We introduce you to our friend and partner Lynne Mendelsohn who owns/manages the Zig Zag B&B in Livingstone, Zambia where GSGC travelers stay while in Livingstone.  Lynne has become a partner by connecting us with orphans needing comfort dolls and projects helping to educate young orphans.

Read the very interesting story of how this Scottish born Lawyer left a successful practice to live in Zambia!

At 39 years old and after practising law for 16 years I decided to take a year off in 2007. I felt the need to “put something back” and so volunteered for various community and conservation projects in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa.  It was a life changing year.

Africa became a part of me and I knew I wanted to become part of Africa, but when I came back to the UK in November 2007 I wasn’t sure how that would happen.   I took a consultancy job in order to save some money – it was meant to be for 18 months but I only lasted 8!  In May of 2008 I typed into Google “property for sale Livingstone Zambia” and found details of a guest house in Livingstone that I had stayed in and loved.  It was meant to be!  I mortgaged my house to the max, lived on starvation rations for months and sold everything that wasn’t nailed down.  I still didn’t have enough money but I managed to make a deal with the owners of the guest house and I will pay off the rest over the next few years.

Also in 2008 I set up my own charity, which I called Life Begins – partly because it was the year of my 40^th birthday and partly because my focus is to try to give children a better start in life.  It was clear from my time in Southern Africa that a child’s life chances are heavily influenced by what happens in its early years, so good nutrition, education, health and welfare in this time can have an impact for the rest of that child’s life and help break the cycle of poverty that prevails in the poorest areas.

During 2007 I met the man who in 2008 became my husband.  He’s Namibian, a quiet gentle giant, prepared to work to cross the cultural divide and put up with my at times slightly frenetic behaviour.  In October 2008 we moved to Livingstone, rented a house and worked to complete the deal to buy the guest house.  We took over Zig Zag on 1^st January 2009; it took many months of hard work to understand the business, commercial life in Zambia, tourism, running a restaurant, how the swimming pool works – all these things you just don’t have to deal with as a corporate lawyer in the UK!  But we did it and the business is going well.  After the initial months when the business was under control I started to make enquiries as to how I could channel the work of Life Begins.  I found the Tutalike Nutrition centre, run by an amazing lady called Susiku, who has taken her own personal tragedy and turned it into the energy to care for orphans and vulnerable children in her own community.

Currently we feed the 70 children at Tutalike every day and we have just raised funds to enable 12 children to start school.  Other children are receiving much needed medical treatment and we gratefully received donations from Global Sojourns Giving Circle of much needed underwear, comfort dolls and educational games.

In future I hope to set up small reading toolkits and use them at a weekly play group in 2 of the townships around Livingstone.  I also hope to raise funds to feed the children attending the Saturday morning play group in Dambwa and Ngwenya townships.  I’m also supporting 2 teenage boys who are currently working at Zig Zag and next year will be going back into full time education after several years’ absence.