August 1981, and I'd just finished teaching a class of lads at the Burma Road Training Centre in Lusaka. I'd arrived in Zambia that spring - 19, naive, wearing faded dresses and Bo Derek cornrows in my fair hair, to the puzzlement of my African colleagues. One of our VSO friends had invited us to stay at the Outward Bound centre in the northern province. And so we set off, 1,000 miles in a fish lorry. After the first 50 miles we spent the evening in a local disco at the junction where the north and east roads divide. The women danced with babies tied to their backs with coloured cloths. Finally, at 2am, we began the long drive north. Two of us slept and the third kept the driver awake. I took on that job, chatting through the darkness and watching the road lighten in the brilliance of an African sunrise, red dust, tall grass and stunted trees. When the guys awoke, one found he'd only packed one pair of pants for the next four weeks.

Eventually, we arrived in Mbala at the northernmost tip of Zambia, a pretty village overlooking Lake Tanganyika - an extraordinary stretch of water 200 miles long.

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