Story written by Wilton Mamba (Swaziland) which appeared in The Blackpool Gazette

I was among the last passengers to get off the train at Blackpool North after an uneventful three-hour long trip from London -Euston, though I must admit - I loved the country-side. It compares with nothing I had seen in Swaziland where I hail from. The weather was great on the Saturday of my arrival in Blackpool.

As I walked past a security officer who was saying something incomprehensible and gesturing in my direction, I was relieved how small the train station is. I brushed past the officer and as I turned towards the taxi rank, I realised he wanted to see my train ticket. I went back to show it to him, almost at the same time remembered that I had been warned about the accent. If there was one thing that the officer at the foreign office in London was right about, it was the accent in Blackpool.

I mulled over this and the prospects at The Gazette which I would be joining in two days time. As I looked into the distance, I saw nothing that came any close to the hype I had heard about Blackpool. The people are nice, I thought as the taxi man helped me with my bags amid much chattering. The man at foreign office was right again, but still wrong about everything else, I thought as the taxi driver swung the vehicle around Carlton Hotel to bring to my view a breath-taking coast-line - the kind that I had never seen before - not that there is any in land-locked Swaziland, where I practice as a journalist. I began to sit back and enjoyed the view of the coastline. The sea was calm and it looked like one could just walk over it and touch the horizon in the distance.

As the taxi pulled up at the entrance of the Hilton Hotel where I would be staying, I realised that all my guards were down. I was warming up to this place and as I alighted from the vehicle, I looked into the distance - the way we had come - and saw what I later learned is called the Pleasure Beach.

It had taken some serious persuasion and mental preparation on my part to come to Blackpool. I had to remind myself that the Commonwealth Press Union, which accepted my application for the 2004 Harry Brittain Fellowship and the Johnston Press, which paid for all my expenses, had gone to great lengths to make everything possible.

As I walked into the hotel, a man in a grey single-slash suit and a matching tie went past me in the opposite direction. English men just have taste for clothes, I thought for the umpteenth time. They never cease to amaze though how they don't seem to care what they cover they feet in. The girl at the reception was good-looking, as they all seem to be and I do hope my wife never gets to read this.

Something had been bothering me on the few days running to my trip to Blackpool and it refused to go away even after I had found the hotel. I later realised it was the same thing that had made me not to look forward to coming here - and it was finding The Gazette newspaper where the CPU in conjunction with the Johnston Press had arranged for me to do my attachment. I wondered what the people would be like. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to learn that The Gazette had arranged transport for me throughoput the week.

That seemed to do the trick and without thinking about it I was on my way to the nearest bar - and there are so many of them at Blackpool. I got myself a pint of lager and was not surprised that it seems to cost the same everyhwere. But for £2.50 I would get myself six of the same, but better tasting Hansa Pilsenes in the Kingdom of Swaziland. A man came to me and started a conversation. I was impressed with how nice everyone seems to be in Blackpool. In a way, it differs from London, where everyone seems to mind his business, or should I say his drink.

Unlike London, people do seem to walk just for the fun of it in Blackpool, while everyone seems bent on winning some kind competition in London. As we spoke at the bar, I realised, not for the fast time, how ignorant of the geography of the planet Europeans are. The man had no idea where Swaziland is.

I later had a meal at the restaurant and noted how there seems to be so much emphasis on how little one eats. The food was great though I still prefer my chicken when I can make out its body parts. I just appreciate how big the animal is - and also observe a moment's silence for the deceased bird before eating it. If you go to any restaurant across England, and the few I have been to in Blackpool are no exception, the dishes seem to be called something heavier than it would weigh in your stomach. I asked for rice at what is supposed to be an upmarket restaurant outside the town centre and they gave me yellowish granules drenched in sauce, obviously to disguise how badly prepared it was. My hosts suspected it was not what I had expected to get as I gave my dish a long suspicious look, and the rice was served separately.

They still got it wrong - at least by my own wife's cooking standards. Because my wife knows that I would only get treated to a meal with rice only on Christmas day during my childhood days, she is always at her Olympic best when she prepares it, which is at least once a day. A normal meal in Swaziland would be porridge served with anything from vegetables, meat, soup to beans and rice, while abundantly available in local supermarkets, most house-holds still have it on Christmas and special occasions. It is not so much a question of affordability, but rather the majority of people have porridge in the daily diet because it is filling as compared to rice. I would rather have my Christmas every day.

I have found, in Blackpool, that people, like everywhere in England, seem to eat very little. Lunch for the working class comprises of a sandwich and my wife would kill me if she found out I was starving myself in this fashion. I come from a part of the country that is lucky to have enough rain throughout summer, which is not the case everywhere. This should explain why I find it strange how there are campaigns to encouraging people to eat less.

There has been at least one reported case where a life was lost to obesity and Westminster has been accused of ineptitude regarding England's newest threat. I do find this in stark contrast with the situation in Swaziland, where, by a very conservative estimate, so many people die as a result of having little to eat. At the last count 300 000 people were affected a humanitarian crisis that has been going on relentlessly for a period spanning over three years. Talk of what is food for one being another man's poison.

I still think the world is planets apart. The only people who seem to live on the same planet are journalists as I have learned with my experience at The Gazette and indeed in so many other newspapers houses in London where the culture seems to be just the same. Outside the newsroom it is a whole alien world.