Above is are pictures of Richard trying to keep track of all the kit that has been issued……no chance, “shiny new kit, quick, grab what you can and run”

Some of the dried, pre packed food we will be taking is pictured below.

We will rely on are MSR Stoves for boiling water for drinking and cooking with. The team will need a daily intake of over 48,000 calories and 80 litres of melted snow to sustain and hydrate us and keep us going. This will be a daily routine of melting snow block…watching out for any patches of yellow.

Below is an MSR Stove.

The tent I will spend my time in is shared by Steve D, Nick & Shaun. The smells in the tent in the morning will take some getting used to, another pleasure of the trip. The tents have are specially designed for the trip and if the worst happens, such as we accidentally rip or we catch the tent on fire we will be carrying a spare tent between the team.

One of 3 tents we will take to the North Pole.

Being part of such a unique expedition is pushing me on to make the best of the opportunity i have been given, but I know it will all be worthwhile if i can raise the money for my charity.
That will keep me motivated and get me to the North Pole.

Pen Y Fan is the highest mountain in South Wales at 2,907 feet, and the highest in Britain south of Snowdonia.

We camped out on the Saturday night, cooking on an MSR stove similar to those we’ll be using on our Magnetic North Pole Expedition.  On Sunday with long drives ahead of us, we did a shorter 11km walk up the back of Pen Y Fan to Corn Du, following the gentle southerly ridge down towards Merthyr Tydfil.

When time allows, long walks in the mountains carrying weight, is some of the best training we can do.  Camping in cold weather – albeit a lot warmer than the temperatures we’ll be experiencing – is also a good help and experience in using essential kit like the MSR stove will be invaluable.

In all though, a beautiful weekend in the Welsh Mountains!

We are an all-British team of 12 with 10 men and two women. The Expedition will take around 25 days of walking, skiing and camping on ice, in temperatures down to minus 50C and below, pulling sledges weighing up to 140Kg, avoiding frost bite and 80% of the World’s Polar Bears which live in these regions.

I need to do more research at the RGS, but if we succeed we believe we’ll be the first all-British mixed-sex team to reach the Magnetic North Pole unsupported. Most attempts are supported through the Polar Race, or Polar Challenge, and only have to carry enough supplies for one week at a time.
We have an experienced guide in Richard Bull, who has led numerous Expeditions to the Magnetic North Pole and across Baffin Island, also supporting and advising on many other Expeditions to this hostile region.

More training dates have been put in the diary to teach us the skills we’ll need to survive for up to 4 weeks in the Arctic, particularly the basics of pulling our sledges through large fields of ice-rubble, safely using and maintaining the MSR fuel stove – our only source of heating and water for the duration – and erecting and dismantling our tents – our essential and only form of proper shelter – often in high winds.

Mr Moses Kazevu is not at all what I expect. He is a tall energetic man who radiates casual good humour. Rex and Ellinor’s demeanour when Kazevu is mentioned in conversation lead me to feel that we were due to meet a lion. But not a bit of it – meerkat perhaps – he listens as I quickly sketch out the content of our meetings and our progress so far. “Yes yes,” he says, “This is all very good – we should do all of it.”, and that is that; the Meercat’s head is up and he is surveying the dining room. It turns out that the room contains a delegation from USAID’s Zambian office and Kazevu is clearly an accomplished networker – he seems to know most of the people there. “They never give us anything.”, he remarks sotto vocce. Suddenly, he spots a lady delegate at the desert trolley, “Ah there is my girlfriend.” Kazevu jumps to his feet and calls across to her, “You can run but you can’t hide!” The woman is surprised, and certainly she couldn’t hide (her bulk and a dress that should attract a public health warning see to that) and although she forces a smile there is something on her face which suggests there is nothing she would like more than to be invisible just at that moment. But she is meerkat meat; Kazevu descends upon her and engages her in a short but animated conversation. When he returns to our table via several other brief conversations and handshakes his sits, there is a wolfish grin across his face, “She still won’t give us anything but at least I can make her feel bad about it!”

In the car on the way to visit the new school COINS Foundation is building at Kawama, Kazevu becomes serious. He talks with knowledge and evident passion about the KWOP projects. He has a grasp of the detail which I find rare in many charity Chairpersons. My questions are answered comprehensively and he promotes a philosophy which I heartily agree with. “The voice of the orphan is not heard in Zambia.”, he says, “This is very wrong.” And with that he has me – meetkat meat.

