Meet Paul and Lesley Jenkins (above) from Cambridge, England, guests on the latest edition of The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild – that’s our regular Sunday night radio show airing live between 20.30 and 21.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station, reaching a radius of about 75 kms and streaming live on the internet. (Just go to the Zambezi fm website and click ‘listen live’). Lesley and Paul were guests at Chanters Lodge and kindly agreed to appear on our show.

Lesley told listeners that she’d been in Zambia longer than Paul, as she’d been volunteering with Book Bus and went on to explain that The Book Bus aims to improve child literacy rates in Africa and South America by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them, books impart knowledge, fire the imagination and open up new horizons; they are also a tremendous source of enjoyment. The Book Bus is currently working to improve literacy rates at a community level in Zambia. She had much enjoyed her time as a volunteer.

Paul explained that he had only arrived in Zambia two days before the show but had managed to pack in a lot of activity in that short time! He and Lesley had taken the sunset cruise on Lady Livingstone the previous evening and on the morning of the show he’d taken a 15 minute microlight flight while Lesley looked on! He reported the view of Victoria Falls from the air as ‘amazing’. Before coming on the show they’d taken the rhino walk with Bwaato Adventures and had been happy to find and photograph one large rhino with its baby.

The music on the show was great. We opened as usual with ‘Candy’ by Aggro Santos ft Kim Wyatt, followed after the introductions by ‘Moves Like Jagger’ – Maroon 5 ft Christina Aguilera, back to back with ‘Don’t Wanna Go Home’ – Jason Derulo, the current UK number 1. “Up to date as usual on The Experience” I commented. Our Zambian tracks were ‘Mukondo’ by 4th Rock From The Sun coupled with ‘Move Me’ – Sobre, KRay Jay ft Salma. Milli Jam chose ‘Just A Dream’ by Nelly and Rihanna’s ‘Man Down’. We also played Flo Rida’s ‘Good Feeling’ and ‘TGIF’ by Katy Perry. The Chanters Girls rocked back at the lodge!

Paul and Lesley told listeners that Paul was a season ticket holder at Portsmouth FC in UK, that they’d been married for more than 30 years and had a son Matthew 21 and daughter Emma 24, back home in England. Paul is a banker. Lesley had recently visited Rwanda where she’d seen and been captivated watching the mountain gorillas. She’d also spent time in Mombasa,Kenya. Lesley said she’d love to volunteer again with Book Bus. She passed her greetings on to all the staff and volunteers with whom she’d worked in Livingstone, especially Kelly. The day after the show this funny and loving couple told listeners they were going to spend a week in the South Luangwa National Park.

Finally we gave away the usual dinner for two at Chanters Lodge to the first person to text us telling us which country Paul and Lesley came from. There was an excellent response some of which gave a new meaning to predictive texting as they told us the answer before we’d asked the question! Our weekly prize is very popular in Livingstone!