Road to Malawi Pt. VI - The Journey Home

The next morning we woke up at 4:30 and got a taxi to the bus station at 5:00. Little did we know that today was going to be a hell of day. On this fateful day we had to pay a “fine” to a border official, suffer through a six hour bus breakdown, sleep in a bus station, and barely have anything to eat or drink.

 

These pictures are going to have nothing to do with the story but they're cool

We get on the bus in Lilongwe and drive for about three hours until the border. Once we reach the border I walk up to one of the border officials to ask a question. He looks through my passport then tells me that I need to come with him. So I walk with him to his office and he tells me that my visa is expired by four days. I look at him and just think, you have got to be kidding me. He then tells me that we need to go back to Lilongwe, pay a fine, and then I would be able to pass through the border. At this point we were beginning to run low on money and we had to be back in school in a few days so going back to Lilongwe was not an option for us. In addition, we didn’t have a way to get back to Lilongwe as the bus was going to continue. I find Tim and Lindsey and tell them that we are in trouble as they also have the same visa. The three of us walk back into the office and the border official sits us down. They ask us why we overstayed our visa. We tell them that Tim got sick (true) so we had to stay a few extra days. The border post commander comes by and starts being a hard ass with us. “Why didn’t you just go to the office in Nkhata Bay to extend you visa?” “We had no idea there was an office there, it’s a tiny town.” Then he says, “I do not understand how you can just forget the day that you are supposed to leave the country, what were you thinking?” My dad has taught me that in these situations, even though your pride is getting pricked at, the best option is to just stay as cool, calm, and polite as possible. So I tried that and told him “We are very sorry sir, this is completely our mistake, we messed up, but we are teachers in Namibia and we really need to get back to school, we also do not have transport to get back to Lilongwe” After this he just huffs and walks away. The other officer who I had talked to before starts talking to us. He tells us that if we are unable to return to Lilongwe we can resolve the situation here. I ask him how much was the “fine” was. He decided on 450 Zambian kwacha which is about 30 dollars each. Tim starts to grumble a bit and the officer asks, “Are you complaining? It seems as if your friend is complaining, if this fine is too high you can go back to Lilongwe to settle the fine there” I jump in and apologize for Tim and tell him that we are perfectly happy to pay the fine here and that the amount is more than appropriate. When we start to dig into our wallets Tim realizes that he can’t find his. It hits us that his wallet was stolen on the bus. Tim starts getting mad, Lindsey is super stressed, and I’m thinking that now we are going to need to go back to Lilongwe. I fish out the 300 kwacha that was in my wallet (which I was going to use to buy my visa to get back into Zambia) and tell the officer that this is all we had. We explained that Tim’s wallet was stolen. The guy could see that we weren’t lying, we were very visibly stressed. I also explain that I needed money to pay for the Zambian visa. At this point the border official calls on another guy and they discuss a bit. I think they realized that we really where out of money and that if they forced us to go back to Lilongwe the “fine” wouldn’t be paid at the border. So they accepted the 300 dollars. But before I gave it to them I told them that I couldn’t pay them because that would mean that I couldn’t get my visa for Zambia. Hungry for the money, they take me outside to where the bus driver is. They tell him that I need to borrow 300 kwacha from him and that in the next town I can stop at an ATM and pay him back. He accepts, I get the visa, pay the fine to the border official, it goes straight into his pocket, and off we go into Zambia, feeling a weird mix of relieved and pissed off. The strange part was that there are two Malawian visas, both free. There is the 14 day one and a 30 day one. I don’t understand why they were making such a fuss when there is a free 30 day visa available or why they didn’t give that one to us from the beginning. Anyway, we got through, made it into Zambia but now we were pretty much broke, Tim didn’t have any of his ATM cards, Lindsey had no cash, and there were no ATM’s after the first one where I paid the bus driver back. 

One of the villages that we stayed at during the kayaking trip

To make the trip worse we had no had breakfast. It was around three in the afternoon when the bus broke down and we still hadn’t had anything to eat.

