The long travel to Malawi, Africa

So I have encountered the most ridiculousness of travel days. Here is an itinerary of our travel from Bucharest, Romania to Lilongwe, Malawi.

12:00 pm – leave for Bucharest International Airport 

4:00   pm – fly to Istanbul, Turkey, and find out that our bus in South Africa has fallen                    through, and we no longer have transportation. 

7:25   pm –  fly to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Had a 4 hour layover, so I took a free                      shower, and gazed at the tallest building in the world. 

4:40   am – fly to Johannesburg, South Africa

11:30 am –  arrive at airport and wait for transport to a hostel 

7:00   pm –  finally have a ride to the hostel, and with the mad driver I pray    

                   unceasingly that we make it to the place in one piece. 

8:00   pm – Arrive at hostel and go to sleep

6:00   pm- depart on a bus with no ac, no toilet, and some awkward uncomfortable   

                  seats, but at least all 65 of us had a seat 😀

3:00   am – arrive at our first border to leave South Africa, and enter Zimbabwe

10:00 am – finally get the visas to pass through Zimbabwe 

10:30 pm – arrive at the exit border, and happy to finally get the chance to pee  

                  without having to pay a fee. 

11:00 pm – ask to sleep outside, but leaders thought it safer to stay inside the bus.

11:15 pm – Discover that 65 people breathing in a small space through a few12 by 12 

                   windows causes no air circulation. 

12:00 am – we fellow people who got the unfortunate seats in the back of the bus 

                   begin to question whether we can get through the night. 

5:30   am –  run off the bus to happily wait in the borderline, to enter Mozambique. 

12:30 pm – Begin to worship and do some hard core praying when we learn that the 

                   guard has only filled out half of the visas for our group

2:30   pm –  visas are miraculously done, and we are off speed racing through the 

                   country to make it to the exit border, which we learned closes at 8 pm. 

5:30   pm – We get to the bridge that takes you to the border, and make a pit stop 

                   since we don’t have much food or water.

5:35   pm – find out that the gas station won’t take credit cards, USD, or Rand (South                    Africa’s currency), which is the only currency we have.   

5:40   pm  – find out that the bridge that we must cross is one way at a time, and our 

                   side is currently closed. So we pray that it opens for us, because we really 

                   don’t want to camp in front of the bridge.

5:50   pm –  bridge opens, and we worship, even though we are hungry and thirsty, 

                    we still praise the Lord for his awesomeness. 😀 

7:00  pm – we arrive at the exit border in time and get some good news and bad news                  from our squad leader Lia. 

                        – Good news: we found out that the border actually closes at 9 pm

                        – Bad news: due to the freak rainstorm the electricity went out. 

8:00  pm – So we make camp for a second night. We are now running on 48 hours of 

                  being on this bus, and were not looking forward to a repeat of last night. 

8:30  pm – squad leaders came up with a great plan to have boys outside patrolling  

                  and sleeping in shifts. Those who slept went under a semi – truck, or our                     bus, or wherever would give them warmth. 

11:20 pm – a particular individual really needed to take a poop and did so, only to get 

                   caught by the guard. 

11:30 pm – he along with 6 or 7 other guys walk to the police station. 

11:45 pm – issue resolved, and learned that the bathroom is open; it only has a giant                      lock to make it look like it’s locked. 

12:00  am – we girls sleep peacefully on the bus, while the boys cuddle together to                          stay warm. (Thanks again guys) 

5:30    am – get ready once again to exit Mozambique, and fear how long it will take                         this time to enter Malawi. 

6:00    am – have a fellow leader try to exchange currency at the border, and                                  discovered by the angry cop that it is illegal to do such a thing.  

7:00    am – learn that we don’t need Visas to enter Malawi

10:00  am – leave the border and praise God that we won’t have to see another border                     for a month. 

1:30   pm – it has now been 67 ½ hours on this bus, and we finally reach our                                  destination together in Blantyre, Malawi. 

3:00   pm –  get into another bus/van to go to Zomba

4:30   pm-  arrive at Zomba, and relax at a contact’s house to learn about the ministry                    and eat our classic meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

6:00   pm –  get into the van and head up to the capitol of Malawi. 

12:30 am – arrive at contacts house in Lilongwe, Malawi. 

So from Johannesburg, South Africa to Lilongwe, Malawi it took us 78 ½ hours. That’s three days on a bus. So the whole ride while enduring it was very unpleasant, however the minute I entered Malawi all the frustration, and anger ceased, and I praised God. Praised him for delivering us safely, praised him for his love, praised him that he is always near, and praised him for everything. One lesson you can take away from this, is that it’s a lot easier to fly into the country instead of bussing through it. 😀