Meet Marja Hinfelaar, pictured above with family friend Frobert Van Zijl (no, that’s not a typo, his name is Frobert!). Marja, an Historian with National Archives of Zambia and a regular Guest at Chanters Lodge, Livingstone, was in town with Frobert, his wife Karyn and their two boys for a weekend visit, so naturally we invited her to guest on The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild!

For the uninitiated that’s our weekly Sunday night radio show airing between 20.30 and 21.30 hours on Zambezi 107.7fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station broadcasting in a range of 70kms around Southern Province, taking in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and the Botswana border as well. The show’s a great mixture of music and chat also featuring international and local chart news, as well as stories from Lodgeblog and a regular prize of a dinner for 2 with drinks at Chanters Lodge, ensuring the show’s popularity in town and around!

Marja told listeners that she’s a Dutch national and had been in Zambia since 1997 but in fact her first visit to this country was in 1990 when her uncle was a catholic priest in Lusaka. She has a Phd in African History from University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. (“Dr Hinfelaar? We hadn’t been told!” I offered). Milli Jam asked Marja about her work with the Livingstone Museum and she told listeners that the museum’s clock tower was now open as an additional gallery. Her new project would involve digitally recording all the highly valuable 19th Century documents including David Livingstone’s letters so that the originals could be removed to safe storage, meaning visitors would still able to peruse the records on computer. This would entail Marja resuming her regular monthly visits to Livingstone. This made us happy!

The music on the show was great. We opened with Enrique Iglesias featuring Usher, Lil Wayne and Nayer and their smash hit ‘Dirty Dancer’ which we played back to back with Gyptian’s latest ‘Let Me In’. Our Zambian tracks plugged Slap Dee’s ‘I Wanna Lose Myself’ coupled with XBoy’s ‘Malita’. (XBoy’s from Livingstone and a regular listener to the show). Milli Jam chose ‘Take Off’ by Chipmunk featuring TreySongz and Bobby V’s ‘Altered Ego’ featuring 50 Cent. Wow! We moved on to Beyonce’s latest ‘Best Thing I Never Had’ back to back with Akon’s ‘Can You Believe’ and closed with Alexandra Stan’s ‘Mr Saxobeat’. All the hits!

We asked Marja and Frobert about their activities while they’d been in Livingstone and Marja told listeners that Frobert and his family had enjoyed their one day safari to Chobe. She hadn’t accompanied them as she didn’t care much for elephants! However, she’d joined them for a game drive in Mosi-o-Tunya National Park and the whole family were delighted that they’d been able to get up really close to the rhino. Of course they’d been to see Victoria Falls and got drenched in the process – as you do at this time of year!

Marja told listeners about a new journal called The Bulletin and The Record published monthly in Lusaka of which she’s an editor and which takes an in-depth look at topical Zambian issues. When asked about her private life she told us she was ‘separated but dating’. ‘Fair enough’ we said! She told listeners that they’d travelled from Lusaka by Proflight on Friday and that the plane had been exactly on time. They were leaving the next day with the same airline.

We gave listeners the chart and blog news, greeted guests and staff at the lodge and gave away a dinner for two to the first person to text us Marja’s country of origin. Good response! Great show!