For nearly two weeks, the players of the Rev. John Foundation Little League team from Kampala, Uganda, believed they were headed to Williamsport, Pa., for the Little League World Series. The team of 11 to 13 year olds, which plays with donated equipment, was the first African team to advance that far.  But their fairy tale story ran smack into United States immigration red tape. The players and their coaches learned this week that at least some of the team’s visa applications were denied by the State Department. The Little League World Series, which begins Aug. 19, will proceed without them.  “It is unfortunate, as we were very much looking forward to welcoming the first African team to the Little League Baseball World Series,” Stephen Keener, president of Little League Baseball and Softball, said in a statement.

The Ugandans were tripped up by their country’s inconsistent infrastructure and the United States’ strict requirements for travel visas. The State Department did not give specific reasons for the denial, but it told Little League officials that there were discrepancies in the players’ documentation. In Uganda, birth certificates are far from the norm, and establishing someone’s age and identity is complicated because parents and guardians are often illiterate.  “It is a difficult situation, I won’t deny that,” the State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said Friday at a news briefing. “But you know, these cases are adjudicated by consular officials who look very closely at all the appropriate data, and they make their decisions based on that.”  

The Ugandan children play baseball because an American — Richard Stanley, a part owner of the Trenton Thunder, the Yankees’ Class AA affiliate — introduced the sport to the country eight years ago.  “This would have been huge for kids all over Africa,” Stanley said Friday. “This is a great opportunity to expand the sport. All these kids want is an opportunity to go out and play. They have the talent. They don’t have the facilities.”

Jay Shapiro, who has been following the team for two and a half years while filming a documentary, “Opposite Field,” said in a telephone interview from Kampala that the players were crushed when they heard the news and that the embassy employee who told them on Wednesday was so upset “she had tears in her eyes.”  The team had come agonizingly close to qualifying a year ago, beating Saudi Arabia in a qualifying tournament in Kutno, Poland, but Shapiro said they lost the next day to Kuwait because of a tiebreaker rule. This year, it beat Saudi Arabia on July 16 and returned to Kampala full of hope about a trip to the United States. 

Shapiro said the State Department was right to question the players’ documentation, which he called incomplete. Documenting birth is not a simple process in Uganda, Shapiro said. Birth certificates are scarce, especially in the countryside. Many children are not born in hospitals. Some of their parents are illiterate, and in many cases the people raising the children are not their birth parents. A year ago, Little League officials asked Shapiro to gather the necessary documentation and oversee the process when the team qualified for the tournament in Poland.  This summer, Shapiro was not in Uganda. He had wrapped up the film after last season, but he and his crew flew back to Kampala after the team qualified for the World Series to add to the film. He said after the visas were denied, he looked at the players’ documentation and found it incomplete.  “Last year’s team, I’m 100 percent convinced of the legitimacy of that team,” Shapiro said. “This one, I couldn’t say I was 100 percent convinced. The paperwork was sloppy. In reality, they shouldn’t have even been allowed to go to Poland in the first place. This should have been caught earlier.”

Before granting a visa to travel to the United States, the American Embassy requires interviews with each child and his parents. If any of their answers differ from what is on the paperwork, it is considered a discrepancy.  “I don’t think any of them were deliberately trying to give false information,” Shapiro said. “They were just mistakes. But the result is the same. And I don’t disagree with their decision.”  Toner, the State Department spokesman, said he did not know how many of the players were denied visas.  “It’s unclear to me whether it was a preponderance of the kids, so that the team was no longer viable, if you will, or whether every individual on the team was denied,” he said.  Stanley said he hoped Little League officials would appeal to the State Department, but Pat Wilson, the vice president for operations for the Little League, said that would not happen.  “We are going to respect their decision,” he said. “We don’t think it would be appropriate for us to call into question their determination.”  Wilson said there was no precedent for a team’s qualifying for the Little League World Series but failing to gain entry into the United States.  He said a few teams have had last-minute hitches in the process, but all were worked out. 