TUESDAY

Just past the One Way Out Pub (a shack the size of a toilet) is the Field of Hope – you turn left there for Kawama.

The road to the KWOP is a dirt track either side of which are scattered ‘informal housing plots’ it’s the PC term for shanty town. Poorly dressed but invariably smiling children loiter and some wave at the passing mazungu – that’s the un-PC term for a white man. We are a rarity here. I have been up and down this road only a handful of times but on this return trip it is beginning to feel very familiar. Whenever, I am driven down this road I always want to ask the driver to stop and let me get out and walk to the school. I don’t know why this is and I have only once actually made the request. I felt foolish asking to walk but I feel something worse riding in the car – it might be shame or something like it.

The KWOP mainly centres around a school which they run for orphans and vulnerable children – the numbers of these children continue to increase across all of Africa – they are so common that they have their own heartless little acronym – ovc’s. Ellinor, Rex and an ex-artillery officer in the Zambian army, Herbert Chikula pretty much run the show. It is amazing what they manage to do with so little resource. The school is a reasonable building – two classrooms with a small office in the middle. To one side is a sanitation block constructed by a well-meaning aid organisation. It is divided for boys and girls and contains very modern hand basins and toilets. It is ideal for the 212 young people who attend the school except that it has no water. It has been that way for several years and for me it stands as a monument to all that is bad about Aid-based interventions in Africa. One of the purposes of my visit is to finalise arrangements to construct a water tank and electric pump system which can finally bring water to this white elephant.

Behind the existing classroom block we are constructing a significant addition to the school – two more classrooms, two offices and a community resource area. Clearly, with only two classrooms and 212 students the KWOP school is desperate for the extra teaching space; but more than this, even in its construction phase, this project is contributing to the community. 16 local young men and women are being trained in construction skills as the build progresses. They have theory classes in the morning and then move on to site to practice what they have learned. But for me the best bit is where they hold the their classes – a universal shortage of resources makes Africans masters of improvisation and I cannot refrain from smiling as I am ushered into the boys toilet to be faced by sixteen grinning apprentices at improvised desks wedged up against a virgin urinal – at last the White Elephant is serving a useful function.

Progress on the building is good – the design of the classrooms is not the rather depressing block structure which one can see employed all over Africa but rather the result of a design competition. Imagine a dumbbell shape laid out on the ground – at either end a hexagonal classroom which will have a conical pitched tile roof. Each end is linked to the large rectangular resource area in the centre by an office. At present the whole thing is only two courses of bricks above the ground but the end result is easy to imagine and my insides are dancing an excited little rumba as I run up a nearby termite hill to get an aerial shot of the layout. As I look down from my vantage point, it seems a magnificent and beautiful thing to me, laid out in the bright sun slowly rising from the soil of Zambia – I wish I could induce in you the pride that you should rightly feel for this.

We had planned that the resource area should be a library and also an IT-training room complete with up to ten new computers and a server. You may recall that the first appointment I had scheduled on landing in Lusaka was to have been with Gertjan van Stamm the Director of an organisation called Linknet whose mission is to bring internet connectivity to rural Africa. My colleague Paul (Pj) had been working steadily for months trying to find the best IT solution which would allow us to realise the dream of students at Kawama having lessons with students in the UK and America. He had drawn a blank at almost every turn but his talks with Linknet offered at least some hope. Even this last vestige seemed dashed when Gertjan had to cancel our meeting under tragic circumstances.

As I stand atop the termite hill Rex approaches me beckoning. He has a tall distinguished looking Zambian with him who turns out to speak the best English I have yet heard at Kawama with an accent reminiscent Paul Boeteng. “This one is from the Internet Cafe.”, Rex informs me. “He has good news.” In Zambia, the polite handshake is a simple three- grip manoeuvre which I can usually be relied upon to remember. People wishing to be additionally polite will hold their elbow with the other hand and accompany the greeting with a neat bob from the knees – there’s no getting away from it; it’s a curtsey. I’m afraid even my liberalism can’t extend to curtsying whilst holding another man’s hand but had I known what he was about to tell me, I’d have definitely gone for the full bob and very possibly snogged him into the bargain.

