An Oversight in travelling to Malawi
Let me share with you one of our most recent travel experiences and why we should have taken the plane. We boarded the bus at 9:30 am to make our way to Malawi…such began this journey through misery. Things were going quite well, until about two thirds of the way to the South Africa/ Zimbabwe boarder when the tire of our luggage trailer nearly fell off. The frame was bent to about a 60 degree angle. So we waited on the side of the road for about 2 hours while that got fixed.
Ok, on the road again. We got to the boarder to enter Zimbabwe, what a fiasco! It was late at night, dark, crowded, paper work for our vehicle took hours! As we waited in a traffic jam, three of our bags were stolen out of our trailer. Finally we made our way through only to realize down the road the missing bags. We were able to drive most of the night with out issue, but as the sun dawned we came across a police check point where the Prime Minister’s car had rolled over. The police was not happy with us, apparently our driver had been speeding, and told us rather forcefully to return to South Africa.
This actually turned into a God moment as through lots of prayer and a couple hour wait in our car, Krystal felt in her heart that we should go offer to pray from the Prime Minister and the situation. We did so and God softened the heart of the Police Officer and we were allowed to pass through. Praise the Lord! He works in great ways!
But…we were then stopped at every police check point from there to the boarder! Each time we waited anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour!!! There were maybe 15 -20 check points. Ugh!!! Finally we made it to the Mozambique boarder and praise God we made it before the boarder closed. Here we were blessed with another hour and a half to two hour wait as what Jen dubbed as “the slowest man on earth” made out all of our visas. 
By the time we got our passports back, our van being on the other side of the barrier, the police officer tried to tell us that “the boarder is closed, you go sleep over there.” Calming the furry mounting in some of us, Tara, one of our gifted communicators talked with the police officer while we just walked across to the van disregarding what the Police officer said. Praise the Lord there was no issue.
Now that we were in Mozambique we were able to drive one of the bumpiest roads all night. Pretty much the driver would drive fast, fast, fast, then suddenly brake hard, then we would drive over a really rough gravelly patch of road…repeat all night long. I tried sleeping but such instances caused me to come out of my drowsy half -sleeping state thinking that we were out of control crashing into the ditch on the side of the road. After waking up in such a confusion about five times, I decided that trying to sleep was not worth the anxiety it caused.
We reached the Mozambique boarder about 1am, where we waited/slept in the can until it opened at six. Crossing into Malawi was quite a bit better, aside from getting to unpack our trailer and wait for the customs officer who was going to be there “just now.” For those who don’t know “just now” is an African phrase that means in a little while. We went through all of our luggage, then repacked and where on our way again. Our driver said it would only be about 4 hours until we reached our destination.
1,2,3,4…5,6,7,8,9 hours later we were pulling into Lilongwe were we met up with Pastor Harvey. Unpack, repack into his little van, a van that had some issues…issues such as when we were driving to the hostel the sliding door fell off the top hinges. That’s right, the door just fell off! Sigh…what do you do? After 58 hours in a van, all you can do is laugh…laugh a lot and laugh hard. Praise God we made it safely and I got to sleep in a bed that night. God is good, He is good every moment, even if you are stuck in a van in very questionable circumstances for 58 hours of your life. J
Quick tip on travelling in Africa: always pack lots of water, lots of food, and pray hard!!!
