(by Nick Raistrick: iLearn* producer)

It’s all quiet on Robert Mugabe Ave, and there’s no noise coming from  Nelson Mandela Avenue either.

Think of every cliché about an African capital city and on first impressions, Windhoek is the opposite: it has a sleepy backwater feel to it, with tranquil and people free streets: there’s the occasional German building and a distinct lack of street stalls. 

We arrived today and our challenge is to turn the Safari Lodge Hotel and Conference centre into a broadcast hub (including an ISDN line in order to output a live interview with Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho) and training centre, as well as the only place  to be for those involved in sports for development.

From Brazil to Pulau to Liverpool, people will be sharing their lessons on how they’ve used sport to make the world a better place.

Needless to say nothing has quite gone to plan: one of the Your Game team barely made it through customs, none of the lines have been connected yet, the broadcast equipment is still at DHL… so I’m uploading this blog thanks to the purchase of a scratchcard with a code allowing an hour of wireless access in the lobby of the hotel.

On the positive side I’ve set up online training courses that trainees/delegates from Asia, South America,  and all over Africa have been working through.

The idea is that they will get more from the conference this way, and that follow up training will make sure that issues discussed don’t get forgotten. The trainees - African sports journalists and youth leaders from around the world - have produced excellent work so far, and their feedback has been positive too. 

In fact I’ll stop writing this to make sure that they, and their online mentors from BBC sport, are getting along fine… and leave it until tomorrow to create a web production office from the contents of my rucksack – the laptop seems to be working fine, which is a start.

* what is iLearn? Online journalism training for media practitioners in transitional and developing countries, used by the World Service Trust to train journalists in Russia, India, China, and a number of African and Middle Eastern countries.