“Sky One are opening an office in Ndola. You can have wireless broad band 2Gb.”

“Really? When?”, I gasp.

“Soon. Maybe even next month.” Suddenly linking Kawama to the world is back on the agenda. Rex interjects, “There is an option where we can become internet providers.” he says. “Good income generating activity for sustainability.”

It is the best news yet. There are so many advantages to a community like the one at Kawama having access to the internet. With a central long-range wireless hub which can broadcast up to 25km, the possibilities are enormous both for health, education and social care projects as well as the obvious commercial ones.

After a brief tour of the site and a chat with the foreman I am due to meet Mr Alfred Chapi. He is the Chairman of the local council; Larry and I met him on our last visit. He is a true politician and as we shake hands he asks after Mr Larry and apologises again for missing a meeting with Mr Derek whilst on our first visit to Kawama. I take a photograph of him with some of the apprentices next to a brick-making machine. It’s the usual local politics but only a precursor to the real business. I walk the site with Cllr Chapi and outline our plans for a sustainable community development at Kawama. Rex is anxious that I remember my script and flutters nervously nearby. He has his eye on a piece of land which he hopes we can secure as the site for a new secondary school. I play my part and ask Chapi how he would prioritise the various programmes we have discussed.

“Mmmmm for me it is the High school which is the priority. And then the clinic. With an ambulance.”, this last item is an unexpected addition. Chapi has an eye to the main chance. I laugh and dodge the issue, “Talking of the school; we were hoping that some land nearby could be made available?”

“It can.”, he is unequivocal, “I got your email, I talked to the Ndola Planning office. It is here for you.”, and with that he sets off down the road. After three or four hundred yards he stops and waves his arm in a wide gesture. “Here. Plenty of room for dormitories; and power is here and water is just there.”, he points authoritatively to the ground. “All that is needed is the plans and the permissions, and we can start.” I squash a desire to tell him that it might be just a bit more complex than that and, doing my best to sound as if people give me acres of real estate every day I shake his hand and assure him that we will keep him up to date with developments.

“I wonder,” he asks, “if you could meet the Worshipful Mayor of Ndola. Could you come with me now?” I regretfully decline – I have agreed to visit a Care International project.

“Could it be tomorrow?” I ask.

“Ahh regretfully not. We have to attend the funeral house of Mr Tetamashimba.”

Benny Tetamashimba was the Minister for Local Government and Housing who had died at the weekend. Another early death in Zambia; he was to be afforded a State funeral. In Zambia funerals are mandatory – for the deceased obviously, but also for anyone connected with the departed; colleagues, neighbours, every relative however distant is obliged to attend.

“It doesn’t matter.”, I am assured, “We will arrange it for next time.” We say our goodbyes and I head back to the hotel to meet representatives from Care. As I am driven back down the Kawama road, I sit more easily in the car. It’s been a good morning.

The road to Mwange is red and dusty and dedicated to the god of bruised buttocks. Despite this I am enjoying the drive; Morgan and Aaron are experienced workers for Care and I am anxious to learn all I can from this visit. Mwange was a refugee camp, it lies SE of Ndola and is now home to a rural community of subsistence farmers and fishermen who eke out a living from a man-made lake. A community school (ie a school set up and run by a voluntary group) is the central infrastructure of the community and it is there that we are headed. I am beginning to learn that there is a ‘formula’ reserved for visiting mazunga (the plural of mazungu don’t you know?); as the car with the guest arrives it is greeted by brightly dressed women who sing and clap a welcome – phase 1. Phase 2 – let loose the children; as many and as cute as possible. I am suckered as they know I will be. I shake every little hand that is proffered with the universally understood, “howareyou?” Suitably softened up, the hapless victim is taken into a room where members of the community are introduced and make gracious speeches of welcome. One is required to respond in kind – everyone stands when they speak at such a meeting and so an air of formality prevails.

It turns out that the room is filled with 18 ‘social care givers’. These are members of the community who have been trained in a range of skills by Care and who ‘mobilise’ the community when necessary and offer “psycho-social counselling” and “other support.” Essentially it is another ovc project and I am struck by the parallels with Kawama. Aside from counselling, I begin to suspect that they have few other resources available to them. I glean that they have a monthly baby-weighing programme to monitor the wellbeing of infants. The Mwange OVC committee was started in 2000 and received its first training programme from Care in 2002 since which time Care have maintained regular and, I gather from Aaron, close contact with the community.

