Generally the big African cities are quite chaotic and messy as opposed to the idyllic small villages, so I only spent 2 nights  in Lusaka as a stopover en route to Malawi. Yet I can chalk it up as another remarkable experience thanks to a chance encounter that gave me the most moving moment of my time in Africa so far.

I was quite tired after a long bus journey and so was relaxing in the hostel utilising their wi-fi when in strolled Nico, a Dutch traveller I had briefly met in northern Zimbabwe and was visiting a friend in the hostel. We got chatting and he mentioned that he had been conversing with a taxi driver called John, who ran a project feeding homeless children, and asked if I wanted to get involved.

The next morning, we met with John under a railway bridge and started distributing food and some footballs to the children. It was hear that I heard some of the most tragic life stories that led to the kids ending up on the streets.

They were all orphans with their parents either abandoning them as babies or having passed away (largely due to AIDS). Almost all children were on some form of drugs, and it was explained to me that even when alternative accommodation and a form of education was provided for them, more often than not they would voluntarily return to the streets as this is all they have ever known and their addictions were so overpowering.

I suspect part of it is because it’s is a form of escapism away from the grim realities of their lives, and also partly that it is the done thing on the street and it takes a great deal of willpower for a child to break free of that peer pressure.

Shamefully, they are also ruthlessly targeted by dealers who are fully aware of their susceptibility to drugs and the commercial advantages of getting them hooked on them as early as possible.

What was intriguing and touching was the level of solidarity between the children. The older one’s made sure the younger kids weren’t being pushed out of the queue, and helped feed the very young children. Most of the kids have spent their entire lives on the streets. This is the only support network they have ever known, so they have formed their own family on the street.

The manner in which they have had to grow up so fast and the abysmal conditions in which they have to live, is heart wrenching in the extreme. I’ve spoken about this previously, but it is the killing of innocence in children that is so tragic.

It’s strange, even though we all know such poverty exists when it is staring you in the face and you see the human beings behind the statistics it just hits you how fundamentally unfair the world is.

There are no obvious solutions for these kids. Even when there is funds available from NGO’s, there are such structural problems with drugs and abuse that it is unlikely to lead to their long-term improvement.

What they really need is a combination of job opportunities, training and counselling and addiction support to help them start to change their lives but in a country of 70% unemployment, who has the resources for that?

John was a deeply religious man and would take his bible with him and deliver a sermon before distributing food. He firmly believed that he was doing god’s work both in spreading the message of Christ and also in helping feed the underprivileged.

Now he was an utterly selfless man who used the limited funds he had from driving his taxi to buy food for these children but a part of me felt a little uneasy about this – is he exploiting their poverty to further his own religion? Do his motives matter if the work he is doing is helping those who need it the most? Is the view that everything will be alright in the afterlife preventing people from organising politically and demanding the changes that will improve their situations now?

I have no answers, but the experience flagged up a lot of questions for me.

It’s also interesting how religious the children are. For kids who have nothing and have been brutal victim of the lottery of life, I would have thought they would be the least likely to be able to comprehend where a just and merciful god is in their lives.

And yet just as the drugs were likely a form of escapism, it’s easy to understand how the belief if they are righteous enough, that they will get their reward in heaven, is so comforting and appealing.

Just out of eyesight from the railway bridge is an absurdly luxurious shopping mall, selling every big brand name under the sun for exorbitant prices. Such stark examples of inequality are hardly unique to Africa (and the UK is hardly a paragon of virtue with regards to inequality) but it reminds you that the system we operate in is a choice that policymakers have made and it’s not that there is no money but the distribution of resources that is the problem.

I needed a bit of light relief after such an intense day!

My first night, I was really tired after traveling and for the second night, I needed an early night as I had a 5am bus the next day, so I just spent my time in the hostel chatting to 2 remarkable history academics that were doing different projects in Lusaka.

The conversations covered a vast range of subjects and they were just fascinating. Despite clearly possessing a remarkable level of intelligence, they had no ego about them whatsoever and I spent the evenings trying not to get found out!

There’s something surreal about being in the capital of Zambia and having an in depth conversation about the merits of Jeremy Corbyn!

It’s interesting what a variety of travellers I have met on my travels so far. From the 18-year olds in Cape Town who just wanted to party, to the 50 year old volunteering in a wildlife conservation charity as a present to himself before he retires to these 2 remarkable individuals, there really is no ‘traveller type’ and meeting such a diverse range of people is one of the joys of this trip.

And yet my trademark enthusiasm is definitely on the wane the longer I encounter first-hand the brutal inequality that we have brought upon our own people.