of a very competitive match.
 
We then travelled to Cape Town for two days, one of which we travelled to Robben Island. The experience included a tour of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell, the yard where he would have taken exercise and the quarry in which political prisoners were asked to break rocks. All of this was explained by a political prisoner who had been held captive in that very prison. We learnt about the hardships of prison and the punishment they went through, largely because they had fought against unjust laws.
 
After this short stay we travelled along the beautiful South African coast to George where the Seniors played Sevens and the Under 16s played 15s fixtures against Sao Bras Secondary. The U16s played a tough game, again being narrowly beaten and then the U18s were enlightened to the ability of all South African players to somehow sidestep just like Cheslin Kolbe in a really challenging set of 7s fixtures.
 
We then travelled to Aquila to the safari game reserve in which we saw the ‘Big Game 5’ and were guided by Otto. We all got close to lions, elephants, hippos and we got especially close, some might say too close, to a mother rhino.
 
We then travelled to Cape Town to play and billet at the world-renowned Paarl Boys High. We stayed two nights billeting with families who took us in as their own and taught us about the South African heritage and how the country is still fighting to become fully united. After staying a night, we were then taken to the game by the families to play Paarl Boys…… 5th team... We saw some of the huge Junior Springboks who were in their First XV squad and we were all happy that the tour company had pitched us about right.
After experiencing two skilful quick South African sides, we were now up against a South African side with power! 70 minutes of a physical, intense battle for both the U16s and U18s led to narrow victories for both Colston’s sides. This had been a real battle and both teams were overwhelmed with the experience.
 
Finally, we played Sao Brass High School, another unique experience while in South Africa. The highlight of these final matches of 15s for the U16s and 7s for the First Fifteen was not the matches themselves, but the reception during and after the match. The U16s game was accompanied by some really brilliant signing from the crowd and everyone was so welcoming. When getting changed in the sports hall (The school has no showers, or even changing rooms!) we truly saw how little some have and yet how happy they still manage to be. Some of our boys were kind enough to give away some of their old Colston’s kit to some young South Africans at the school and the smiles on their faces as they wondered round collecting kit was amazing to see.
 
So overall the tour was pretty eventful. We travelled, we ate like kings, we played some incredibly challenging games of rugby but most important of all we experienced a different culture and really began to understand how lucky we are at Colston’s. If there is one thing I think we all learnt, it is that we should be grateful with what we have, because there are people with a lot less, who day by day still approach everything with a smile.
 
We were enormously grateful for the opportunity and want to say a very big thank you to the OCs for their generious support!
 
TJ Wilsted
First XV Captain