Zambia isn't at war. Zambia doesn't have widespread famine. Zambia doesn't have a despotic leader. Three reasons why it rarely gets into the news and three obstacles to getting a good spread in the paper. The story revolved around a report by the UK based charity VSO which outlined the problems for education in this part of Africa. Our job was to take the rather anonymous statistics, check out how they relate to what we found on the ground and then personalise them with a few case histories. I am a photographer and I am a journalist. This kind of job allows me to be both.

The news agenda is a hard trend to buck. One of the joys of working on specialist titles is that you can break out from the mainstream agenda, and I am grateful for that. We cover education so this story was right up our street - eight days to cover one story, that's a motorway!

This opinion will probably drift into a bit of a diary entry. I hope that in itself will be of use to anyone who has to a similar commission.

Day One: Meet journalist and charity press officer at London Gatwick airport and check in. I have written previously about how stressful this can get when you have the argument with the check in operator about hand luggage, but British Airways were perfectly helpful and the whole affair was stress free. The flight was uneventful (hooray) and we arrived at Lusaka International Airport on time, were met by a local contact and checked into our hotel for the night. I fixed my cases to a water pipe with a long padlocked cable until we left the next morning. At this stage in a trip everything is uncertain, so plans are flexible and discussions about what to do next are crucial. Eat, sleep, check e-mail!

Day Two: Breakfast is really important so we ate early and got our gear ready for a very long journey by four wheel drive truck. Our guide and driver arrived and we set out for an 8 hour drive from the capital to the North West district over some pretty uncomfortable roads. My camera and laptop kit found space inside the cab, but the rest of our bags and kit had to be loaded onto the back of the pick-up. Anything fragile was wrapped in plastic bags to try to keep out the red dust that this part of Africa is famous for. We stopped for lunch, drank loads of water and arrived in the town of Solwezi late in the afternoon. I had shot a few frames on the way, but on arrival I shot some pictures of local boys enjoying a Sunday afternoon game of football. It's funny, but once you have started to shoot pictures the atmosphere changes and you start to feel a lot more confident.

Day Three: More driving, so we packed up our kit again and ventured further into the district and arrived in Kasempa at lunchtime. We checked into our accommodation and got on with the job as quickly as we could. The local culture involves being courteous, so you need to be very aware that a three hour stay at a location may only mean an hour and a half's photography. We worked until it was dark and we had really broken the back of what we wanted to do in this town. Dinner in a local cafe was an experience and the accommodation was also "an experience".

Day Four: More work in the same town, but at a different school. We couldn't face another night in our guest house so we wrapped up in time to get back to Solwezi before dark. By this time I needed to offload pictures from my seven CF cards and recharge some batteries, luckily the mains was operating tonight and I got everything done. Had the power supply been down I could have used my voltage inverter to charge everything in our vehicle.

Day Five: Started early with a visit to another school and talking to British volunteers from the VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) charity. We met local teachers, including the mathematics teacher who lives with his five year old son in a stock cupboard because of a housing shortage. As journalists we were simultaneously jubilant and horrified by this man's plight. As journalists, his was the story that was going to make our story work. As human beings we were horrified by his need to live in this way. The bulk of our material was now "in the can" so we had a few beers with people we had met and who had helped us and packed up again.

Day Six: Back in the truck and back to the capital. This time it was nine hours over those bumpy roads. The romance of international journalism wears thin at times like this. We had checked into a fairly luxurious hotel so that we could get on with writing and editing in comfort. Dinner was great, but after eating the plain local food for a few days I couldn't face it. Tiredness also hit mid evening, so it was off to my comfortable bed.

Day Seven: Up early. Breakfast, a swim and several hours editing on my laptop. I cut the images down from about 1,300 to about 350, captioned and renamed them before writing multiple copies of the edit to CD. One sent by post, one in my luggage, one to the writer to put in her luggage and one left with the office of our hosts. I guess that's what you call "belt and braces". Another swim, a few beers and bed.

Day Eight: The writer was still making sense of her notes, so I kept to the pool!!! We were collected at dusk and delivered to Lusaka airport ready for British Airways to whisk us back to London.

By midday the next day I was walking on the beach in Dorset with my wife. The trip quickly became a pleasant memory until the first of two features was published last week. It has gone down well, and I'm pretty happy with it. A full page front and four pages inside the magazine is, by any standards, a big spread these days. Mission accomplished and the truth has been told.

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