Multiply Zambia 2014 - Day Minus One

Monday wasn't supposed to be like this!  We had a great time on Saturday at the national celebration in Birmingham's New Bingley Hall.  The Multiply team was commissioned on stage in the afternoon.  Len led much of the evening, and Matt from Kings Church Medway spoke, too.  Mary and I went on the stay the night in Coventry, at what has become known as '64' (Leamington Road) since the Bright Flame saints moved there earlier in the year.

 Loz - my sometime blog mentor - led the Sunday morning meeting.  We had an erudite menu, including a clip of Steven Fry and Bear Grhylls in dialogue, and several leaders boogying around to the Pharrell Williams 'Happiness' song.  Er, I forgot the exact point, but it was something like hope doesn't equal optimism: which is true.  Sigh: chapter two.

We'd had an invitation to lunch with Roanne, who lives with Neil and Claire.  She, with Mim, her partner in the venture, have set up a not-for-profit social enterprise to import and market crafts from micro finance projects in Bangladesh.  The set-up is called 'Glass Half Full', and they're seeking £35,000 of funding.  The aim is, if possible, to steer this towards Multiply, once there's an income stream.  It's very good.

On the way home to Sheffield, about 5.pm, Mick sent a text to confirm an early (and hasty) meeting first thing on Monday at the Farm Central Offices.  Packing would have to wait.  But mercifully I'd thrown a lot of things into the right piles on Friday night.

It was just as well that I turned up because we hadn't withdrawn any dollars and we also needed some more cash for the conference budget.  I was able to provide the reassuring hums as wads of notes went into my briefcase!  At the lunchtime Brotherhood, Hannah did a presentation on the trip, so it was time well spent.

I called in at Sainsbury's at Fosse Park, Leicester for some cheap petrol, and ventured into the store to get some shortbread biscuit.  This is a travellers friend, being high calorie, acceptable if you've got a funny tummy and compact for packing.  I seemed to walk through the vast building for a quarter of an hour before finding the three (not one) sizes and weight offered.  Then I thought I'd try the self serve check-out.  No, I wasn't motivated by the recent announcement that the main supermarkets record between 4.7% and 7.4% extra stock 'shrinkage' since they've trusted customer with this.

Though not having a clue what to do, I was happy to follow the lady on the video screen, and wafted my packet under the scanner just as she did.  Lights flashed and I got a screen full of asterisks telling me I'd used an invalid card.  Invalid card!?  A ruddy and juvenile customer service assistant duly arrived.  He muttered several sentences in consumerese - incomprehensible to me.  I shrugged and sloped off to wait in queue.  It would have been simpler to have had them delivered from Harrods. 

I felt queasy.  I think it's the side effects of the mozzi tablets.  I was at the wrong end of the store to find my car.  I think even the Lego man from Google Street View would have got lost.

Back home, I broke a fasting habit of 28 years and had tea with everyone.  I aimed to attack some last-minute emails, then the packing.  The broadband at home had choked up again owing to certain residents caning it with film watching.  I gave up on that - another little job to fit in tomorrow before I go - and got back to the cases.  10pm brought triumph: one 17kg and one 18kg.  It had been a long day!

Multiply Zambia 2014: just days to go.

I'm a bit late with this, but we're on the final week's countdown to the Multiply Zambia trip. We - the team - means Len and Ali from Brighton; James Norden; Hannah from Multiply (as previously posted).  Now we've also got Farayi, who's Zambian himself, from Kings Church Medway.  We fly out on Tuesday 25 February, first to Nairobi, then connecting on to Ndola in the Copperbelt.  There we'll join Steven in Kitwe, where a lot of the action will take place. 

Len and I, with Steven, will head up the conference schedule: Kitwe, Lusaka, Lilongwe and finally Dar es Salaam.  Al1 and Hannah will be doing stuff in the Kitwe school and ophanage.  James will toggle between the two, and Farayi has to check out Lilongwe ready for Kings Church's own project visit in September.  He'll catch up with some relatives, too.

All in advance, we've ordered a satellite broadband, and sent ten laptops together with about £1,000 of literacy and school resources.  Thanks to all of you who raised the funds and who donated.

I'm on the predictable treadmill of assembling personal kit and all the conference stuff: projector, audio cabling, Powerpoint handouts and essential medicines.  I wake up early remembering 'one last thing' I've overlooked.  The saints have bought me a tarty bit of TNF luggage to replace the pinky-red case I got via Freecycle and that served me well in India.  We're still not sorted out on phones, but James will be doing a full video record.

I'm hoping the saints remember to pray.  I've related that when we have our Multiply prayer day, the last Thursday of each month, I sometimes wake up thinking I'm in Tanzania.  There are 310 pastors there praying that the Multiply team will return. 

A57, A625, A61, A621

It seems that Sheffield Council provides a footpath to the city boundary on all the main outbound roads.  I don't know when I first realised this, but I've made walking the 15 miles to the Derbyshire border along the Manchester Road a regular exercise.  

At points the footpath is a bit grim.  Invariably there's evidence that a car has recently skidded off the road.  This is the route to the Snake Pass (A57), and ice hangs around long after it's cleared in the suburbs.  It's usually headwind on the way out, and buses only run on Saturdays: I recently got soaked when heavy rain started when I was well out in the countryside.

Last summer, I fancied a change.  I did the equivalent walk on Ecclesall Road (A625) towards Castleton.  This is a shorter distance (about 12 miles).  My attempt to take a 'selfie' with the Peak District National Park millstone as a background, was ruined by the direct sunlight from the south.  The footpath has disappeared at some points, so you only want to walk the roadside verve bits in dry weather.

For years we've passed the city boundary sign at Lowedges as we've returned from trips down the M1.  We usually use the A61 to Chesterfield, then head along the A617 to junction 29.  I hadn't been attracted to this route because it's all built-up area.  But the other Monday I had to call in at Skaino's office, round the corner, so just kept on walking.  Returning is down hill all the way (some six miles), which is a compensation.

Skaino's offices also run onto the Abbeydale Road, which heads towards Bakewell.  Twice I've got out to Totley, only to be soaked by rain, and forced to catch a bus home.  This week I completed the walk to the boundary, only to find the footpath goes about two and a half miles further on.  So this was an 18 mile there-and-back marathon.  And I got caught in a brief hailstorm, but it produced a lovely rainbow.

Our dentist surgery lies on the A6102 Stocksbridge Road.  The city boundary intersects this on the main A616 Bypass.  It's way beyond the end of the Middlewood tram terminal, but countryside all the way from that point.  It's next on my list.

It's a great way to get familiar with the city's main radial routes.  And a shame not to make full use of amenities that our Council Tax has paid for!