Saviour is a 10-year-old girl from Chibwe Farm. She lives with her Uncle Kennedy Mantantilo, his wife Vivian and their four children, Irene, Valencia, Chipo and baby Chileleko.

Saviour is in grade one at Simakakata community school. Until now, she was too small to walk the 14km round trip every day for class. Her family kindly agreed to let us spend the day with Saviour and see what a typical 24hours for the girl is like.

Here is a live blog of her day. Click here to see the story in pictures.

06:50

The farm is the closest thing we’ve seen to a recognisable village structure so far. Around 100 people live here, half of which are children of school age. Over 30 of the children go to school in Kalomo, 14KM away. They live in a boarding house the community owns in town, and return maybe once every two weeks to see their parents. While they’re away, they cook and care for themselves.

07:00

Saviour and her friends would normally set off walking now. Their lessons start at 11am, but it’s too hot later in the day and they don’t want to be late. Before we leave today, though, Saviour shows us her morning chores. She sweeps the yard, looking for dust blown in front of the shack and snake trails, then washes a few pans from the night before.

07:15

Saviour walks 500m to a small stream which even now, after the rainy season, might as well be stagnant. The villagers wash their clothes here, and the cattle drink from the same place. Saviour fetches a bucket from the supply to make nshima for breakfast. A chicken drinks from one of the children’s cups which has been left unattended.

Saviour and her cousin Irene walk into the tall grass to wash in water collected from the stream and dress for school.

09:00

The villagers of Chibwe spend some time talking to us and explaining how the farm works, so we’re very late setting off for school. George, the headmaster at Simakakata has joined us for the walk, to look after the children and help explain things as we go along. Usually, the five children – Saviour, Valencia, Irene, Sharon and Alex – would walk unaccompanied.

09:30

The children pick some muchinga-chinga berries to snack on. The small red berries are sweet, but with a not unpleasant sour aftertaste – like a Haribo sweet.

09:40

The children start chasing each other and playing games. George explains that the average teacher wage in Zambia is 1.8million Kwacha per month, or £200. Before he chose to come to Simakakata, he worked in a school with running water, electricity and proper cooking facilities. He’s here because he wants to be, and other teachers won’t work in these areas for the salary.

10:00

George explains that there are around 50 elephants loose in the area, which they think have come up from game parks in Zimbabwe, where they’re being hunted for food. He’s worried for the safety of the children who walk this far every day.

10:20

We’ve covered about 5km. We’re fairly sure the children would be moving faster without us. Irene has stolen Steve’s sunglasses.

10:30

George sees a young child leading a cow through a cornfield and calls him over. The child should be at George’s school, the child says he has no clothes that are clean enough to attend and needs to work.

11:00

For the last 500m we try taking our shoes off to see how hard the ground is. Of the five children, three are barefoot. We notice more sharp pebbles, ants and the occassional piece of broken glass than we did before.

11:10

We arrive at school, slightly late, but headmaster George says it doesn’t matter. He is happy to do anything that will help raise badly needed funds for the school. Saviour goes straight into a maths class, where she’s learning to write the nnumbers 1 to 4.

11:30

The classes for grade 1 are just half an hour long. Saviour’s second class is CTS – Creative and Technical Studies. Music, art, home economics are all taught in this class.

12:30

The children break for lunch. Those who’ve brought food eat. Saviour hasn’t. They play in the yard and throw sticks into the nearby tree to knock out the fruit.

13:30

The last class of the day is SDS – Social Development Studies. The children sing “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” to learn the English names for different parts of the body. There are over 70 languages in Zambia (popn 11 million) so English is a vital lingua franca.

14:30

The end of day bell rings and the children sing a song about the end of the school day. They spend half an hour playing in the yard before the long walk home.

15:10

Saviour and her cousins start the long walk back. To pass the time we start to sing songs – the children sing some in Tonga, and we teach them some English ones.

15:40

A woman whose house we passed earlier stops us to talk to George about writing a letter for her, Saviour and her cousin Irene run off to the stream behind her house and come back with a bottle full of filthy ditch water.

16:30

We pass over a dry river bed, the children spot a pig which has escaped from a nearby farm and try to shoo it back. Unlike goats and cattle, pigs are usually kept indoors, so it’s unusual to see them roaming.

17:20

We arrive back home at Chibwe. The children are all still full of energy, despite having walked for four hours today, and not having eaten anything other than muchinga-chinga berries since breakfast. Saviour eats a snack of cold nshima, the corn starch dough which is the staple diet here. It’s leftover from the rest of the family’s lunch.

17:30

It’s chore time, and Saviour washes the pots from the preparation of the bean stew that’s cooking in the yard.

17:40

The family sit down to eat. It’ll be dark by 18.00, and with no candles there’s no time for any homework to be completed before the light is lost and it’s time for bed.

Do you have any questions for Saviour?

If you have any questions for Saviour, please let us know via Twitter or leave a comment below.

Saviour’s story can also been seen in photographs via this link.