A bit of History

In October 2010 I packed up my laptop, running shoes and a few pair of togs and flew off to Africa for a month of passing on my 'encyclopaedic' (haha) knowledge of rugby to a bunch of impoverished orphans. Mmmm, even reading it now makes me wonder what the hell I thought I was going to achieve. I arrived to find that the balls I had bought out of SA had gone AWOL, the pitch was just a patch of dirt, the kids mostly had no shoes and on top of all that, they were bloody hungry .....

Livingston itself is a magical place, tucked in beside the mighty Zambezi River and cut off from Zimbabwe by one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World - Mosi oa Tunya 'The Smoke That Thunders', Victoria Falls......

 

As you might expect it was a pretty amazing month of my life. Helping the kids out was very rewarding and it was awesome meeting so many other volunteers and adventurers doing their own thing in Zambia. There was a good smattering of boozing, dancing and Zambezi action mixed in too of course....

So I trained and fed the kids for the month I was there and with the help of a few friends left them with another month or two of supplies and twenty footies (they finally arrived). I bought them grain and seed to plant in their small plot for a season and a mate and I bunged on a Christmas party for them as we left. All good ...Everybody happy....except how do you just walk away from all that and not look back?

And so, after drinking many beers with many folk from many places, I met Rif and then Ben, Jono and Lloydy.....all of whom had come to Livingston after conquering the mighty Kilimanjaro. Well, it seemed like an awesome adventure and possibly a good way to raise some Kwacha for the orphans and the rest is pretty easy to figure out......


My goal is to raise enough money to start to make a permanent difference to the orphans lives and not just give them a month or two of random help. Money to help build some basic infrastructure, to improve their primary education, to sponsor them into high school and to implement some vocational programs to kick-start them in life. And in an African economy, that really isn't a huge amount of money.......

I've put together a short clip to summarise my first experience in Africa.....the orphans, the rugby, the adventures, the parties...... watch it at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhMYfcKOeAI

Kilimanjaro - ni tu ya kilima

Orf