Stanley said he considered it a major setback to his efforts in Uganda. He became involved eight years ago after visiting the country for a United Nations economic development program and said he had spent more than $1.5 million building facilities and setting up a program. He said he paid for the team to travel to Poland for the qualifying tournament in 2008, in 2010 and again this year. He said each trip cost about $35,000.  He said his goal was to build sports schools that emphasize academics and athletics.  “When I talked to the minister of sports, he asked me, ‘Can we win at this sport?’ ” Stanley said. “That’s what they care about, because they can’t win at anything. They have great talent there, but I told them: ‘You have to teach the kids. And those kids will play all day long if you give them the opportunity.’ ”

Shapiro said Little League should require teams attempting to qualify for the World Series to go through a preliminary visa approval process so that there are no last-minute disappointments.  “It’s a shame,” Shapiro said. “Their country isn’t ready for this. The schools aren’t ready. The parents aren’t ready. The only thing that’s ready are the kids and their talent. They will make it one day, and if there is anything positive out of this, it’s for people to realize what wonderful things are happening with these kids. They’ve got their own little world growing here.”

June 2011

Little League Middle East/Africa Regional Tournament for boys  ages 11-12 will once again be held in Kutno, Poland from July 13-17, 2011.  Why Africa is even mentioned in the title escapes most people, since it will never be held in Africa and virtually no African teams participate because of the obstacles Uganda will attempt to overcome for the third time.

Does Little League officialdom hinder African participation?  You be the judge as Uganda faces obstacle after obstacle.

The primary problem for African teams is cost to get to the tournament in Poland.  Uganda's cost is estimated at $35,000US.  No other participant in any Little League Tournament in the world faces such a high entry cost.

The problem that will stop Uganda's participation is getting the visa that would allow them to travel to Poland.  Since the tournament is held in Poland, that will require Uganda to apply for the visas at the Polish Embassy.  Since Uganda has no Polish Embassy, it requires travel to Kenya, the nearest Polish Embassy.  This same problem will face most African countries since most countries in Africa do not have a Polish Embassy.  We are told the normal visa procedure takes two weeks time.  That means at least two trips to Kenya or you stay two weeks in Kenya. 

Paper work required by the embassy:  First of all you need to provide proof that you have paid for the airline ticket as the visa will only be good for the date you leave until the day you return and this information can only be provided by the airline that will not give it to you until you have paid for the tickets in full.  If you do not get the visas, most airlines will return most of the money you paid for the tickets over a period of time.  All the airlines have this policy knowing how hard it is for Africans to get visas to the EU or to the U.S.  A letter of Invitation from Little League in Poland is required.  The Polish embassy now requires a letter from the Uganda Baseball and Softball Federation allowing the Little League Team to travel.  They also require a similar letter from the Ugandan Commissioner of Sports.  Then we must get letters from the parents of each player allowing him or her to travel.  This letter has to be notarized, which in Uganda can only be done by a lawyer at a cost of about $50US per player.

In order to get a visa, each traveler needs a passport.  To get the passports for each child requires the payment of about $150US per player and to get it rapidly, 3-5 days, we were told we needed a letter of invitation from Poland inviting the team.  Little League in Poland says they will not send this letter until we give the names of all the players and their passport numbers.   We can't get passport numbers rapidly without the letter.  Thus we lose two weeks of time waiting for the passports in order to get the letter of invitation.

Now comes the question of birth certificates.  This is going to always be a problem since most births have not been registered in Uganda, as in most African countries.  This problem has been brought to Little League Baseball's attention since at least 2004 and little has been done to address the problem.  We have suggested going to the school where the player first registered for Primary one, or first grade and use that date for the date of birth.  This year Little League asked for us to go back to the school the child attends to get the school, with official stamp on school letter head to state the child's birth.  This is all verbal, but nothing on paper.  We have done this.

As we write this, we have been informed by the Polish Embassy in Kenya that in order to get a visa, a new requirement is that each child and coach seeking a visa must apply in person and wait the two weeks to get the visa.  This will require each child to travel to Kenya at a cost of $150US each, stay at a hotel for two weeks, miss school which is in session from late May until early August, to get a visa to play in the Little League Regional Tournament.  As it stands now, Uganda will not be going to Poland to play because they are being denied the visa that would allow them to get on the plane leaving July 10.  We have already spent many thousands of dollars which have all gone to waste.