Our bus broke down about 300 km from Lusaka. We had two potential buses that we could catch from Lusaka to Livingstone, one leaving at 7:30 and one at 10. When the bus broke down we figured there was no doubt that we would make it on the 10 o’clock. An hour and a half into the break down I made the perverse joke that Tim and Lindsey were also thinking, guys what if they aren’t able to fix the bus and we are stuck in this town in the middle of Zambia? We immediately brushed it off but we all had it in the back of our minds. I had been able to scrounge up some change that was in my bag so I bought us some food at the local store. After we bought the food the owner of the shop came to talk to us. The three of us knew what to do, play the pity card. We told him how we had been traveling for two days already and still had two days to go. We told him how we had to pay a fine to get out of Malawi and how we needed to make it back to school. In a testament to how generous Africans have been to us already we were getting the impression that the owner might hook us up with something from his shop. Lo and behold he did! He bought each of us a Coke. I then shared my peanuts and bananas with him and we started talking. Real cool guy, he ended up telling us that we could stay at his place if the bus wasn’t fixed. I’ll admit, I was angling for this to happen and it was a relief to know that if the bus didn’t happen we would have a place to stay that night. 

Cooking some food

After three hours of waiting we decided that we were going to try to hitch hike the rest of the way to Lusaka. So we took turns. No cars stopped for us. We were hitch hiking for about an hour and a half when I see a young Latina lady ride by on a bike with a helmet. She looked at me and said hey, I greeted her back and thought immediately, she has to be Peace Corps! PC volunteers have an ability to spot each other and I knew she had to be. But before I could call out after her she had ridden off. Five minutes later she comes back and I tell her “I’m so glad you came back I was going to call out after you! You are Peace Corps right?” She replied yes, she was a Peace Corps response (6 month service after having done two years in El Salvador). Tim and Lindsey came over and we explained our situation. We all hung out together for an hour, told stories and compared Namibia and Zambia. She ended up giving us some contact information of people that she knew in Lusaka that could houses us that night because it was already seven and we knew we weren’t going to make it on time for the bus. While we were waiting the bus company decided that the bus was beyond repair and had dispatched another one. Six hours after the breakdown the bus arrives and we hop on. We say bye to our friend and get on the road. The driver went really fast through all the windy roads and he played Taken once more as well as the horrible music videos. We were pretty annoyed when we arrived in Lusaka at midnight. We talked to people and found out that the next bus to Livingstone was at five in the morning. At that point it was too late to call our new Livingstone contacts to ask if we could stay with them so we just asked the driver if we would rest in the bus for a few hours. We do so, wake up at four in the morning, buy our tickets, climb on the next bus and thankfully escape the Lusaka bus station. 

This spot was the best snorkeling I've ever done

The next morning we arrive in Livingstone around midday. We were a wreck. Shells of our former selves. At this point my foot had also developed an infection and was swollen up to the point that I couldn’t walk properly. We were hungry (peanuts and bananas for lunch the day before, no dinner, no breakfast, and only a small snack around eleven), thirsty, and grouchy. We walked to our hostel in silence, get there, drop our stuff off, rest for about fifteen minutes then go to get food. I ate a full cheeseburger and fries and some shwarma. At the end of the meal we were all smiles. We head back, sit down by the pool and relax the rest of the day. At seven I turned on the T.V and there was a playoff basketball game going on. I was SO happy. I was sitting down in the dark watching the game and giggling to myself, super creepy but I was beyond caring. After the game we pass out, wake up at 6, get a ride to Shesheke (the border to Namibia). We pass through the border, buy some food for a week at the village, go to the outskirts of town and hitch a ride with some very nice Afrikaners who drove very fast and all the way to our villages. I pass out until the next morning. It seems as if the trip really took a toll on all of our bodies, the three of us became sick and only felt better about a week and a half later. Malawi was beautiful, I’m glad I did this trip when I’m still a hardy 24 years of age, but I am never doing another trip like that again. It was brutal. Next time only in style. Malawi wowee.                

