African music, diamond mines and Zulus were all part of a meeting for Keighley Rotary Club.

Rotary's Group Study Exchange team gave an excellent presentation following their recent six week trip to Southern Africa.

The five team members included Keighley's Frances Wilmore, an employee of Keighley Laboratories, who was sponsored by Keighley Rotary Club. The other members were leader Kevin O'Neill, Richard Butterfield, Chris Martin and Debra Taylor, who were all sponsored by their own Rotary Clubs.

All described their trip as one they will never forget after experiencing not only widely differing landscapes but all aspects of life, from output housing to shanty towns and diamond mines to hand weavers. The visit to Rorkes Drift, the mission station immortalised in the film Zulu, was a high spot and Fran also spoke of her industrial visit to gold mines and a munitions factory.

She also admitted to taking a liking to the big cats in the country, including an eight-week-old lynx she came across!

The end of the presentation was a co-ordinated slide and music sequence which gave an atmospheric summary of the trip of a lifetime for these five team members.

The exchange programme has been run by the Rotary Clubs since 1965 and pairs Rotary Districts throughout the world. There is currently a study team in this area from Port Algere, Southern Brazil, who will themselves be hosting a team to their country in April 1999.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.