Holding this and other tournaments in Africa eliminates all the visa problems.  In Uganda, the visitor obtains his visa when he arrives at the airport.  All that needs to be done is to pay the $50 as you go through immigration control upon arrival.  Will Little League International ever hold the tournament in Africa?  The answer we keep getting is "No!"  Thus Uganda will forever be prohibited from participating in the Middle East/Africa Tournament for 11&12 year olds and 13-14 year olds since they will always be held in Poland.

Can Uganda Little League get VISAs to play in the Little League Word Series?

October 2011
 

In early September, a meeting was held at the U.S. Embassy with Uganda Little League and the U.S. Ambassador, his first assistant, the head of the visa section and the Embassy PR man.  We informed the ambassador that we do not intend to stop the program to develop baseball in Uganda.  He was very happy to hear that.  Thus the purpose of the meeting was to see how we can bring next year's World Series Eligible teams to play in the Little League World Series.  We have assured him that Uganda will continue to produce superior teams that should each year be playing in the Regional Championship games in our region every year and at every level that we can afford to send them to play.

The result of the meeting was that the problem was not age, contrary what an ill informed State Department Spokesperson in Washington said at a Friday press briefing in early August.  There were two problems.  One that can be easily fixed, and one that may create problems for certain children if we try and fix it easily. 

Problem one was how authentic were the birth certificates.  One has to remember that birth certificates are not routinely given out in Uganda and most people know what month and year they were born, but many do not know the day they were born.  In order to play in the Little League Regional Tournaments, the players need a birth certificate and a passport to get them to another country. To get a visa to Poland takes about 15 business days.  To get a passport takes about two weeks under normal conditions.  In order to save time, I supplied the money and the coaches got the birth certificates and the passports.  That was mistake number one.   There is only one office in Uganda that according to the U.S. embassy can issue official birth certificates, and since the parents are asked the date of birth on the birth certificates when they visit the embassy, and then who got the birth certificates, the coaches could be in danger of "Child Trafficking", a major crime.  To fix this in the future, the parents of the guardians of each player will now have to have their parents obtain the birth certificate at the proper ministry.  Easy to fix, but takes time and money, which means now the team has to be selected in early May in order to get their birth certificates, passports, visas and tickets to the Regional Tournaments.

Now the problem that can be fixed easily which will exclude many players, or may not be fixable under current State Department Rules.  According to the embassy, when the U.S. visa is applied for, the parents named on the birth certificate need to be present at the embassy to prove they are the parents or guardians and that they can grant permission for the child to travel.  This does not apply if the person is age 18 or above, only if the person is a minor, and that is all the embassy is concerned with, not the actual age.  If the two people named on the birth certificate do not come to the embassy, then the person who does come needs to have a "Court Order" that states they are the person responsible for the welfare of the child.  If a parent is dead, they must present a "Death Certificate" which almost no one in Uganda obtains.  Many of the children that play baseball in Uganda are taken care of by one parent, an aunt, grandmother, sister of a relative or other person.  None have "Court Orders".  Should the Uganda team apply for visas to come to the U.S. next July, we have only about 2 weeks to apply for and get the visas at a cost of $140.00 each.  Who is going to get a lawyer and apply for, pay for, and obtain a Court Order in those two weeks.  We could restrict our players to only those that have both parents on the birth certificate alive.  If that is the case, we will be telling most of the children in Uganda that you are not allowed to play for the dream of making it to the Little League World Series, but we will have no problem getting the visas.  I would rather abandon Little League if we had to do that.

We hope that Little League and the U.S. State Department might take into account the type of program the Little League World Series has been and will continue to be.  If this cannot be worked out, I am sad to say that Little League Baseball and Softball in Africa will only be for the wealthy.

