The bus left and we all fell asleep, I woke up and
it was around nine o’clock and we were in some hilly region of Zambia. The
geography was already completely different from Namibia. Our part of Namibia is
completely flat and brown for most of the year. Zambia was green, lush and
mountainous. It was beautiful to look out the window and finally see different
hues of green again. Problem was that the driver was crazy. It was a very curvy
hill road, lots of blind turns, but our driver was leading us in our gigantic
bus through these roads and going very fast. Never slowing down, just honking
ahead of blind corners to make sure people got out of the way. Only thing that
made me feel safe was that if we hit any other vehicles or livestock we would
be fine, the other car, definitely not.
 |
| Some scenes of Lilongwe |
As the bus went on we started getting fidgety and
impatient. This was the longest stretch of road that we had to cover and we
were getting antsy from sitting in tight seats for so long. Luckily, the driver
put on the movie Taken at one point
so we all got to enjoy Liam Neeson’s badassery for a while. When the movie finished
is when things got bad. The driver started bumping
Zambian gospel music with the respective music videos on the screens. The loud
annoying music would have already been enough to make a person grumpy after
traveling for so long but the worst part were the music videos. Just cheap,
poorly produced, unintentionally funny but not that funny junk. Boring
choreographed dance moves, strange occurrences (five men in full neon colored
robes of different colors dancing in front of a Hummer the entire video), and
just bad production (one was of a guy standing and singing while different
pictures and strange backgrounds flashed behind him, soccer fields, blue
backgrounds, and extreme close ups to his face). I might be overdoing my
complaint on these videos but I was really grumpy that morning. And they really
sucked.
 |
| Unadulterated awesome |
We keep moving on and arrive at the Malawian border around
noon. We get the free 14 day visa pretty painlessly (this is going to be a
problem later on in the story) and jump back on the bus to Lilongwe. We get
there about an hour and a half later. The Malawian capital was just a mess. We
did see one beautiful mosque (Malawi’s Muslim population is 20%) but the rest
of the buildings were just completely worn down and ugly. Nothing over two
stories of height and lots of improvised housing and shops. Trash everywhere.
It was like Rundu but less organized and twenty times the population. Also the
first thing that I noticed was just the massive amount of people. Namibia has a
population of 2.1 million people. Malawi’s is 15 million. Check out a map and
look at the size difference between those two countries. You felt the amount of
people in this country immediately. Many market stalls, small stores, and
street side vendors.
 |
| A market outside of Lilongwe |
So far in my close to two years in Africa I have
never really felt threatened or worried about my safety or the safety of people
around me. That changed when we got off the bus a Lilongwe. As in Lusaka, there
were many men waiting directly in front of the bus doors. They don’t even give
you space to get out the bus. At the same time it’s a cacophony of them yelling
at you to try to convince you to get into their taxi. I’m embarrassed to say
this but Tim, Lindsey, and I literally did no research on Malawi before we got
there. We knew where we were going and sort of how we were getting there but
nothing else. We didn’t know what the language was (luckily English, the
currency (Malawian kwacha), or the conversion rate (415 kwacha to the dollar).
We had no idea how to get to our hotel or the amount to pay a taxi driver to
take us to the hotel. Anyway, we pushed our way off the bus and immediately
people started grabbing our arms and hands. Not a friendly grip, a strong,
trying to drag you away grip on your arm, we had to yell at people to not touch
us because we were completely surrounded and these men were forcing themselves
onto us, bumping into us, yelling into our ear, and making our arrival as unpleasant
as possible. One guy offered his taxi and everybody started yelling at him and
calling him a thief. Obviously we stayed away from him although he followed us
for a while. The thief then started yelling back at the other guys and a fight
almost broke out. All in our first minute in Lilongwe. I already had my bag
with me, Tim and Lindsey went and got there’s from under the bus while the men
were jabbering and pestering away at us. We get our things and try our luck
with one of the guys. We tell him we are going to Mabuya Camp, he tells us that
it costs 4,000 kwacha total. At this point we had no clue how much the money
was worth so we said yes but suspiciously. The driver then led us through some
streets to his car, along the way Tim found a Muslim man and asked him how much
a normal taxi was, he also had no idea. So we get in the taxi, stop at an ATM
then head on to Mabuya Camp. We pay the man and walk into the lobby and check
in to the hostel. We ask the owner and he assures us that we paid the right
amount. Got lucky! At that point we were exhausted, pissed off, hungry, and
dehydrated (the bus stops once every five hours so we tried not to drink water
so we wouldn’t have to hold it until the next stop). Lindsey must have set a
record that day for holding it in because even if we did stop it was a lot
easier for men to go to the bathroom then women. Lindsey was a champ and didn’t
use the bathroom for what seemed like 10 hours.
