45 years married, with 3 sons and 5 grandchildren, meet Jerry and Carol Evans (pictured above) from Denver, Colorado, USA, guests on the latest edition of The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild – our regular Sunday night radio show airing between 20.30 and 21.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s popular local radio station. 107.7 fm broadcasts 24/7 to a radius of about 75 kms from the city centre which is just 10 kms from Victoria Falls in Zambia. Our show is a lively mixture of music and chat.

“We’re mini missionaries” replied Carol when Milli Jam asked this warm and interesting couple what they were doing in Zambia. “We’ve come out to your country for a short time, voluntarily, to help at the Rafiki Mission in Chongwe near Lusaka” she continued “and we just had to come to Livingstone to see the world famous and amazing Victoria Falls”. Jerry and Carol went on to explain that they were helping tutor children at the orphanage especially those who were behind with their spelling, grammar and maths! They were also assisting with the construction of more cottages to house the children at the mission, which at the moment catered for 50 live-in orphans and loads of day children as well. As if this wasn’t enough, Carol was also involved in establishing a children’s library at Rafiki.

Rafiki operate in about 10 African countries and Jerry and Carol have been to several, including the one at Jos in Nigeria, they told listeners. This interested me, as I was general manager of Plateau State Hotels Board based in Jos in the 70’s prior to coming to Zambia. Sadly, Carol and Jerry told us that some of the orphans at the Rafiki Mission in Jos were there as a result of losing family in the recent unfortunate troubles between Christians and Moslems in that city.

The music on the show was a nice mixture of new, not so new and local. We played ‘Chasing U’ by Akon and ‘The Apple’ by Eminem which are both pretty new, together with ‘White Flag’ by Dido and ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley which are not. ‘Crazy’ used to be our theme tune on the show before we updated to ‘Candy’ by Aggro Santos. The local selection starred Brian featuring Exile with ‘Mailo’ and Marky II featuring Petersen with ‘Gelo Wanga’. Milli Jam chose Shayne Ward’s ‘Just Be Good To Me’ and Wiz Khalifa’s smash ‘Black And Yellow’.

Carol and Jerry told listeners that Jerry was a retired banker and that while they were in Livingstone they’d had a ‘delightful’ sunset cruise on Lady Livingstone and found Victoria Falls ‘wonderful’ even though they’d got soaking wet! On their last morning, the following day, they planned to go on the lion encounter, as they wanted to see the new white lion cubs at
Mukuni Big 5. Luckily we were able to get them a short notice booking!

We gave away the usual dinner for 2 to the first listener to tell us which mission these good folk were involved with – that tricked the listeners who thought I would ask where the couple came from, though sharp Jak did win! We greeted staff and guests at the lodge and in closing Jerry and Carol thanked Zambians for giving them such a warm and wonderful welcome to their country.