When I originally thought about travel days I thought about all of the flights, passport stamps, and taking fun travel pictures and videos with my squad. What I didn’t think about was the truth about what travel days are really like.
Travel days are long. We have had layovers for 19 hours, riding on busses for three days, heat, cold, stomach aches, dehydration, lack of sleep, back pains, you name it we have probably done it.
For our trip from Malawi to Zimbabwe it was the definition of rougher then rough. If you have read my teammates blogs you know how this story goes, but here is how it went from my perspective.
We started our first bus ride at 6 pm on Friday night. We set off ready to start the adventure, and 10 minutes into the ride we took a quick stop on the side of the road and all of a sudden almost everyone quickly gets off the bus and starts running into the field to use the bathroom, and they took their sweet time to go and talk with each other as well. We continued to make small stops along the way for fuel and honestly we aren’t sure what, and by the time we actually started to get out of Mzuzu we had 85 people on a bus with 67 seats. There were people standing, sitting on the floor, and most of them sitting on us. You heard that right, for 7 hours I had a man practically sitting on my shoulder. I tried my best to sleep on the trip but every time we made a stop people that were getting off would hit us with their bags, or even worse if you were Nettie, their butts. As we were about 30 minutes away from Lilongwe, I realized that the woman across the aisle from me was throwing up into a rag. I was done. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it through the next ride.
We made it to Lilongwe at around 2:30 am and didn’t get on our next bus until 5am. Once we were on I thought, “Okay only 17 hours for this ride I think I can do it!” The beginning of the ride went fine and I had a great time talking to Janele about how her month went (she is on a different team). As we got to the Mozambique border, everything changed.
It became extremely hot like worse then Oklahoma heat ladies and gents. We knew we were about to be in for a long border crossing, and by long I mean we were there for 5 hours and I got a horrible sunburn. We realized quickly that we weren’t in Kansas anymore because this was a different kind of heat. The wind hitting my face felt like sandpaper. There was no A/C, some people didn’t even have windows, and the heat didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. I honestly sat there on the bus thinking “I wouldn’t mind going home, at least it is cooler there, and my house smells good, I don’t think I have ever smelled this bad in my life, I am sweating so bad.”
We spent 5 more hours on the bus before making it to the Zimbabwean border. We were there for almost 3 hours waiting on visas, but finally at around 1 am we made it to our first city stop to stay at a hostel. Praise the Lamb that we decided to stop because I don’t think my reputation could stand 6 more hours on a bus, I was irritable, extremely dehydrated, and had back pain beyond any back pain I’ve ever had. The next morning we left at 12:30 after a decent night sleep, and began our last leg of the drive to Bulawayo. The next 6 hours were long, but we were excited because we were in our own personal van and could stop for food and bathroom anytime we wanted. At around 7 pm we made it to our stop and finally made it to our host.
So I tell you this and give you this long drawn out story to say travel days are not always fun. They are hard and long, but the best part of travel day is knowing where you are going next. To finally get to your next destination and meet your new host. Get to your new living situation and finally lay down in a bed, to meet the people you will be working with and helping for the next month, to finally stop and look at his creation and realize how blessed you are to be on this race.
The race isn’t about travel days or how comfortable you are 24/7. The race is about looking at the situation you are in, laughing at what you can, and thanking the Lord daily for the opportunity. The truth about travel days is they are hard, but the adventure is worth it.
