Meet Anne and Mike Gough (above), Guests on the most recent edition of the Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring Jay Hillz. ‘The Experience’ is our weekly radio show airing every Sunday night from 20.30-21.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station. Teachers both, Mike works at The Arnewood School, New Milton, Hampshire in UK while wife Anne is at The Island Learning Centre on the Isle of Wight. Mike is also head of the IT centre at Arnewood as well as the international co-ordinator. Anne’s learning centre helps children with learning difficulties prepare for a return to ‘regular’ school.

“How long have you been married?” Milli Jam asked at the top of the show, Mike sighed (though he denied it) and replied “thirty five years”. Anne and Mike told listeners that they have three daughters and one seven year old grandson – clearly the apple of his grandparents’ eye!

The Goughs explained that they were in this country to research a proposed trip to Zambia for Arnewood students in 2016. They were planning to bring a group of 12/15 youngsters for a month. They told listeners that the students’ itinerary would hopefully include time spent at Hillcrest School in Livingstone with Hillcrest students later travelling to UK on an exchange basis. There would be time spent working at the Butterfly Tree projects at Mukuni Village, building structures with money raised by the students in UK for the project. There would be a safari in Botswana as part of the trip and a week spent volunteering at lion encounter.
Mike and Anne told listeners they had arranged many successful trips in the past to countries as varied as Bolivia, Siberia and Tibet. There was a lot of work involved in planning, as well as selling the trip to prospective students and parents.

The music on the show was good with latest hit tracks from Sigma, The Vamps, David Guetta and Ed Sheeran. Jay and Milli Jam chose recordings from One Direction, Chris Brown and Zambian artists Eddy and Judy. Our oldie of the week was Brook Hogan’s ‘For A Moment’ and the prize we give to the first person to text us telling us the name of the performing artist was won by Mitch, who earned himself dinner for two with drinks at the lodge.

Mike revealed that he was a Liverpool supporter which pleased Jay who is too, and these people spent time congratulating each other on that afternoon’s win again Manchester City. Milli Jam and I were rather irked by this mutual admiration, and felt pleased that the lovely Anne had no interest whatsoever in football. As a couple Mike and Anne love cricket and are executive members at Hampshire County Cricket Club.

They told listeners that they had returned from a two day safari in Botswana that afternoon, they had very much enjoyed the outing and had been lucky to see a vast array of wildlife including lion and, Anne’s favourite, warthogs. They hoped to have time to do some of the many other tourist activities available around Victoria Falls during their stay, but ruled out the bungee jump!

Asked where they would like to be and what they would like to be doing in ten years’ time Anne said she would like to be on the silk trail exploring China, while Mike wanted to be revisiting communities he and his students had helped in the past, in different countries around the world. We thanked this interesting happy couple for guesting on the show and wished them well in the planning for their trip. We looked forward to welcoming some of their students as Guests on our programme in a couple of years’ time!