Travel days on the World Race look different every time. Some times we have long flights, but the plane has so many movies it makes up for it. Other times we take a ferry which is more like a cruise ship. We have also gone by bus, and usually there is so many of us that we rent the whole bus. Which means we end up having a great time all together as we watch movies and try to get sleep. Although we have had many different travel experiences. None of them have topped this last travel day or days we had from South Africa to Zimbabwe. Which ended up taking 55+ hours.
January 3rd at 2pm we started out by walking to the gautrain in Pretoria and took it one stop over to the bus stop. We waited for our 4:00 bus that never came. Caught a bus that was going to Johannesburg and arrived there around 6pm.
We ended up waiting until 9pm until our correct bus came, during this time is when I wrote my last blog. I had just eaten dinner and with a full belly I soon drifted into sleep. My teammate Emily was sitting in front of me. Somehow we ended up on the bottom of the bus while the rest of our team, and the other team we were with were upstairs at the top of the bus. Around midnight Emily woke me up as we had pulled up to a sketchy little gas station. Was able to use the bathroom, brush my teeth and buy a couple snacks.
We got to the South Africa border at 4am on the 4th. As we are walking to find the right line to stand in, we see a sign that says beware of baboons. When we finally do find the right line, we see other squad mates in the line that left hours before we did. When we stop to talk with them Molly says don’t fight it. Just sleep on the ground it is actually pretty warm.
I looked through the little bag of things I had on me. Found my Kindle and thought watching Maleficent would make for a great pass time. Sadly it was such a small screen and we didn’t have any speakers. We crowded around, took turns holding the screen, and listened as closely as possible. Soon little kids were crowding around and trying to see as well. Before we even made it halfway into the movie people started getting louder, and it became harder to hear, and our eyes became heavier and heavier.
I decided to stop fighting it, embrace it, and lay down on the awfully dirty cement and fall asleep. I probably had to wake up every 15 minutes to move forward a couple feet. We were at the South African boarder for a little over 5 hours, which gave us plenty of time to get things done. I read my Bible, journaled, read a book, and got more sleep.
At 9:30am we drove to the Zimbabwe side of the boarder. The line was a lot better on this side and soon enough we got our visas, and got back on the bus. I wish I could tell you our bus took off and kept going with the journey. Sadly, this is not how it went. We got back on the bus, it waited in a slow line to get to the check point. When it got there all of our luggage was unloaded to see if any of it needed to be taxed. Both teams made it through without needing to pay any fines or taxes. Unfortunately not everyone on the bus did. We spent more time waiting for the people on our bus to pay this. On the Zimbabwe boarder side it ended up taking 7 hours, making for a combined total of a 12 hour border crossing.
4pm we were on our way again, we immediately stopped at a pizza/chicken/ice cream shop. I have never eaten my food so fast. (it was the first meal I had since the other night) The bus kept going but by 5:30 the AC went out, and shortly after that the whole bus broke down. Naturally, you would think this is when everyone started complaining, but this is when things actually got really good! Our group lined up on the side of the road, we were talking and then I went and got my Bible. We all took turns reading different scriptures. One of the girls on our squad got out her guitar and Abel played. We worshiped until it got dark and we couldn’t see the music anymore. It was beautiful because others started to join us, we were able to hear other people’s testimonies, and someone mentioned that we would have never done these things if the bus hadn’t broke down. Because we were in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t a single light for miles. We could see the stars so well! I don’t think I have ever seen so many stars in the sky before.
Meanwhile, while we were doing all of this. A car, truck, and then finally another bus had all stopped and tried to jump our bus. Shirletha, who had been listening and checking how the bus situation was going, made her way over to us. She told us we need to pray because if this jump didn’t work we would need to call a different bus. Which could take up to 2 days. We got in a circle and started praying together. At the sound of our amens, the lights on the bus came on, and right after that the engine started. The passengers even recognized that God heard our prayers.
On the road again at 9pm. I went right to sleep, I seem to not have no problem sleeping while traveling. Again, a little later Emily turns around and wakes me up. It is 1:15am on the 5th and we have broken down again. This time they have a different bus already on the way to get us. We pushed the trailer with all of our luggage to the new bus. Get it connected and we are back on the road at 3am.
We finally made it to Herare around 5:30 am. A man named Willie walked up to us asking for our leader Allison. He said he was a friend of our host Dave, and would be taking us to our taxi. We said goodbye to the other team, thankful Greg was there to carry my bags to the truck. (lesson learned: never ever say no to someone carrying your bags) We loaded into the back of this man’s truck, and he drove us to the taxi park. We loaded into a big taxi van, which would take us to Chinoyi, where we would meet Dave our host.
10am we make it to Chinoyi, we met Dave at the trek gas station. Thankfully, he brought us to a grocery store where we got our breakfast/lunch. Then we did all the grocery shopping for the next couple days. At 1:30pm on Tuesday the 5th we finally set off for Doma where we would be living. But we made a U-turn because the police were up ahead. To avoid getting a fine, we stopped at some friends of Dave’s to wait till the police went home. We were able to shower, and have some coffee and cookies.
4:30 we got back in the back of Dave’s truck with all of our luggage and for real made our way to Dave’s house. At 7pm we finally arrived. Which added up to a total of 57 hours of travel.
Living in fear is something I am trying to give up this month. Naturally, some of the things that happened on this travel day would have me fearing a lot of things. When we were on the side of the road reading the Bible together. I could feel the peace of the Lord being poured out over me. I knew even though this was crazy what we had gone through and were still going through. I had no reason to fear, because I had Jesus walking with me through the whole thing.
