'You know," said Tom Maschler, "I think this might be even more satisfying than the Booker." I had met up with the legendary publisher and founder of the Booker Prize in London to talk about his latest venture, the Book Bus, a community tourism project in which a unique mobile library staffed by volunteers tours impoverished community primary schools in the Livingstone area of Zambia, distributing books.
A few weeks later, as I stood in a muddy playground, surrounded by a delighted swarm of children all desperate to read, I understood what he meant.
If any country needs this support, it's Zambia. Despite its relative stability, it remains one of the world's poorest countries and has been decimated by HIV/Aids, with one in six adults affected. Its schools are underfunded and overcrowded, and books are in short supply. In addition, English is widely spoken (currently, most books donated to the project are in English). In 2006, Maschler spent a month touring schools, hospitals and orphanages in Lusaka and Livingstone, scouting for suitable locations. His proposition was welcomed with open arms by the Zambian authorities. After enlisting the help of illustrator Quentin Blake, who painted the bus in his distinctive style, of publishing contacts who donated books, friends who donated money, and gap-year company VentureCo, which runs the volunteer programme, the bus - a 30-year-old Leyland Tiger - was finally shipped to Zambia in early 2008.
Livingstone was chosen as Book Bus's base because of its proximity to Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya national park and the Zambezi river, in the hope it would entice volunteers to join the project for a period of between two weeks and three months, combining their work with sightseeing.
I was met at Livingstone airport by Jo Payne - the project's redoubtable team leader - Azwell, the bus driver, and my co-volunteers - Jean, a retired teacher from Richmond, Phoebe, a 19-year-old student on her way to a Tanzanian orphanage, and Marjorie, a French-Canadian librarian, en route to establish an orphanage library in Lusaka.
Livingstone's main road is lined with surviving Edwardian buildings from its days as the capital of northern Rhodesia. A 15-minute walk from the centre, Grubby's Grotto campsite was set down a tree-lined dirt road in a quiet, residential area of town. Our tents had been pitched on a crab grass lawn, sheltered by sweet-scented frangipani trees.
That evening, Jo meted out daily chores: cleaning the bus, cooking - al fresco on a two-ring gas stove - and washing-up. Then, over a Mosi beer in the verandah bar of Grubby's colonial house, we discussed the week ahead. We would be spending each weekday at a different primary school. The schools had been set up by communities that couldn't afford the government school charges, but are under-resourced, the teachers often unpaid.
The next day we boarded the bus for our first school visit. Most of the seats had been replaced by shelves bending under the weight of books and paper, and crates stuffed with pencils and crayons, glue and glitter. Leaving the centre's tarmac roads, we spent half an hour bumping along dusty, potholed tracks, attracting waves from villagers, before pulling into Nakatindi school playground, where the bus nearly sank into the rain-sodden earth.
Nakatindi is a typical run-down rural township. The school has around 350 students aged between seven and 12, more than 50% of whom have lost one or both parents. In a spartan classroom, Rose, a government-sponsored teacher, told us that there can be as many as 50 students in each class.
Attendance had dropped recently though, she said, because the supply of free sacks of maize provided by the World Food Programme has stopped, temporarily, she hoped. The maize was used to make nshima, a bland but nourishing porridge. Often the children's main meal of the day, it was an incentive for parents to send them to school. Now, instead, many go to help out in the market, scrounging food from stallholders to survive.
The schools had little access to books before the Book Bus began last year, and standards of literacy vary wildly. The aim of the bus isn't to replace lessons, but to work in partnership with the teachers on storytelling, one-to-one reading, drama and art. We each took a group from a class of enthusiastic and inquisitive 12-year-olds, inviting them on to the bus to choose a book. A few minutes later, I'd found a shady spot and my group began to read Roald Dahl's The BFG. Later, I sat drawing with a group of seven-year-olds in the playground.
After lunch, we toured the village's traditional round homes made of compacted earth, passing women in brightly coloured chitenge (sarongs) balancing unwieldy sheaves of buffalo grass on their heads for thatching.
The week I spent there ran like a well-oiled machine. Up at 7am, or earlier if it was your turn to make breakfast, at school by 8.30am, classes until 12pm, more activities after lunch. Our free time was filled with cruising or rafting on the Zambezi, spotting elephants, giraffe and zebra in the nearby national park, taking microlight or helicopter flights over the Falls, watching football matches in Livingstone's retro cinema or just chilling out at the campsite.
At the end of my stint on the Book Bus, I travelled half an hour from Livingstone to the rustic luxury of Tongabezi Lodge, set on a tranquil stretch of the Zambezi. My spacious riverside cottage was built around a tree, open to the elements. From my terrace, I watched a sociable pod of hippos wallowing in the shallows. I bathed under the southern cross and was lulled to sleep by crickets.
It was utterly idyllic, but I didn't need to feel guilty about my indulgence. The lodge's owners have set up a primary school, teaching more than 160 students, 80% of whom are orphans. It's one of the best schools in the area - like a sought-after catchment area in England, families will do anything to get their children in. Many of the children I met had big ambitions to become doctors or work in business. Helping them learn to read is just a small step towards a positive future.
• Virgin Airlines (virginatlantic.com) flies to Johannesburg from £394 rtn inc taxes. South African Airways (flysaa.com) connects to Livingstone from £200 inc taxes. The Book Bus (01926 411122, thebookbus.org) operates from May to October. Two weeks on the bus costs £635 (plus $300 in-country payment). You can donate money to the cause on the website. Tongabezi Lodge (00260 213 327 468, tongabezi.com) costs from $450pp per night (rack rate) all-inclusive, although the Book Bus can sometimes negotiate lower rates for volunteers.
