The Japanese Experience

We were delighted to have a Japanese Guest – Yudai Nakamura (above) – on the last edition for 2013 of our weekly Sunday night radio show, The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela. The show airs at 20.30 hrs CAT for an hour on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station and is a smooth mixture of latest Zambian and international music as well as chat with our guest of the week. A lucky listener also has the chance to win dinner for two at the lodge – if they can text us quickly telling us the name of the artist on our oldie of the week. The prize on this week’s show was quickly snapped up, the oldie being 1D’s ‘That’s What Makes You Beautiful’!

Yudai told listeners that he hails from Nagoya in Japan, a city of some four million inhabitants. He had arrived in Livingstone three days prior to the show after a thirty six hour journey from Japan via Hong Kong. He works for a company making electronic components for vehicle manufacturers particularly Toyota and he works, he said, in the quality control section. An electronics engineer by profession, in true Japanese style Yudai came to the studio weighed down with tablet, smart phone, camera with lenses and we’re not sure what other electronic else besides in his back pack! When queried he told us that such items are cheap in Japan but that food and drinks are not!

We had no Japanese music to feature on the show but instead we picked the ‘best of 2013’. My three tracks were ‘La La La’ – Naughty Boy featuring Sam Smith, Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ and PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’. Yudai knew that one but said the relationship between South Korea and Japan was not good so it wouldn’t do for the Japanese to say they liked the track! George dropped O.C featuring Salma’s ‘Folo Folo’ and ‘Bufi’ by Petersen and Pilato as Zambia’s best of the year. Milli Jam chose Miguel’s ‘Adorn’ and John Legend’s soulful ‘Best You Ever Had’. My pick of the week was Tiesto’s ‘Red Lights’.

Yudai told us that he was single but that he had a steady girlfriend. “Why isn’t she with you?” Milli Jam asked and Yudai said that she had a ‘poor image of Africa’ but he hoped one day to persuade her to accompany him on one of his trips. This was his third or fourth visit to the continent. Since he’d been in Livingstone he’d been on a one day safari to Chobe NP and hoped to return the following day for another visit, mostly to capture more photographs of elephants in the river. Yudai is a great photographer and showed us many of the brilliant photos he’d taken during this and previous visits. He also belongs to a Kendo club in Japan and gave us a brief explanation of the dangerous sounding sport, telling us that face, hands and abdomen were the attack points!

Sports wise our Guest said he likes swimming, cycling and baseball. Music wise he likes Japanese pop. Asked where he would like to be and what he would like to be doing ten years’ from now, Yudai said he hoped to be married and to have enjoyed a honeymoon with his darling in South Africa and Namibia. He hoped to still be working for the same company in Nagoya.

We closed by wishing all our listeners health, happiness and prosperity for 2014!

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David Livingstone Bicentenary 2013

This from the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia caught my eye.

“Zambia: rise and falls

David Livingstone, the first European to clap eyes on the awesome sight of Victoria Falls and baptize it with its regal name, was born in Scotland in 1813.The bicentenary of his birth is reason enough for the town of Livingstone, nestled next to the falls on the banks of the Zambezi (in Zambia), to go nuts.

It’s hosting arts, cultural and sporting events from March 19 (Livingstone’s birthday, also to be marked by a wreath-laying ceremony at London’s Westminster Abbey where he’s buried) to November 16, the date Livingstone first saw the falls in 1855. Neighbouring countries, as well as countries through which the intrepid explorer, missionary, medic and anti-slavery campaigner travelled, will bring customs and foods to an international cultural festival in March while an academic conference in April will reconsider Livingstone’s legacy. Bicentenary events are also taking place in Scotland and Malawi.”

There are two sights with further information David Livingstone 200 and Livingstone 2013.

Picture above is of the great man himself!

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Marcel & Julie Menard

Meet Marcel and Julie Menard (above), Guests on the most recent edition of the ‘Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela’, our regular Sunday night radio show airing from 20.30 to 21.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station. Marcel and Julie hail from Canada, although from different parts of that vast country, but are currently based in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. Marcel is a health, safety and environmental engineer working for Adnoc on a rig in the Persian Gulf – an operation that churns out a mere 300,000 barrels of crude oil every day! Julie was a nurse for most of her working life but subsequently retrained as a teacher. She recently retired from her job in UAE teaching English as a second language.

The Menards were visiting Zambia by invitation of their friends the Bohling family who live in Kitwe on Zambia’s Copperbelt. They had originally met Jenna, Kyle, Sharon and Kevin in UAE and were delighted to come to Zambia to spend some time with them. During their visit to Kitwe Marcel had been taken 5220 feet down to the working surface of the Mopani copper mine – a trip he had found fascinating. The mine employs some 19,000 people. They had also spent time at Nsobe Game Camp 60 kilometres south of Ndola. They had been recommended to Chanters Lodge by the manager of Kafue Lodge in Ndola. Happy with their stay at Chanters? Yes they were. They described it as ‘cozy’ and ‘a great place to chill’.

The music on the show was up to standard despite the dearth of new releases common at this time of year in UK and USA. We opened with our theme tune for 2013 – ‘Feel The Love’ from Rudimental ft John Newman. We followed up with Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ which Marcel and Julie dedicated to their friends the Bohlings. Other tracks were from PSquare, Magg44 ft Karen, Exile ft K’Millian, LMFAO and Pitbull. The oldie of the week was MJ’s ‘Rock My World’ and the weekly prize of a dinner for two at the lodge to the first person to text us the name of the artist on the track was quickly snapped up! Our pick of the week was Timbaland’s ‘White Wedding’ and we closed with One Republic’s haunting ‘If I Lose Myself’.

Marcel and Julie told listeners they had enjoyed lots of tourist activities while they’d been in Livingstone including the sunset cruise, a leopard, lion and cheetah encounter combo, linked with an elephant back safari, as well as a fabulous dinner on the steam train. Marcel had also taken a 15 minute helicopter flight over the Falls.The day of the show they had taken a one day safari to Chobe National Park in Botswana and had been lucky to see a pride of lions during the trip. They’d been amazed by the size and beauty of Victoria Falls which had surpassed all their expectations. Julie had described their steam train dinner activity as ‘very romantic’ and on being questioned this charming, happy couple revealed they had been married for 15 years. Julie has one son from a previous relationship.

During their visit Marcel and Julie made a very generous contribution of education materials to a school at Mukuni Village and commented on the fantastic progress they saw near Chanters Lodge on road repairs in Livingstone.

Asked where they would like to be and what they would like to be doing ten years’ from now, they said they had plans to retire to Malaysia when Marcel finished work in five years’ time, before eventually returning to Canada.

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Happy New Year 2013

Happy 2013 to all my family near and far, friends, as well as Guests and staff at Chanters Lodge Livingstone.

Hope to see you at the lodge during the course of the year!

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