Meet Marianne Olsen (above) from Tromsoe, Norway, guest on the most recent edition of The Chanters Lodge Experience with The Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild. That’s our regular Sunday night radio show airing weekly on Zambezi Radio 107.7 fm from 20.30-21.30 hrs. 107.7 fm is Livingstone’s most popular local radio station reaching a radius of about 70 kilometres domestically and streaming live on the internet from their site and from ours. Our show is a great mixture of local and international music plus chat – we also give away a dinner for two with drinks every week for the first person to text us the answer to a usually simple question! Keeps us popular!

Marianne told listeners she’d been coming to Zambia off and on since 1994. She’s an occupational therapist by profession and explained that this is a discipline aiming to promote health by enabling people to perform meaningful and purposeful activities. Occupational therapists work with individuals who suffer from a mentally, physically, developmentally, and/or emotionally disabling condition by utilizing treatments that develop, recover, or maintain clients’ activities of daily living. “There are very few occupational therapists in Zambia” she said.

I told our audience that Marianne was one of the first ever Clients at Chanters Lodge when we opened in July 1998. At that time she was living and working in Livingstone. This, her most recent visit, had come about as a result of attending an international congress for occupational therapists, held during the course of the past week in another Livingstone hotel. She had enjoyed the congress. We asked Marianne about the recent massacre of young people in Norway and she was emotional as she recounted to listeners what had happened and how the Norwegian people and government had reacted to the tragedy.

The music on the show was good. We opened with Vanessa Carlton’s ‘1000 Miles’ back to back with ‘Collide’ by Leona Lewis. Local tracks were ‘Come Follow Me’ by Judy featuring Cactus and Mampi’s ‘Wali lo Weleka’. Milimo featured Jay Lo and Pibull with ‘On The Floor’. Our oldie of the week was Phil Collins with ‘Against All Odds’ and we closed with Ed Sheeran’s ‘Little Bird’. Ed hit the number one spot in the UK album charts that very evening!

Asking Marianne about her family, she replied that she had two children Temba and Tawanda. “What?!” Exclaimed Milimo “but these are Zambian names!” Marianne went on to explain that she’d been married to a Zambian who had two children from a previous relationship and that she had brought up the two boys in Norway as their mum. Both were doing well, one working for a courier company and the other still in high school. Football? Arsenal though she confessed to being much more interested in winter sports than soccer! Music? Everything, but she particularly likes Danny the Zambian star.