George ran the Victoria Falls Half Marathon to raise money for Play it Forward
On the 2nd of July I had one week out of school to raise money for a charity called Play it Forward, based in Zambia.
My dad runs a travel company which donates money to the charity. He supported them by helping to organize a group of people to come from England and run the Victoria Falls Marathon to raise money for the charity.
During the week we were hosted by Play it Forward and visited many of their projects and their beneficiaries (which means the people they help). You can see the itinerary here.
Play it Forward is a charity which uses football and education to help tackle poverty in Zambia. The founder and managers are Oliver Brendon and Jake Criswick, and they have 30 people working from their head office in Livingstone, Zambia.
You can find the website here, and if our school supports any charities I would like to recommend Play it Forward, as they work with children exactly like us.
Zambia is a country in the south of Africa were all the people and places are lovely and it is very safe, but it is a very poor area of Africa and the government doesn’t have much money for schools and education. The schools we visited didn’t have enough buildings and had no things like books and sports pitches and two toilets were shared across all the students. Also some of the children didn’t have any shoes and many of them didn’t have uniforms.
We stayed near Livingstone which is named after David Livingstone, who was a famous explorer and the first European to see Victoria Falls. Most people in Zambia speak English, but there are 67 native languages, and here are some words I learned:
We also stayed in Zimbabwe, which is the other side of Victoria Falls. There are 2 main languages called Shona and Ndebele but also quite a lot of others (though not as many as in Zambia).
AM: We arrived from our overnight flight from Manchester to Victoria Falls Airport in Zimbabwe.
PM: We got picked up from the airport and taken to banks of the Zambezi River at 2pm. Then we took a fast boat upriver with a guy called Arnold to the lodge we were staying at. It took 45 minutes and on the way we saw lots of crocodiles and hippos, and I even saw 2 otters. The lodge we stayed at was called Mpala Jena. It was a really nice lodge and had very modern rooms as well as a cool pool. My dad also sells this lodge to his clients so he found it very helpful to stay there. I helped by doing 2 videos of the lodge that my dad will use for staff training at his office.
AM: In the morning we did site inspections with my dad at five lodges he sells with his company. I learnt about how much detail travel companies have to go into to sell holidays. They were very cool and stylish.
PM: In the afternoon, we had to cross the border to Zambia and arrived at Avani (the next hotel we were staying at) and met up with everyone else. It was very nice to meet everyone - there were about 30 people in total. Then we got on a bus with everyone else and went to a place called Elephant Café where we joined by some workers from Play it Forward. When we were at the restaurant we all had to stand up and say why we had come on the trip, and I said I wanted to help and to learn about the charity. It was very eye opening how much this charity meant to some of its members .
AM: We woke up early to do a training run with the rest of the group overlooking Victoria Falls, which was incredible and exhilarating because it's one of the seven wonders of the world.
Then we got on the bus to Katubya school. It took about two hours to get there, and it was in very remote location (there were no tarmac roads for the last 30 minutes).
Katubya school is a school Play it Forward works with to give them running water and a orchard to grow fruits such as mango, pineapple, papaya and more. They now also have a piece of land to grow more food for school lunches, and we are hoping our run will raise enough money to make a new school block, and to buy a solar panel. It was so cool to see how much Play it Forward has done to the school and how much they are about to!
PM: Then we went straight to the Play it Forward football grounds (they are also a semi professional Zambian football club) which were simple but very well used. We played some football and volley ball games with children from the Play it Forward teams. Lots of people were playing in bare feet which was very strange but cool at the same time. Then we gave some football shirts and boots which we had brought from England to the team managers.
Then in the evening we all had dinner at a restaurant. 'All' meaning all the youth teams, all of the people running the marathon, and most of the Play it Forward coaches. One of them was called Mercy and she told everyone about her life when she grew up. It was quite emotional and made my dad cry probably.
AM: We went to a local football ground on the outskirts of Livingstone to play a tournament between lots of Play it Forward teams which range from under 12’s to adults, girls and boys.
We filled In the gaps of each team and played as an all star team as well. I played in the u15 team and they were all so, so, so good and skilful, but it was very interesting to see the differences in height from British people to Zambian. It was a very nice experience.
PM: We collected our race gear and crossed the border back to Zimbabwe, and checked in to our final hotel because the race starts very early and the border opens at 6:00am so we would miss the start of the race. Victoria falls marks the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe but the race starts in Zimbabwe so you have to cross the border to get there. We all ate a lot of pasta for dinner and went to bed very early.
AM: We all met up at the outside of our hotel at 5 Am and got on the bus to the start line.
The marathon runners set of first at 6:30 there were 4 from our group. Then there was the half marathon and the relay runners who were up next (me!). We started at 7:00 and there were 20 runners from our group in that race and 5 more doing the fun run.
I ran the first part of the relay in 48 minutes which was 10.5km, and then my partner Anya ran her half in 55 minutes which meant together we ran the whole thing in 1:43mins. Also on this trip I met someone called Rachel from Runners World who was running for Play it Forward, and she came fourth out of the women’s full marathon with a time of 2:56mins!! You can read about our trip in Runners World here.
The run was amazing, mainly because of the setting and the atmosphere. The route took us along to Victoria falls then back across a bridge overlooking the great Zambezi river which was incredible. Also, along the way we saw elephants, gazelle , baboons and buffalo whilst we were running.
Amazingly, me and Anya were the quickest mixed relay team in the race. Which is crazy since were the youngest by a mile, and we got a $500 prize and lots of goodies (bag, jacket, trophy, t-shirts) from the sponsors. I really wanted to use it to get a mountain bike but decided to give it to Play it Forward!
We then cheered everyone on to the finish then got the bus back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit.
PM: We later got told that 5,100 people ran the race which made our feet even cooler. Then we went on a sunset cruise with the whole play it forward crew and that was it!
My favourite bits of the trip were:
In total we (me and my dad) raised £1000 for Play it Forward and counting. The whole team raised £25,000 for the charity .
The END!
P.S. The donation page that my Dad helped me make is here - If anyone wants to donate, it's still open. We just hit out £1000 target!
Thank you to..
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