Mike & Jan's Great Escape: New Life Ahead! Exciting Challenges

As many of our friends who read this blog know, Jan and I are off to pastures new but this now puts it all into place on what we are doing. In exactly 2 months today, on 5th June we leave our home here in London, England for a new life (albeit temporary) in Africa. We have chosen to move to Ndola in the Copperbelt Region of Zambia.

We have loved travelling around the world and have been very privileged to visit many wonderful places but we always seem to return to Africa. This has meant for some time now both of us have wanted to help a community within that region.

Both of our skill sets will be put to good use within the education system. Jan will be working a lot with the three head teachers and the directors of the schools while I will be working with the infrastructure, helping with the maintenance and hopefully "training" a young adult in each of the schools to look after the day to day problems and be able to fix them themselves. Another part I am looking forward to is assisting with a bike ride through Zambia to raise money later this year.

Inspecting the newly built play facilities for the younger Children at Greater Joy School

Jan discussing with Jodie a lesson

We have teamed up with a fantastic charity called BEYOND OURSELVES who are based here in North London and the charity works within the community of Ndola and its neighbour Kitwe about an hour to the North-west. Beyond Ourselves is partnered with three community schools, Kawama and Greater Joy Schools in Kitwe and Janna School in Ndola.

These are some of the poorer areas within these communities and need all the help they can get, not just with money (although that is greatly needed) but also with support, advice and physical help both in the teaching and also in the infrastructure. Beyond Ourselves works within the schools and communities to sponsor and help feed and cloth vulnerable and orphaned children, assist with the education and raising standards as well as assisting in the construction and ongoing maintenance of the school buildings, playgrounds and infrastructure.

Possibly the only meal some children get in a day

Put to work glazing windows

Although the children have many challenges living in this area what is certain is they love going to school and learning through structured teaching and through informal play. It is so obvious from the smiles on the faces how the children love the schools and the learning.

Teaching at Greater Joy School

A Class at Kawama School

Jan and I spent a short time visiting the team out in Ndola back in February and March this year to see what is being done and to meet the fantastic team there, Dan and Melissa and their family along with Emily and Malcolm with their family. We just loved it and now having booked one way tickets we are off in a very short time.

Eyes on the teacher at Greater Joy School

Ndola is the 3rd largest city in Zambia and when we travelled this year it was the "rainy" season so was very green and had lots of flowers around. Contrary to many peoples imagination not all of Africa is very poor and under-developed. The city of Ndola boasts a Tennis Club, Boat Club and a couple of new Shopping Malls. Part of our time there was checking out what we could buy and what we couldn't. As far as we could see everything we could possibly need was around including Marmite and a selection of Waitrose own brand products (OK these we found in Lusaka). The social side is not just for the ex-pats either as many said a lot of the local people go which is good for us as we hope to meet and make friends with people from the area.

As you can suspect from our travels and our love of Africa, not all of our time will be spent working and some will be spent travelling around Zambia and the neighbouring countries. We have enquiries out about a suitable 4wd vehicle fully kitted out with tents on the roof and the rear with fridge/freezer/cooker and all the stuff we need for bush travel so if anyone does fancy a trip out to southern Africa on a "Safari" holiday then we would love to see/meet you and even show you a little of why we like the area.

Must have been a late night

l-r Jodie (Director of Beyond Ourselves) Dan, Emily (both from Beyond Ourselves team in Ndola), Jan, Helen plus Ospeck and Angelina (Founders of Greater Joy School Kitwe)