 |
| Another one of our many shops on the small towns on the way up to Nkhata Bay |
We settle in, sit down by the pool for a bit and
hang out with the two Rhodesian Ridgebacks that live at the hostel. These are
two BIG dogs. One in particular was almost waist tall and thick. He was an NFL
lineman in dog form. According to Wikipedia these dogs where bred to keep a
lion at bay until the hunter arrived to pick up a carcass. I think he weighed
close to 110 pounds, probably even more. While we were there one Rasta was
rolling a joint from a newspaper right there in the open. After hanging out
with the dogs and recovering a little bit, we strike out into Lilongwe for
dinner. We were trying to find an Italian restaurant that a few other guests
had recommended to us. As we were walking around I saw some taxi drivers
hanging out and decided to ask them. Their response was pretty predictable, “Do
you know where the Mama Mia’s restaurant is?” “I’ll drive you sir don’t worry
about it” “Oh its fine we are just trying to foot (walk) there.” At this point
the leader of the taxi posse started giving me directions to get there. I then
tell him that tomorrow morning we need a driver to pick us up at five in the
morning to take us to the bus station. As soon as he hears that he says, “Oh
okay let me give you the proper directions to get to Mama Mia then!” As you
would say in Portuguese, what a cara de pau! Shameless! Anyway he gave me his
card and promised that he would pick us up in the morning. We keep walking,
stop at a grocery store to check out the local beers (Green beer, very hoppy,
Stout, a dark beer, and Special Brew, I don’t know, just a stronger beer). We
keep moving and we see a lodge/hotel that looks like Mama Mia would be inside.
We go there, find a restaurant that is not Mama Mia but still have a delicious
dinner. We then head home, crash hard, and wake up early the next morning.
Our driver, Dison, is there right on time and he
takes us to the station. Along the way he offers to take us all the way to
Nkhata Bay, our final destination. The cost was 90,000 kwacha, the bus was
3,800 so we passed. We get to the station and it was pretty nasty. Big old
buses everywhere covering everybody with thick black exhaust. There were people
selling food and doughnuts, the buses where blowing exhaust directly onto the
food (the exhaust pipes where literally a few feet from the food being sold)
but the sellers didn’t seem to mind. Dison walks us to the bus that we are
supposed to get. We pay our tickets, get in, and head to the back. It was
around seven in the morning when we enter the bus. The bus left at 9:30. We would
not arrive in Nkhata Bay until 7:30 that night. And we only traveled 400 odd
kilometers. That was a tough day. Turns out that there are two different buses,
one that stops in every single town along the way, and one that doesn’t. We got
on the wrong one. We wanted to blame somebody so we just blamed Dison for
screwing us over and taking us to the wrong bus. We needed a scapegoat after 10
hours of mind numbing tedium. Also we asked the bus driver three separate
times, how long will it take to reach Nhakata Bay. Five hours he said, each
time. We were hating on him to by the end of the trip. But at least we got to
see quite a bit of Malawi. Ate a lot of samosas along the way from bus side
vendors, tried to communicate with our seat neighbors when we got really bored,
and even tried to have a dinner of Doritos and avocado during hour eight when
we were really starting to lose it.
 |
| The reason why it was all worth it! |
No comments:
Post a Comment