Special Christmas for Uganda Little League

Santa Claus came in many forms to visit Uganda Little League this December.  Major League  Baseball came for the ninth consecutive year bearing gloves and baseballs.  This time, something very special was added.  The DVD package of discs of the 2011 World Series was added.  This valuable present will enable us to really show the coaches at the January clinic how to really play the game of baseball.  There were so many things that took place in this World Series that anyone paying the slightest attention can learn so much in coaching the game.  We will be able to use this year after year as the Ugandan players and coaches become more skilled in playing the game and thus more competitive in International Competition.

A second Santa Claus was Ms. Susan Birnbaum of the New York City Police Foundation.  Her daughter at her high school in Westchester County started a drive to collect slightly used baseball and softball equipment.  On December 17, they became the first individual donors to collect and deliver baseball equipment to Pitch In For Baseball for the children of Uganda.  We have offers from several other people who wish to do this, but they were the first.  We hope several others will join them in the near future.

Santa Claus number three has to be Wilson Sporting Goods.  At the December Winter Meetings, we managed to speak to the leadership of Wilson and expressed our need to obtain many gloves and baseballs for our program in Uganda.  They said they could help, and did they ever.  We hope to be part of their annual program in the future, as we were this December.  We were able to purchase hundreds of gloves and baseballs at amazingly low prices.  This will now allow us to really expand the baseball program in Uganda while working with the Ugandan Commissioner of Sports and the Peace Corps.

The one problem we now have is at our biggest Santa Claus of all, Pitch in For Baseball.  Without Pitch in for Baseball, Uganda Little League would have all kinds of headaches.  This Santa Clause packages all the gifts other people give to us.  The Wilson package being as large as it is, is now squeezing them for room.  As the Ugandan presents keep growing, it enables us to expand baseball into Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan and Rwanda, but Pitch in for Baseball is being choked for space to handle all this.  David Rhodes, Executive Director of Pitch in for Baseball and I will work on a solution.  I am sure we will find one shortly. 

November 2011:

January 2012:

History is Made with Canadian Visit
January 2012 was a very significant month. The one thing that the world heard and read about was the visit of the Canadian Little League team from Vancouver, BC to Uganda. They arrived on the evening of January 14 and left Uganda on the evening of January 21. The New York Times, the Washington Times, the Toronto Newspapers and broadcasters covered this story, as did ESPN and Aljazira, amongst others. They came to play the game that was supposed to take place last August at the Little League World Series. The game was played on January 17 at the Uganda Little League complex with several hundred spectators. Certainly the largest crowd to ever watch a baseball game in Uganda in anyone's memory. Uganda won two to one, but that was in my mind incidental to the event. In my mind, the biggest significant event was that about 50 visitors came from Canada and not one was eaten by a lion when they go off the plane at Entebbe Airport. Why is this important? Because the Americans that make up the Saudi Arabian team, according to Little League International, claim that they will never play a game in Africa because it is too dangerous and that is why the Middle East/Africa Regional Tournament must always be played in Poland. The Canadians have destroyed that argument. How Little League International now justifies playing this tournament in Poland will be interesting to hear.
 

During the two weeks starting on January 7 and going thru January 20, the Little League complex hosted about 90 coaches, teachers who will become baseball or softball coaches, two teams of 11-12 year olds for the first week and two teams of 13-15 year olds the second week and a contingent of an additional 40 visitors from Kenya during the second week, in addition to about 25 girl coaches learning to pitch windmill as taught by three Peace Corps Volunteers. All the coaches were being taught the fine points of how to play the game with topics being covered such as the role of the first base and third base coaches, making line ups, evaluating players and positions, game strategy and when to hit and run or sacrifice. At the same time, all coaches were instructed on umpiring mechanics and techniques. The purpose of the teams playing the games was to give the coaches an opportunity to practice what they were being taught, including umpiring the games. Each day, classes were held from 9 to 10AM. Two hours of actually demonstration followed. At 2PM, games were played every day with the games being coached and umpired by the trainees. At 5PM, every coach was required to play in our daily softball games, with a number of the later games using the newly trained windmill pitchers. At 8PM, the 2011 World Series games were shown to point out the method of really playing the game and the mistakes that are made by umpires who were not asked to get help, and the problems of using all your players when the games go into extra innings. This World Series, with the comments made by the television commentators was a great training tool and we have to thank Major League Baseball for supplying us with the DVDs.
 

