Meet Peter and Gill Langmead from Chisamba, north of Lusaka, who’ve been visiting Livingstone to see the lunar rainbow over Victoria Falls for the first time, even though they’ve lived in Zambia for many years. So, we took the chance of inviting them to guest on The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient, our regular Sunday night radio show airing on Zambezi fm every Sunday at 20.30 hrs Zambian time, and also streaming live on the internet. Peter and Gill own Langmead and Baker – click the link to read all about their company!

“Did the lunar rainbow live up to expectations?” Milli Jam asked our guests at the beginning of the programme. “It probably exceeded them” replied Peter “it was absolutely fantastic!” “Did you get some good photos?” We wanted to know. “Absolutely!” said Gill “in fact we’ve already posted quite a lot of them on the internet via Twitter and Facebook”. “How did you hear about Chanters Lodge?” asked Milli Jam. Our guests went on to explain that they’d first made contact with me through Twitter and everything had then fallen into place when they came to make their arrangements to visit Livingstone and see the lunar rainbow. Of course they’d found time to do other things as well, including visits to Livingstone Museum and the Railway Museum, as well as Lawrence Yombwe’s fabulous art gallery.

Peter explained that he’d first come to Zambia in the mid 80’s and that for most of his career he’d been involved in agricultural development – for much of that time with cassava. We were amazed to hear about the many uses of this shrubby plant whose starch filled roots are much in demand in Zambia for food. For some time Peter and Gill produced cassava starch commercially. They’d been involved in many other things, we heard, including but not limited to, the production of essential oils and bath soap, the publication for 5 years of Beauty Zambia magazine and handling media interests and public relations for British Airways in Zambia, amongst a load of other corporate clients!

The music on the show was great. We opened with Cher Lloyd’s ‘Swagger Jagger’ (number one last week in the UK), back to back with One Direction’s ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ – “sure fire future hit” I commented. Our Zambian tracks were ‘Vomela’ by Dalitso and ‘Nalilwala’ by Afunika. (The first track saying ‘if you’re sick, accept it’ and the second ‘I’m sick’ ….apparently!) Milli Jam also featured ‘My Life’ by DJ Khaled and Akon coupled with ‘Oleku’ by Prince ft Brymo. Our oldie of the week was ‘Dancing On The Ceiling’ by Lionel Richie and we closed with Jessie J’s ‘Sometimes Dreams Come True’. (In a disappointing number of replies Enoch won a dinner for 2 at Chanters Lodge for texting us that it was Lionel Richie singing ‘Dancing’.) The Langmeads informed us that they were friendly with Hip-Hop Mr Cri$iS with whom they had been involved on the United Against Malaria campaign.

Peter and Gill told listeners that they’d been married for 11 years and had originally met in England (in a Hampshire wine bar!) They’d spent some time living in Thailand. Gill’s background was in journalism but at the moment their focus was on public relations and media matters. Peter had just returned from a trip to the far north of Zambia and when they left Livingstone the next morning they were heading for Choma to research a vitamin A enhanced maize.

Interesting, lively and nice guests? You bet!