Zambia World Wide

Our daughter, at 16, still had two years schooling to go in Zambia, but with the school leaving age in the UK at 16, we had a problem. Like her brothers, she had always done well at school and was well up near the top in all her subjects. Unfortunately, her education history was still somewhere back in Cyprus and as we could not produce certificates to prove her ability, the Department of education placed her for her last two years in the local comprehensive school with younger children so that she could sit her final examinations with them..

For my part, I applied for over forty jobs during that first year. I sent off my c.v. with s.a.e enclosed, with carefully written letters of application to many firms, and attended interviews in various places. I went on an induction course for one of these jobs which had been advertised as a 'Fire Protection Consultant' but left when it became clear that I was to be trained as a door to door salesman for a fire extinguisher company using, in my mind, questionable sales tactics. I even went to sea on a north sea fishing trawler which belonged to my sons employer.

I did have some offers from the government department that was intended to help folks like us but these were all in places like Saudi Arabia or Belize. My particular skills were only needed in developing countries and we were not going to go down that route again. Also, Marjorie had really been affected by the Cyprus affair and the manner in which she had been deprived of her and our children's homeland, where her family still lived, and made it clear that she was not going to go abroad anymore. So I lowered my sights and aimed a little lower.

One day, after nearly a year of trying during which we lived rather economically, I saw an advert in our local free newspaper, that was delivered to every house in the town. [We no longer bought papers once we had worked out that one weeks newspaper delivery cost the same as one weeks milk]. This carried an advert for a 'Non Resident Residential Social Worker'. I must say that the apparent contradiction in the title did intrigue me.