On January 11, the Uganda Sports Commissioner launched the governments Sports School program. While the program will establish 32 secondary schools as sport schools starting the 2013 school year, with the remaining 100 or so starting in future years, two schools will start this school year with softball in an all girls school and baseball in a boys school. Both schools involved sent teachers who will become coaches to our two week training program. We in turn equipped them with gloves, bats, helmets, catcher's equipment and balls to start a 4 team league of S1 and S2 students playing a game a week. Each school will have a Peace Corps volunteer assigned to supervise the league operation. We and the Uganda Sports Commissioner will use these two schools as prototypes which will help in getting Parliament to fully fund the program in future years with the goal that the program will produce student/athletes that will provide Uganda with competitive International teams in many sports. For baseball and softball, it will spread the game rapidly throughout the country and give thousands of ball players the opportunity to develop their skills in a highly competitive environment. In the words of Jimmy Rollins and Derek Lee, who visited during the Canadian teams visit, the ball players of Uganda have the natural fluid motions and the talent to be major league players.

February 27, 2012:

Significant Donation - Pocket Radar Company
Pocket Radar Company donates two pocket radar guns to Uganda Little League. This will greatly help the program to monitor the talent of our young players statistically that may open some eyes in the near future. The talent is here, but we need to give it the opportunity to let it flourish, and also be able to measure it. The Pocket Radar Company had donated a very valuable tool that will enable us to do this.

April 2012:

Great progress has been made in Uganda over the past month at all levels of baseball and softball. We will be hosting our annual Uganda Little League National tournaments this May. We will have 5 or 6 11-12 year old teams coming to play for the right to travel to Poland to play in the Middle East/Africa tournament which will be held during the middle of July. That will be followed by the 13-14 tournament. Both these will be preceded by the girls 11-12 program which we hope will have a competitive team traveling to their tournament in Italy. Getting visas to Italy will be a lot easier than getting the visas for Poland as the Italian Embassy is located in Kampala while the Polish Embassy is located in Kenya. For the first time, the boys program will have a team from Gulu and a chief umpire from Canada. Chuck has informed us that after his visit in January, he would like to return in May. He will now be a chief tournament umpire.

We really made history late in March. After our meeting with the Uganda Commissioner of Sports on one day followed by a meeting with the Uganda Country Director of the Peace Corps, a three way meeting was set for a Tuesday afternoon at the Commissioner's office. This is where I believe history was made. The mission of the Peace Corps in Uganda is to spread sport programs in the schools, which is exactly what the Commissioner's Sports School program intends to do, and a number of those schools will feature baseball and softball. What was agreed to at the meeting is that when the first 32 schools start in 2013, There will be six of those schools playing baseball and 4 playing softball. Each with at least a 4 team league playing a full schedule of games at the S1 and S2 level and slowly advancing to the S3 and S4 level and then to the S5 and S6 level over time. Starting in the April-May 2013 time period, each of these schools will come to the complex at government expense to play for the National Secondary School Championships. The Peace Corps will assign newly in country volunteers with a background in Physical Education training to these baseball/softball schools to teach the teachers to become coaches and oversee the programs at each school. The schools may also have as many as two Peace Corps volunteers to also assist in track, soccer, and basketball. The government will be supplying funds for these programs in terms of pay, equipment and facilities. The Peace Corps Volunteers will do their in country training at the Little League Complex in November.

In January, the schools will be sending the future baseball and softball teacher/coaches to the complex along with their designated Peace Corp Volunteers to be trained on playing, coaching and umpiring the game of baseball and softball. Between some of the other programs that want to join the Uganda Little League program, we expect that we will be housing about 100 future coaches for our two week January program. The Sports Commissioner's Secondary School program officially launches right after our two week training program, but working with him, we already have a softball school and a baseball school operating this year. When 2013 comes, those 32 schools will represent only 25% of the final number of Sport Schools. Thus, this will be a joint program of Little League Baseball, The Peace Corps and the Uganda Sports Commissioner to expand baseball and softball all over Uganda over the next couple of years.

