Craig and Abby, pictured above, staying at Chanters Lodge, guested on the latest edition of our Sunday night radio show – the Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild – which airs every Sunday night from 20.30 – 21.30 hours on Zambezi Radio 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station. It was the last show of 2010!

Craig’s a New Zealander, Abby’s English, and although not married they’re partners and currently live in Johannesburg, South Africa where Craig’s a consulting engineer with Mott MacDonald an employee-owned management, engineering and development consultancy serving the public and private sector around the world. “Do you work?” Milli Jam asked Abby. “No” she replied “I’m a lady of leisure in Johannesburg with a great social life and loads of friends, mainly because of work permit problems”. “That must be a a bit boring, wouldn’t you prefer to be working”? I chipped in. “Not in the slightest”! Was Abby’s instant reply which had us laughing.

Quite a lot of chat on the show was about rugby. Obviously we wanted to know from Craig, a former player with London Scottish, why New Zealand had never won the Rugby World Cup! Craig claimed that they had, in the 80’s, but Abby quickly scotched this idea by reminding him that South Africa didn’t feature then, so somehow it wasn’t a genuine victory! Nice one Abby!

Craig and Abby told listeners about their fascinating travels to both Cambodia and Rwanda earlier in the year with the Penguins Rugby Club, teaching rugby in these developing countries to disadvantaged youngsters. They’d been surprised at the amount of raw talent seen in both places. The Penguins is a ‘by invitation only’ club and you can read more about it by following the link above. What did surprise us was to hear that Abby had also been a rugby player when she was younger until injury forced an early retirement. We also had respect for Craig on learning that he’d recently completed the Paris Marathon in under 3.5 hours.

The music on the show was good, as usual. We got off to a flier with the Ghanain band R2Bees ft Wande Coal’s ‘Kiss Your Hand’ back to back with the awesome ‘Man Down’ from Rihanna’s latest smash album. George chose Petersen’s ‘Wanna Dance With You’ and Kelvin Mwesa’s ‘Wonderful Time’ for his two local tracks. Milli Jam chose Jamie Foxx with ‘Winner’ and Akon’s (imo horrible) ‘No Labels’. We also played ‘Many of Horror’ by Biffy Clyro to give listeners a feel for the UK Christmas No.1. I commented that our closing track Sean Kingston’s great ‘Party All Night’ (and sleep all day) was a good track for this time of year in Livingstone.

Craig and Abby told listeners about their one day safari to Chobe National Park in Botswana where they’d been lucky enough to see a pride of 8 lions – a record for our guests on that trip. This delightful couple had also enjoyed their helicopter flight over the Falls, as well as a sunset cruise and a morning river safari. Abby told listeners that on their last morning, the next day, she intended to bungee jump. (And she did!)

I took the chance to wish our listeners a belated Happy Christmas and a prosperous 2011, and also to thank the staff at the lodge for their extra-ordinary hard work during the holiday period. As we went on air the lodge was packed and for once the girls didn’t have too much chance to enjoy the show!