Road To Malawi Pt. V - On Some Monkey Buisness

Before the kayaking trip, Tim cut his foot, it wasn’t a bad cut but it had gotten infected from the lake and became very swollen. Tim wasn’t able to walk very well with it but he decided to tough it out since we would be sitting most of the day on the kayaking trip. We show up in the morning where we would be leaving from and meet up with Kumbu and Anderson, two brothers who would be our guides. They had been doing this kayaking trip for about ten years so they took care of everything, food, tents, sleeping bags, and water. We head out and start paddling. Our pattern on this trip was about four hours of paddling in the morning and two after lunch. Great exercise, at the end of the day we would always be tired and real hungry. Kumbu and Anderson would prepare all three meals of the day and they were delicious. Beans and toast for breakfast, sandwiches with tomatoes, onions, avocado, and bananas for lunch, and something heavier for dinner. One night was fish, another chicken. They really did a great job of preparing all the food and being great hosts. I would definitely recommend this trip to anyone that goes up to Nkhata Bay. They also do shorter day trips with a barbacue and longer two week trips. 

Anderson and I

Along the way we got to do a lot of cliff jumping (one was 17 meters/55 feet high!) and snorkeling. We would jump out of our kayaks and start swimming around wherever we stopped and be able to see beautiful fish. Each night we would camp out in a remote village. These where beautiful villages as they were all nestled along the bottom of a mountain and facing the lake. The coolest part was that all these villages had no roads going to them. The only way to get to them was by boat. Of course wherever we went children would get all excited and call out muzungu muzungu! It means white person, interestingly, it was the same word that they had called me in Rwanda. In our part of Namibia its mukua.

 

17 meters of fun! Didn't hurt too bad on the way down

During the trip, Tim’s foot started to get more and more swollen. It seemed like a second cut had gotten infected next to the first one and it made it look like Tim had a nipple on his foot. On our last day the foot was monstrous. Our guides said that this was a common kind of infection and that what they had to do was to pop out all of the pus that had been collecting in this cyst looking thing. Also at this point Lindsey and I had both gotten other cuts infected but not nearly as bad as Tim’s. Lots of bacteria in the lake, watch out for shistomiosis/bilharzia in the south part of the lake. So in our last morning of kayaking we were going for our last haul. We were feeling pretty tired and were moving slowly. Kumbu feels the vibe and stops us and tells us that its time to take care of Tim’s foot. So we stop at a beach, Anderson gets two reeds and starts trying to pop Tim’s cyst. Tim was in a lot of pain at this point and he was yelling, cussing, and scaring the little kids that came to wonder what we were doing. Eventually Anderson is able to pop the cyst and pus explodes everywhere! It even exploded onto Kumbu’s shirt and there was a large amount just sitting there on Tim’s foot. It was really really gross. Anderson keeps squeezing and more keeps coming out while Tim is groaning in relief. We took a picture, laughed a lot and then we were off again. After that we felt re-energized and we were able to make it to our final destination.

 

The Team

Our final stop was a hostel nestled inside a bay and under the cover of trees. This place was built by a former Malawian Peace Corps volunteer. We did some more cliff diving here but fatigue caught up to us and we stopped moving and just sat down and enjoyed the other guests’ company. We were pretty tired so we turned into bed early. Next morning we were going to take a ferry back to Nkhata Bay at 11. We had traveled about 90 km in the four days of kayaking. We hung out, talked to the staff, read the newspaper, and as usual, wasted time until the next transport was ready. We get into the ferry, order some rice and beans from the kitchen and continue on our trip back to Nkhata Bay. Kumbu and Anderson broke out a bottle of brandy so we enjoyed that while we watched the beautiful lake go by.

We arrived in Nkhata Bay, said goodbye to Kumbu and Anderson then headed back to Mayoka Village. We went to bed early as we knew we were going to have a full day of travel. The next morning I ran to the ATM first and got some cash for the trip. Something I forgot to mention, the largest bill in Malawi is 1,000 kwacha. This is equivalent to a bit more than two American dollars. I took about 80,000 kwacha from the ATM, so there I was trying to fit 80 bills into my wallet. Fat Stacks. I felt like some kind of drug dealer. I got back to the hostel, and we hopped onto a combi to Mzuzu. From Mzuzu we hopped on an 8 hour bus to Lilongwe. At Mzuzu the usual mob rushed us at the bus station. A few F bombs and shoves later we were able to get on the bus. Warning for travelers, these guys will lie to your face, if you ask if your bus is around they will tell you right away that it already left just so you can get onto their bus. So be warned, it’s better to tell them you know where you are going and walk around until you find your right bus.  