I am given the opportunity to ask questions, so I enquire about their future plans for the community? The answers sound terribly familiar; they want to become sustainable and need farm inputs (seed and fertiliser); vocational training in carpentry and tailoring and brick-making. They become animated and say they want ‘empowerment’. “We are tired of being empty-handed helpers.”, says one man. The advice of Lord Joffe, Patron to the COINS Foundation comes back to me as we drive home, “Do something small and if it is successful, write it down so others can also do it. Then you have done something big.” We must make Kawama such a model.

WEDNESDAY
This is my last day at Ndola before driving back to Lusaka. It is set aside for one final meeting with Rex & Ellinor. It’s going to be a crucial one and I ask if Herbert Chikula, as Finance officer could attend also.

So the four of us sit for a whole day in the garden of the hotel churning through endless details – there are worse settings for a meeting. Impala, guinea fowl and peacocks wander the grounds. The sun is bright and hot but a large jacaranda profuse with purple blossom shades us as we hammer out the key points for each of the 11 projects which we hope will transform Kawama.

RL

As some of you may know, I’m “tweeting” little nuggets of information while I’m in Zambia working on our community development projects here.Whilst tweeting is all very jolly – I thought it might be interesting for some of you to read a bit more about what I am up to this week – for those of you with little time or short attention spans (!) I  will continue to tweet!!

BACKGROUND
The object of this trip (my third visit to Zambia) is to review the progress on the construction training project and the classroom build which started nearly two months ago at Kawama; meet some partners who we think may be essential supporters for our projects and most importantly meet a range of people, especially the key staff at the Kawama Widows and Orphans Project (KWOP) to firm up on as much details we can for the prospective Community Development Projects at Kawama.

Many of you are aware of the COINS Foundation’s strategy of 360oInclusive Community Development – in a nutshell for those of you who are less familiar –

• We don’t do ‘Aid’ our projects must all have a ‘route to sustainability’.
• We work with people in the community – hear what they need and then develop a plan to deliver it with them.
• All our plans ‘hunt out’ and include the most disenfranchised in any community – this almost universally turns out to be disabled children and children with mental health problems.

Before I left for Zambia we had just received a report from Richard Mwanza. We had commissioned him to do two things –

1. Conduct a ‘baseline community needs assessment’ for the 22,000 people of Kawama
2. Suggest a project programme in response to the identified challenges

This report has been discussed, revised and augmented; going back and forth between me, the researcher and the community members at Kawama several times. By the time I left for Zambia I was pretty familiar with it!

The main reason for my visit to Zambia this time was to agree concrete plans with our partners in Kawama and begin to turn the ‘outline’ plan in our report into real projects on the ground.

The Report came out to highlight two very broad streams of work. They were:

- Strategies to strengthen the infrastructure of the Kawama Widows and Orphans Project (KWOP) – our partner of choice through whom we hope to deliver our programme.
- A Project Programme to meet the development needs of Kawama.

Zambia Diary Part 1

FRIDAY
I left Heathrow for Lusaka at 7pm last Friday evening and froze for eight hours whilst revising notes and watching movies into the night –I always dress for Africa and then forget all about BA’s air conditioning and totally inadequate blankets!

SATURDAY
I arrived in Lusaka at 6am – I have a long wait at the airport before my connecting flight to Ndola so I’ve arranged a couple of meetings to make best use of the time. Steve Powers from Care International had agreed to meet to see if there were any Care projects in the Copperbelt which could be linked with our plans for Kawama. It’s always good to talk with really experienced workers in Africa – you can learn a lot. We were discussing the implications of partnership working in post colonial Africa.“Intervention is always a disturbance.”, he said, “You just have to manage it as best you can.”

We agreed that I could visit a project for orphans and vulnerable children in a rural village called Mwange later in the week.

I love the internal flight to Ndola – it’s always in a small twin prop plane – it feels like real flying. I mean you never forget that you are in the air and it requires rather more effort not to dwell on the combined effects of engine failure, gravity and a couple of thousand feet!

