Tuesday 2nd May

It's been a long day. It started at about 4am when I first woke up too excited to sleep. This has been a theme to the start of my days recently.

It feels as though one chapter is closing and another is beginning. Today we fly to Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, to give their children thousands of footballs. It's really quite bizarre.

I have no idea what to expect. We think they will welcome us - everyone has been pretty friendly to date. Everyone seems to want footballs.

But it's a strange feeling going somewhere so unknown. Most of the schools and orphanages that we will visit don't have telephones, or emails. You can't just go online to find out directions. You can't just text them to ask what time would suit them best. We have all become so dependent on the technology around us, that it's rare that you ever get the chance to not know where you're going anymore.

Ever since we first had this idea, the same little niggly thought has worried me. How? How are we actually going to distribute the balls? How are we going to make sure that the footballs people have given us, actually get into the hands (or feet) of the children in Malawi? It may be that we are very naïve in our approach. A part of me thinks it will be OK to just rock up and say "Hey. Anyone under the age of 16 want a football? Please form an orderly queue."

No, of course it won't be like that. But it raises the question, how do we do it. Clearly we cannot drive our lorry into a small town, open up the back of the container and start giving away footballs. Bedlam would ensue.

Whilst we have tried to make this feel like a big event over here (the name The Great Football Giveaway" has a sense of scale and event to it), over there we will be very discrete. That was of course until The Minister of Youth Sport & Culture in Malawi called us. We have his full support, but I'm worried that if things start becoming too 'official' the beaurocracy might hinder us rather than help. We are due to meet with the Minister on Monday so we'll see.

At the moment we're on the plane. The jumbo is struggling slightly with the weight of Sarah's bag, but the pilot is confident we should reach Johannesburg in about nine hours. From Jo'burg we fly to Blantyre in Malawi.

We have only been to Malawi once before. I would like to say that the last time we were here we travelled the country, absorbing the local culture and experiencing life through Malawian eyes. But that would be a lie. We stayed in very privileged places and rarely stepped foot outside the gates of the various hotels that we stayed in.

The only real time we did, was when we went to watch a game of football between two local village sides. There was a carnival atmosphere - hundreds of people had turned up, mainly kids, and two teams of eleven battled it out for the prize of victory. This was football stripped of all its marketing. There were no sponsors, no advertising hoardings, no photographers lining the touchlines (apart from Sarah and her digital camera). It wasn't like the Sunday League football I play. We have never had more than three people turn up to watch us and here there were hundreds (or was it thousands?).

They had a ball. Not a great ball, but nevertheless a ball. They had to stop every now and then to pump it up, but it was round and it served its job. But what struck us more than anything were all the other handmade footballs that the children had made, from bits of plastic bag and rubber tied together with string. It was at this point that we thought "next time we come let's bring a suitcase of brand new footballs for the children here". OK, so that suitcase has become a container load, but I've never been one for doing things by halves...

So as day drifts into night and night drifts into day we look forward to the unknown adventure that awaits us. After a cat nap on the plane, we will wake up in Malawi.