 

Afternoon of our last day of kayaking

We arrived in Lilongwe around eight and headed straight to Mabuya Camp. Feeling tired and very hungry and thirsty we decided to order pizza. While we were waiting a pretty girl comes up to me and asks me, “Andre? Is that you?” I look at her and I can’t place her face. “It’s Sigal! From Nido de Aguilas!” I was dumbfounded and realized that it was a classmate all the way from Santiago, Chile. We had studied together while I was in seventh and eighth grade. Somehow we had run into each other in Lilongwe, Malawi of all places! Mom always told me that it was a small world, but this was insane! Lilongwe! Probably the worst capital city I have seen in my life in the heart of Africa and I was running into a middle school classmate from South America. Super weird, it took me a good half hour before I could stop saying, “I can’t believe this!” We caught up, talked about what we were doing in Africa, talked about old friends and teachers, and shared travel horror stories (always done with travelers here). At 9 I realized that I was starting to nod off and couldn’t provide intelligible conversation anymore so I said good night and crashed. Still can’t believe the coincidence!                     

Tim, Kumbo, and myself at the top of one of our jumps

Road to Malawi Pt. IV - Malawi Wowee Bra!

Bless Mayoka Village. This was the name of the backpackers’ hostel that we were staying at in Nhkata Bay. We arrived there late and we didn’t have their phone number or any clue on how to get there. We were a bit in survival mode and were making plans on if we didn’t find the place. We were thinking about knocking on peoples doors asking them to house us for the night (an idea that is not so ridiculous in Africa as it is in the western world) until we saw another backpackers. So at least we had that place as our backup plan. As soon as we get off the bus it was the usual story. Just a bunch of men waiting for customers. The reason why I say bless Mayoka Village was because they sent somebody to pick us up! But before we met the guy, our very first meeting in Nkhata Bay was with a man who introduced himself as Happy Coconuts. Right away he tells us that he’s the man with the hookups and that he can get us the goods. “Huh? What are you talking about Mr. Coconuts? Or is it Mr. Happy Coconuts all together?” “Malawi Gold bra, Malawi Wowee, ganja bra!” What we hadn’t known and only realized the next morning when we walked around town was that Nkhata Bay was basically little Jamaica, or at least what I imagine Jamaica would be like. Rastas everywhere, sweet roots reggae music playing, and people looking like they were high walking around everywhere. Weed is very much illegal in Malawi but it seems like the rule had been forgotten in Nkhata Bay. Anyway, our man from Mayoka Village drives us to the hostel and we are lucky enough to walk into buffet night. Tim, Lindsey, and I drop down into our seats, register our names on the tab that stays open the entire time you are there (dangerous, watch out for how much you spend) and as Africans say, hamma (hammer) the food. Completely crush it. It was rice, boiled potatoes, a chicken stew, and salad. We eat till we have food to our eyeballs, sit and talk for a few minutes then head off to bed. Tim and Lindsey had their own private suite only fifteen feet from the water while I got to stay in a four person room (the other spots where for Kelsey, Sara, and Sara’s brother for when they arrived). I fell into my bed, didn’t even put my mosquito net down, and fell asleep in a matter of seconds. 

Tim, Lindsey, and I in one of the beaches

   

The next morning Tim, Lindsey, and I headed into town. Mayoka Village is at the top of a hill and Nkhata Bay town at the bottom. On the walk down there are about ten stands made out of wood where a bunch of Rastas where selling their goods, paintings, necklaces, wood carvings, pipes (of course), and even their own music CDs. We stayed in Nkhata Bay for almost two weeks so by the end we got to know everybody hanging out there. There was Happiness, the man that hooked Tim up with an amazing painter. There was Dr. Smiley, who introduced himself as a doctor specialized in herbology (also, of course). Gift was also around advertising his boar tours. Further down the hill there was another interesting one named Mr. Bamboo. All a great group of guys, annoying in the beginning since they were trying to sell us things but they calmed down once they got to know us. Tim was having a painting made by one of the guys there so we spent one of the first afternoons hanging out, talking about Malawi, Namibia, and taking things at the village speed.