Ndola airfield is tiny. Disembarking there puts me in mind of the final scene in Casablanca. Different Ric, different time and the wrong end of the continent but you get the idea. I was met by Rex and Ellinor.Mother and son – she is the founder and driving force behind KWOP and Rex is a local Pastor but also administrator to the various projects they already run. It’s great to see them again, I think we are genuinely getting fond of each other and conversation is easy this time as we head for the car.

We have dinner together including our driver – the same guy every time who speaks little English and despite my best efforts never manages to relax with us. We talk late into the night planning the final itinerary for the next four days. I retire to bed pretty done in – it’s been more than 24hrs without sleep (thanks to the BA flying refrigerator); the mosquito net over the bed confirms what kind of hotel I’m in; “Gem of the Copperbelt” is their strap line, “But that’s not saying much.”, I mutter ungraciously as I slide into sleep swatting at every itch.

SUNDAY
The peacocks wake me. They sound for all the world like raucous and very indignant cats. Classier than cockerels I suppose but no less of a shock to the system.

Rex and Ellinor arrive at 10 – we have planned to spend the entire day going through Richard Mwanza’s report to draw out the key issues and air our views as a precursor to roughing out a programme plan – we have a meeting with the chairman of their board on the following day and would like to have a joint proposal for him by then. It’s hard going and by lunch we are only four pages in to a 20 page report – I have made eight pages of notes! Community development is complex. But it’s time well spent. I learn more about the realities of life for an orphan in Kawama and the dismal state of health care in the community. The desire to turn these discussions into some kind of action burns hot But there is good news too – I learn that the electricity supplied to the KWOP school is 3 phase and very reliable and the community is mobilised and already helping to build the new classroom block at the school.

By dinner we are done with Richard’s report – we have agreement on all points (by no means a certainty before I left from England) and we agree to meet the next morning to rough out a plan ready to present to the Chairman over lunch. Despite our tiredness the excitement is tangible – this huge, nebulous thing which encompasses so many problems and crosses our diverse cultures, is clearly coming together.

MONDAY
Another meeting with E&R – we start early to be ready for Mr. Moses Kazevu KWOP Chairman who we are due to present to at lunch. We previously agreed that Richard’s report suggested two areas of work –If KWOP was to stand any chance of delivering on the huge program we had begun to envision, they would need some additional infrastructure.To date, no-one at KWOP is paid, they have no income, no office space or place to meet, they have no means of transport, they have to combine their time between community work and the struggle to live. The second area was the Project Programme itself. We have identified ten priority projects for Kawama:

• A Community Health care programme to be extended from KWOP’s existing project and to include a Community Health centre
• To build a Secondary School in Kawama
• To build a vocational training centre and run training courses in carpentry, IT skills, tailoring and construction.
• To establish a sustainable agriculture project
• To remove the vulnerabilities from, and extend KWOP infant nutrition project
• To complete the build of the additional classrooms for the existingKWOP primary school and commission same with furniture, books andcomputers etc.
• To establish an internet Cafe within the school
• To establish a programme of micro-financed businesses
• To develop a Family-support programme for disabled young people
• To improve the water supply to the area and refurbish the school sanitation block.

We agree that Ellinor & Rex would submit applications to the COINS Foundation for these two strands of work. Clearly the infrastructure support should reflect the needs of KWOP to deliver the project programme.

We all realise and agree that our ‘route to sustainability’ hinges on a balance of health and social care projects and wealth-creation schemes which can grow to pay for them.

Despite the huge task, our optimism from the previous evening remains. We feel ready to face the Chairman.

End of part 1 . . .

Poverty and disability are inextricably linked in a vicious circle in the countries of the south. What has become apparent as I read, is the way forward to reduced poverty and sustainable development is to empower disabled people and their families to become participating members of society by removing the environmental, financial and attitudinal barriers that they face.

Looking round my house, it is almost impossible to count how many individual items I have but it’s easy to find 10 items I do not need. If I asked 10 colleagues, friends and families for 10 items they do not need and sell them at a car boot sale I bet I could raise £150. Four people organising a boot sale (with items from ten of their friends) could raise £600. This is slightly more than the COINS Foundation paid this week to repair a water pump at a school in Zambia.