With Ly-nnn, and team leader Ashley too. Jacquie and Kate Nixon. Karen Kurten-bach, 2 chickens, and 5 bus breakdowns…..here on Malawian travel day!!!! (Sing that to the tune of Gilligan's Island…or try to, it kind of doesn't exactly fit.)
Anyway….
The night before we left for Nkhata Bay, we had team changes; we ate dinner together, chose our team name, and talked about the things we wanted this team to be. One of the main things we wanted was to be a team that chose joy and laughter no matter what inconveniences arose – to look at those situations as an adventure instead of nuisances. It just so happened that we were tested in this the very next day, which turned into one of the craziest travel days ever.
We left Lilongwe that morning at 9AM and headed for Nkhata. First we had to get a taxi to the bus station; which is always fun with our huge packs and the 5 of us in a small taxi…we ended up making 2 trips. The Lilongwe bus station is a bit sketchy and confusing because when you are white, people assume you have money, and when you have money, you can afford to pay more and everyone wants your business. So everyone is clamoring to ‘help’ carry your bags (for a small fee), offering taxis, trying to get you on their mini bus, or asking you for money or food. Basically, it’s chaos. Just to add to that; here we are, 5 girls in Malawi, Africa armed with a name of a town and a phone number, searching this crazy bus station for the public bus headed for some place named Mzuzu because there wasn’t a bus going to Nkhata Bay. This is one of those moments that it hits me, what is my life right now? And how does all of this insanity work out. We’re not on some tour where everything is figured out for us, we are kind of flying by the seat of our pants and hoping God will work everything out for our good. Amazingly, it always does. We find our bus, stow our packs precariously overhead, find seats together in the very back of the bus, ready to wait until the bus fills up to leave (the buses here don’t depart until there are about 50 more people in there than there are seats. No joke.) We immediately make friends with 2 men sitting in front of us, interested to hear why these white girls are in Malawi on the public bus system. Naturally, this leads us to talk about Jesus and what we are doing in Malawi. The older gentleman turns out to be a pastor and the younger guy is headed off to work somewhere and isn’t a believer, but had tons of questions about Jesus and church and Christianity and why we believed what we do. They were both really sweet and kept us informed about what was going on and when to get on and off throughout the journey (not speaking the language and being unfamiliar with the buses, we never knew when we could get off and go to the bathroom without getting left behind).
About an hour into this ride, our bus breaks down. We sit on the side of the road for an hour while they try to fix the problem and then everyone piles back on and we take off again. 5 minutes after that, we break down again. They work on it for 20 more minutes and we take off again, only to break down for a final time 50 feet later beside a maize field. At this point, everyone else gets off the bus and the other people seem to be very angry outside in this field yelling at the bus driver and making sure he doesn’t run off without getting another bus to us. So we get off too, unload our massive packs on the side of the road, and sit in the blazing sun with our Malawian friends closely watching us as we laugh and play Uno. We made another friend, who was brave enough to come up and ask to join us. I personally don’t think 5 white girls are intimidating, but this guy informed us that most of the people were. We had fun laughing with him about the differences between the American and Malawian bus systems. He was very surprised and amused to learn that live chickens were not allowed on American buses and also that we bathe our dogs and let them sleep with us. All of them were intrigued by my camp chair.
I’m not sure how long we sat there waiting, but it was 4:30 by the time we finished Uno and everyone left us in the dust sprinting to get onto the new bus. It was pandemonium. People were pushing and shoving with their belongings, probably because half of them were the people who got at the station later and didn’t have seats. Jacquie pushed her way onto the bus to get our seats and somehow managed to get our same spot as before as we shoved our smaller bags through the window to her as everyone else was still fighting to get to seats, even though in the end they all ended up where they were originally. Hefting 60 pound packs through a bus crammed with people was not fun at all, but we all made it on the bus and no one’s back was broken so all was well.
We traveled for hours upon hours. I don’t think it’s possible to make it to Mzuzu in 6 hours, let alone Nkhata. But our driver was doing his best to try…this guy was flying! I sat in my seat, involuntarily bobbing up and down like a rag doll and praying for the bus, the driver, all of us, and anyone who got in our bus’s path. That’s pretty typical for African bus travel though. The roads started getting curvier and more mountainous, and the engine started struggling. We pulled over a few times for a few seconds and kept going. Except one time, the bus wouldn’t crank again and all of the men were outside looking under the hood. This is when Kate, Karen, Jacquie, and I took our chance to pee. It was dark and we went out a path to another maize field to relieve ourselves (all standing about 3 feet away from each other) when the bus suddenly cranks and everyone is yelling for us to get on. Jacquie literally started sprinting to the bus with her pants still down and we all ran just in time…the bus was already moving when I stepped on. We almost got left in the Malawi bush with nothing but a headlamp and 2 squares of toilet paper.
We didn’t stop anymore after that except to let a few people off. I don’t think I’ve ever been as cold on a bus ride as that night. It was freezing! And I had on shorts and short sleeves. So 5 ice cubes finally make it to Mzuzu at this even sketchier bus station in the dark. All the buses have stopped running and there are very few people there. Thankfully, the toilet guy was there and we had a place to use the bathroom. There are a couple taxi drivers outside wanting to take us to Nkhata, but our awesome bus friends advise us not to trust these guys that hang out here so late at night and assure us that we will be safer on the bus. One of our new friends sleeps right in front of us and got up anytime someone came on the bus throughout the night to make sure we were okay. A couple of us stayed up to stand guard while the rest of us tried to get some sleep. A couple cops came on board asking us tons of questions about why we were staying on the bus and where we were going and what organization we were with and wanting us to get off the bus and go somewhere else. Kind of worrisome for a moment, but yet again God worked everything out in our favor and we were allowed to stay on the bus. His grace and providence were all over this travel…later when we got to Nkhata Bay, our contact told us of a neighbor and friend traveling the same route from Mzuzu to Nkhata, who had died in a horrible mini-bus crash around the same time we should have originally been on a mini-bus headed there.
At 4AM, a mini-bus full of people and couple of our bus friends is leaving for our destination, so we set out with them. I never dreamed it was possible to fit all of this in a van: 18 people, 5 huge packs, 5 smaller day packs, 13 boxes and bags from the other passengers, 2 chickens, and a partridge and a pear tree. In Africa it’s good to be so crammed together during travel because driving is so crazy that otherwise you would be sliding back and forth across the van; this way everything is so full that there isn’t anywhere else to go. About an hour later we make it to the main street of Nkhata Bay, find a taxi to pile our bags in and take us up the hill to Butterfly, drag our bags down a million steps to reception and pass out on the benches. 6AM. 21 hours after we left Lilongwe on a 6 hour bus trip. T.I.A. This is Africa. Welcome to Nkhata Bay!!!