Two other significant events happened in March. A College Baseball player from California came to Uganda in early March He is staying until late May in the Jinja area helping to train Little League Baseball and softball players in Jinja and Lugazi. In addition, a gentleman from Taiwan arrived about 2 weeks ago with the intention of staying for several years and using that time to develop baseball players. Working with the Commissioner, he will be working at one of the Sport Schools monitoring and training coaches and players on how to play baseball. Both of these travelers have come on their own at their own expense. We will do our best to make their time in Uganda a most rewarding experience. They will both be at the complex during our tournaments.

June 2012:

Last month, Uganda Little League held three tournaments. We hosted the girls 11-12 year old program early in May with seven teams participating. This was an unexpected tournament as our long term plan was to bring the 7 and 8 year olds we started playing with tennis balls last year into softball this year working on wind mill pitching. Our coaches indicated that they wanted to hold the 11-12 year old tournament because they have been training those girls also. Thus the tournament was held. We had hoped to send a team to play in the regional tournament that is scheduled for Italy from June 11-14, but once we found out that we had to pay for hotel rooms for the team and hire a bus to take us from the hotel to the fields every day, plus pay for our meals each day, we were reluctant to get involved. When it was determined that there was a conflict with the boys tournament scheduled for July 13-17, and some other complications came about in Uganda, it was decided not to send a team this year.

The boys 11-12 year old tournament was won by the Lugazi Little League. We have now made sure all the birth certificates are from the proper agency and the school records verify the birth dates. We are now in the process of obtaining the boys passports, which we should have in a couple of weeks, which at that time we will be able to apply for the Polish visas. We hope to obtain the latter without the complications we had last year. Little League International has been very helpful in assisting us on obtaining the U.S. visas should the team win in Poland. One problem that may present itself is that the Lugazi team is made up of entirely 11 year olds. They will work very hard to bring home a victory to Uganda. We do not anticipate any of the problems of false documents like last year as the problem has been cleansed from the system.
The 13-14 year old team that we had hoped to send to Atlanta Georgia did not happen. We were notified mid May that the airlines would not grant the free passage that was needed to get the team to Atlanta.

We have made significant progress with the Uganda Sports Commissioner in assisting him with his Sports Schools program. We will have at least 7 secondary schools playing games internally at the S1-S2 level this coming school year. The same will apply for at least 4 girls schools playing softball. Next May, they will be playing for a Government Sponsored National Title at the Little League Complex. In reality, these teams will really be 13-14 year olds and if we can work this out, maybe the Ugandan Government might sponsor their trips to the Little League Regional Tournaments for the respective age groups. The following year, they will expand to the S3-S4 level, etc. Each one of these schools will have a Peace Corps sports major volunteer to act as a supervisor, commissioner to make sure the programs are running properly. In conjunction with this program we have purchased over 900 gloves and 100 dozen baseballs that arrived in Uganda in March. Under the Commissioner's control, any government registered school will be allowed to purchase this equipment at cost. We expect to expand this equipment store significantly in future years.

RIGHT TO PLAY REFUSES TO SUPPORT UGANDA LITTLE LEAGUE PROGRAMS
In January of this year, the Canadian team that was supposed to play the Ugandan team at the Little League World Series came to Uganda to play that game. It generated much publicity and Right to Play used it to raise significant amounts of money, well over $130,000US. Some of that money was supposed to aid some of the travel costs teams encounter to get to tournaments. The estimate we were told was about $35,000. When our tournaments were held, the various leagues made a request for some form of support for their travel costs. We were told that not one penny would go to support any Uganda Little League Team. It had all gone to the adult teams in Uganda, nothing to the children in the Little League program. It is the Uganda Little League's opinion that all those generous people that supported this program last November and December were deceived into thinking it was going to somehow aid Uganda Little League. Right to Play has made it clear, nothing will go to support Uganda Little League in any way.

