Dave & Hazel Roberts guest on ‘The Experience’

Meet old friends of mine Dave and Hazel Roberts (above), lively guests on the most recent edition of The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient, featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela. For the uninitiated ‘The Experience’ is our popular Sunday night radio show airing between 20.30 and 21.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station, and streaming live on the internet. Zambezi 107.7 fm studios are situated on the 6th floor of Mosi-o-Tunya House, the large office block in downtown Livingstone opposite Livingstone Museum, and that’s where we go to broadcast our live show every Sunday evening!


The programme is a great mixture of international and local music as well as fascinating conversation with our weekly guests. We give away a dinner for two with drinks at Chanters Lodge every week to the first listener to text us, telling us who’s singing our ‘oldie of the week’. This week the track was Phil Collins’ ‘Do You Remember?’ The prize was quickly snapped up by Mwiinga. We also feature my ‘Pick Of The Week – Tip For The Top’ and my selection on this particular show was JLS with ‘Pieces Of My Heart’ – we’ll see what happens in the charts if and when the track’s released as a single.
Dave and Hazel told listeners this was their third visit to Zambia. They’d stayed in Livingstone from1998 to 2000 when they’d spent two years as volunteers at David Livingstone Teacher Training College, teaching student mathematics teachers. The Roberts’ are both qualified maths teachers, and noted on air that the standard of maths teaching in Zambia had not been very good in the past. They felt they’d contributed a lot to help rectify this situation during their time in Zambia. They’d volunteered through VSO twice more after leaving Zambia, once in Malawi and once in Senegal and they’d also enjoyed both these tours of duty. Their current visit was part of a four week African holiday which had taken them first to South Africa then to Zambia. They were enjoying meeting old friends in Livingstone as well as visiting old haunts like Chanters Lodge, and they told listeners proudly that they’d been two of the very first customers at the lodge when it opened in 1998. “That’s true!” I confirmed.
The music on the show was good, we opened with ‘Hurts Like Heaven’ a track from the brilliant Coldplay album ‘Mylo Xyloto’ back to back with ‘Convertible’ a great new recording from Chris Brown. George chose Exile’s ‘Auwe’ coupled with Ty2 featuring Kaufela with ‘Spotlight’ – this was a special request from Dave and Hazel who demanded to hear some of George’s work. “It’s a great track!” They said. “Of course!” We said. Milimo dropped Bei Maejor’s ‘Fell In Love On The Dance Floor’ and Ne-Yo’s ‘Regardless’. Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’, the current UK number one, closed our show.
Dave and Hazel told listeners they were from UK and that they had two adult children as well as two young grandchildren. Although neither of them were from that part of Britain they were currently living near Wakefield, West Yorkshire in order to be near their grandchildren. They’d been married for 44 years, having met in 1966 at a meeting for maths teachers in Germany. “Was it love at first sight?” Milli Jam wanted to know. “No!” Quipped Dave in his Welsh accent (for he is of that race) “it was maths at first sight!”. We laughed. This lovely, loving couple wished they had more time to spend in Zambia but sadly would be driving to Lusaka the following Tuesday and flying back to UK two days after that.

We wished them well and ‘bon voyage’, thanked them for taking the time to appear on our show, and hoped we’d see them back in Livingstone again one of these fine days!

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