5F on Safari

In August 2022, a few months after the former 5F classmates had returned from Zambia, Anna flew to the UK for one of her regular trips home and they all got together in the New Forest to reminisce about '5F on Safari'.

Carolyn Smith is a freelance PR and audio describer. She is also the presenter of '5F on Safari' but in this episode she talks to the podcast's producer Helen Lee about falling in love with Africa and about a thought provoking visit to a Zambian village.

By her own admission, Kate Marshall wasn’t always a model pupil at Wycombe High School in the 1970s. But by the time she had retired……just before 5F’s Zambian adventure…..she had become a family circuit judge. As well as talking about her enjoyment of discovering Zambia in the company of a group of old friends, she discusses her thoughts on Zambia’s colonial past and Zambia today.

In previous episodes of this podcast, we've heard how a trip to Zambia has been ‘the experience of a lifetime’ for a group of women who all met at Wycombe High School over forty years ago. In this episode, we hear from Anabel Harries for whom this African adventure proved to be not only life enhancing but life changing as well.

In this episode, Rosie Heath talks about her own very personal way of connecting with a new country and how 5F’s trip to Zambia helped lay some personal demons to rest.

5F’s amazing Zambian adventure was organised by Bobbie Gristwood who has always excelled at arranging school reunions. In this episode, she talks about what the trip meant to her and why she thought she might not actually make it to Africa.  

Anna Tolan and her husband Steve emigrated from England to Zambia in 1998 to realise their dream of running a conservation education programme for young Zambians. Having decided to base themselves in Mfuwe on the banks of the river Luangwa in eastern Zambia, they were fortunate to be given some land for their enterprise by the local Chief. In May 2001, they opened the Chipembele Wildlife Education Centre and two decades later, some of Anna’s former classmates made the 1000 mile journey to pay her (and Chipembele) a visit. In this first episode, Anna talks about Chipembele and about how much she enjoyed playing host to ‘the girls' she had been at school with.  

Getting together on Zoom to reminisce.