July 2012:

Uganda went to Kutno, Poland with a team of 11 year olds from the Mehta Little League in Lugazi to play in the Middle East/Africa Little League Regional Tournament.  After losing the first game to Saudi Arabia by a score of 2-1 on a two run home run in the top of the 6th inning, the team came back the next day to start their journey to the championship.  They beat Dubai by a score of 6-0, followed the next day, when they had to play two games, by beating Qatar by a score of 13-1 and Kuwait by a score of 8-0.  This brought them to the Championship game on July 16 against Kuwait who they beat 5-2 to qualify them for the Little League World Series.  The Mehta team scored 33 runs in five games while giving up only 5.  Very unusual for a team with a 4-1 won lost record. 

The team traveled back to Uganda after the tournament to get ready for their planned trip to the World Series.  They will be appearing at the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday morning, July 24, when they will be interviewed for their visas.  Their next game will be in Williamsport at the World Series against Panama.  That game is scheduled for 6PM on August 17.  It is our understanding that the game will be televised live around the world on ESPN.  Our only problem with that is that the game will be starting at 1AM in Uganda.

July is the month for Little League Regional Tournaments.  This year, Uganda will once again be sending a team to Kutno, Poland to play in the Middle East/Africa tournament that starts on July 13.  Each year, it gets more and more difficult to send teams to Europe, and this year was no different from that aspect, but it was different because we thought we might also be able to send a girls team to the 11-12 softball regional tournament.

As this is being composed on the afternoon of July 10 in New York, the Ugandan boys team is checking in at Entebbe Airport for their trip to Brussels and then on to Warsaw.  Their plane leaves Entebbe just before 11PM Uganda time and lands in Brussels at 6AM Brussels time.  Then, after sitting in the Brussels airport for 8 hours, they will take off for Warsaw and land there at a little after 5PM Warsaw time.  The only food that they will be able to have from the time they get off the plane in Brussels until they are on the bus that will take them to Kutno, will be bread that they will carry with them on the plane.

This team almost did not make it.  While our tournament was held in mid May, by the time passports are obtained and parent consent forms motorized, the visas that allowed them to get to Poland were only delivered to them 4 hours before they were to board the plane at Entebbe Airport.  Paul finally was given the visas by the Polish Embassy in Kenya at 3PM and then had to catch a plane to get him back to Uganda and the Entebbe Airport in time to meet the team who were hoping he would not be delayed.  Otherwise, no one was going.  To obtain the visas at this late time required the assistance of Beata, the Regional Little League Director.  Getting these visas and what went on before could fill a book.  All we can say is if the Regional Tournament was held in Uganda, no one would have to go through what we have to go through every year to get to Poland.

That brings us to the girls program.  Early in May, we put together a girls All Star team to represent Uganda in the Europe/Middle East/Africa Regional Tournament for girls 11-12.  We were getting set to send the team to Europe until we found out what was involved.  It seems that several years ago, and every year since, we have been asking why Uganda cannot host a Regional Tournament.  We were told that we do not have the facilities to house and feed the visiting teams.  Certainly Poland does, and does a wonderful job.  The Middle East is too hot in July and South Africa is to cold.  Uganda has perfect weather all year round.  So we built dormitories and eating areas.  We now have 16 team rooms and 16 coaches rooms and a place to cook and feed everyone, but we still do not get a Regional Tournament. 

The girls tournament is to be held in northern Italy.  I am sure a very nice location.  When we went to apply, the notice said that we would be able to stay in a hotel that we would have to pay for by the day.  We would also need to have a bus take us from our hotel to the fields and back every time we wanted to practice or play.  In addition, we would need to take care of our food requirements at our cost.  WOW.  We cannot host a tournament that we would be willing to house, feed and pick up and return teams to the Entebbe Airport where you pay your $50 and you get a visa upon checking in at border control once you get off the plane.  The teams would not be charged for housing or feeding during their entire stay.  What is wrong with Uganda?

There is no way that under the current circumstances that Uganda can ever send a team to Europe under the terms of what was required by the girls tournament.  We have informed Little League International that if that tournament was held in Poland under same conditions that the boys tournament is run, we would have sent a girls team.  We cannot support a program that basically supplies a ball field to play on only, and then have to come up with $35,000 to participate.

September 2012: