Live on the Radio

And so I went on BBC Radio Leicester to talk about all this. I've just got back. It was good and relaxed enough for the time to pass too quickly and leave me with a thousand things I had thought of saying, unsaid. If you're interested or like Dire Straits, here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ksjq8

Oh well. I thought of checking the iplayer but the program was unavailable so soon. I checked this blog thing to check how many thousands of people had viewed my last post, or hadn't, as it turned out and then checked my emails.

There was an email from a man, a stranger I had met on a train back in the early June summer and had talked with and about Zambia too. I left him with my email address and he contacted me to say that he has a laptop, surplus to his requirements and could I make use of it for the academy. It was fantastic and almost like magic. I like it when things like that happen.

Communication is tricky across the 6000 miles between here and there and my colleagues and coach cannot afford many emails and have to go to an internet shack to send me an email on their solitary computer. The laptop will be a giant step forward towards where ever we are going. I have a way of getting it there and from the donations I have so far raised we can afford to buy an internet dongle to get the academy online. Brilliant.

The like has happened before. I met a women and her friend on another train whilst reading Herman Hesse's Fairy Tales. I can't remember when it was but it was dark and you couldn't see out of the windows. She was interested in the book, one that, although being familiar with Hesse, she hadn't read and one thing led to another and I told her a bit about my life and she told a little about hers. She contacted me several months later, like in a fairy tale and donated some money. With it we bought the first nets the football pitch in Chainda compound, Lusaka, had ever had. Nets can make scoring a goal somehow different, somehow better and it was the first thing we wanted.

This is a photograph of the Chainda pitch just before twilight. Twilight is around the same time all the year through. The pitch is a very important place and I spent many hours on it. It is the only open space in the compound and many things happen there, not just the football. People meet and get to know each other there and the kids make kites and fly them. The road running behind the goal is the main tarmac road running through the village and to the city of Lusaka. A lot of balls meet their end on it.

Welcome to Goal Zambia!

This photograph was taken in Chainda compound, Lusaka, Zambia, in the English summer of 2013. It is the girls football team of the Dynamic Stars Academy, with their coach and my friend, Kelly Mukuka. They call him Coach Mukuka and everybody in Chainda knows him as such. If he's not at the pitch when you get there, somebody will know where he is and one of the children of the village will run off between the houses to find him. He will invariably come.

This is a new blog. It's about Zambia but I haven't got enough time right now to tell you much more. I have to go on the radio tomorrow and i'm a little nervous. I should perhaps give it some thought. The radio girl told me on the phone that the radio man would just have a chat with me about the work I was doing in Zambia. It would be just like a conversation and may have already been and gone by the time you read this. It should be fun so we will see what happens.

This blog is exciting but I don't know what form it will take or what rules it will follow. We will see what happens here to. I want it to give the viewer an idea of what we doing, where and with whom, in Zambia and what we want to achieve and what i am doing now in the UK as a part of that.
I imagine that it will contain more photographs and stories. It may have a song and some films, I don't know. At present it is a work in progress and in a way it would be good if it sort of stays that way, I suppose, in that the blog will evolve as time passes. I hope to depict the children and young adults of the academy, the community of Chainda and the place itself.

I had a significant email today from my friend Kelly. I managed to send him a laptop for the academy and he has raised some money to buy an internet dongle. This was the first email he has sent with the new computer and the email made me smile.

At present it is a work in progress and in a way it would be good if it sort of stays that way, I suppose, in that it will evolve as time passes. I hope to depict the people and the place.

All this blog stuff is new to me. I haven't done anything like this before. I'm not sure if there is an etiquette to follow or tricks of the trade to learn. There could be endless possibilities to do this and that so I will play around with it and find out. It's exciting. This is the first real Post and I considered changing the picture, although on immediate reflection I  won't because i've just written about the one above of the lasses in the team shot. I have a lot of pictures to choose from so i'll save that for another day.