When I first came to Zambia, seven years ago, it was said that the first rain comes for
Independence  Day, the 24th October, this year in Kafue we are exactly a month late, there have been a couple of showers but nothing more. Today it is very hot, just after a couple of kilometers we see many athletes with the t-shirt in the hands and the sweat coming down from face and chest. The clouds are there but striking, when the wind pushes them under the sun they gift us a few minutes of shade which allows the boys and girls to breath. Like always when we arrive in Chaniana a lot of people comes at the sides of the road to cheer and offer water, Insist Maunga, home idol, was cheered along non-stop in the last kilometers which from the school take to the fishers’ port on the Kafue River. Insist, a program just in the name, runs with us since the beginning in the Juniors he was always among the first ones, now he is a constant presence in the first ten of the Seniors, where though he still misses the victory. His best race of the year was the test for the first Lusaka Marathon of next Saturday where he showed unexpected resistance which leaves us hoping for the best. Continue reading →

Paul, Maximillian, Miko, Most and Samson, Milika, Yvonne, Charity, Astrida and Priscilla …

They are the ten finalists of the cross-country race under 14 organized by the Olympic Centre of Lusaka under the programme: I.O.C. President’s Athletic Challenge.

Our 10 children arrive from different rural areas, far one from the other even about thirty kilometers.

Today 17^th November, there is the final and the departure of the race is supposed to be at 8 in the morning. Continue reading →

 So many common places for the shortest race of the circuit!

‘The seasons are no longer the way they once were’, the rain season is late this year and the torrid heat made the shortest race of the circuit more demanding. ‘Nothing drenches your thirst more than a glass of water’, at the arrival the manual water pump of the Mungu School is assaulted by the young thirsty athletes. ‘Nothing is more refreshing than the shade of a tree’, at the end the 250 participants fought for a place under one of the huge secular mangoes in the schoolyard. Continue reading →

Almost 200 participants … but at the departure the Seniors are few, “ it is the distance to scare them away” says the coach from Chipapa. But this reason which we heard way too often does not convince me. Continue reading →

Friday evening with no power in Kafue. ‘Survivors’ dinner at candle light, with milk, cereal,
bread, Egyptian spiced bread sticks, jam and many pawpaw from Chikupi. The children eat a lot foreseeing the first race, then Winnie the eldest, who will race for the first time in the over 12, says ‘before the start, I am always a bit tense and worried, it seems to me that at the departure I will not be able to start, to run for the all race, then after the start and the elbowing, everything goes and I only think about reaching the arrival’. Still she did not know, that despite the TB of the bones, which crippled her stride, she would arrive fifth … for the first time … Continue reading →

It is the final! Starting from Mungu with the arrival in Chikupi, 8 km of dusty gravel surrounded by a golden landscape typical of the dry season. Continue reading →

It is my first time at the Chaniana Harbor. The atmosphere is different from the other villages in the rural area of Kafue, there is a thriving fish market, women with interwoven mats on the ground full of small fish which the sun is drying and bags full of ice and fresh fish, and boats, the majority made out of wood with a traditional shape others out of more modern resins berthed at the bank of the Chaniania River, the fluvial basin of the Kafue River. Continue reading →