We arrive into town, which was BUSTLING, but then when you compare it to Namibia any place is crowded. We walked around, talked to the ladies selling fruit and started to realize that Malawi was the cheapest country any of us had ever been to. There were giant avocados being sold for forty cents each! Onions for about 10 cents. I don’t even know how these women were making money. Every day we walked to town, bought some groceries, made guacamole on bread for lunch and enjoyed life. Although by the end we were getting tired of guac, unbelievable I know but when you eat it every single day for two weeks, it happens. Another example of how cheap Malawi is, this is going to drive people that go to bars crazy, there are small bags (100ml so a bit more than a double shot) containing coconut rum that were sold in groups of 16. The group of sixteen costs about five American dollars. And they actually tasted good! That coconut room with pineapple juice was all over the hostel. If you are in Africa and want to do a cheap vacation, Malawi is the place to go.    

 

Doing the African beach life

The greatest attraction of the area was of course Lake Malawi. This is the second largest lake in Africa, Lake Victoria being the first. It also had the clearest water I have seen in my life. Only water that has ever compared was Guam, an island in the Pacific. I’ve never seen lake water like this, I was used to muggy dirty water but this lake was crystal. Since we had arrived at night we hadn’t been able to catch a view of the lake. The next morning I woke up around seven, opened my doors to my balcony, looked out, and let my mouth hit the floor. Stunning. Transcendent. Dreamlike. Screensaver material. I stood there for at least five minutes without moving, just enjoying the view. The water was turquoise, the mountains green, the rocks grey and jutting out of the water. Also, far away into the distance you could see huge clouds of black smoke coming out of the water. Tim later told me that these where actually massive movements of bugs. They were some kind of insect that laid its eggs in the water at night, eggs hatched in the morning, and the bugs flew up to the sky and launched themselves into a massive mating orgy. We got to see these bugs (in smaller amounts) up close and they were tiny. A fraction of the size of a mosquito. For them to create a cloud like that had to mean that there were hundreds of thousands of bugs in those clouds. Thankfully they were many kilometers away from us.

We made sure we appreciated the lake every day. Mayoka Village rents out snorkeling gear for free so every day, usually twice a day we would go snorkeling. We saw quite a lot of fish, fairly colorful ones to even though it was a lake. The most memorable fish where the cichlids that where swimming around. There were also many boulders on the lake floor so we got to play around them. Tim, Lindsey and I would also go on swims across the bay, it was about a kilometer swim which we did with our snorkels, very nice exercise to start the day.

 

Amazing water

Tim, Lindsey, and I spend a few days on our own before the rest of our group arrived. We met several other travelers, a surprising amount of Israelis, a Brazilian guy traveling the world who we would eat dinner with us every night, and a few other Peace Corps volunteers from other countries. The night before the rest of our group arrived we brought a few of the bags of coconut rum and hung out with the other guests until late. In the middle of the night one of the owners of Mayoka Village shows up. He is a fifty year old man and I hadn’t met him yet. He stumbles in completely and utterly drunk into the dining area. Spittle flying out of his mouth whenever he talked. He sits with us and begins calling me dickhead! I had just met him! So I call him asshole in return and that’s what we called each other for the rest of the night. He was having great fun with it and there was no malice at all, but it was a bit strange. Later on he starts dancing, takes his shirt off, with his pants barely hanging on to his waist. The other guests tell us that it’s pretty common for him to get completely naked. So he keeps dancing, falls flat on his face about five times and each time bounces right back up. I’ve never see a man of his age get drunk like that, keep falling, and just keep going. It was close to one in the morning when Tim, Lindsey, and I decided to call it quits but he was still there going strong. We saw him the morning after and he did not remember us but he was an extremely friendly and welcoming guy. I just still couldn’t understand how he was still alive with how hard he went on his night out. Apparently he has two or three nights a week where he goes bonkers. 

 

Brandon and I canoeing around the bay

The next morning the rest of our group arrive. At this point we had almost ten PC Namibia volunteers staying at the hostel so we had a good time. The rest of the days all went in similar fashion. Wake up and grab some breakfast, go for a swim, walk around town, take a nap, read a book, swim some more, and sometimes go out for dinner. One day we went out on a boat ride to a local village. Along the way the driver would toss a fish into the water and a huge Kingfisher eagle would swoop down and snatch the fish with its talons. Beautiful sight. The week was super chill and relaxing, at the end of the week most of the group left while Tim, Lindsey, and I stayed behind. We were going to embark on a four day kayaking trip with a company called Monkey Business early the next morning.