This past week a few of my teammates and I decided to take four days and go to Zamba, Africa to go visit Victoria Falls, which is one of the seven wonders of the world. We had the most amazing time spending time together, getting to meet new people, dining out with zebras and bungee jumping off of the falls. Everything was so beautiful in Zambia. God sure knew what he was doing when he made it. Although I saw so much of Gods beauty all around me in Zambia, i saw him most in the most unlikely of places. I saw him most in the 40 hours we spent on busses to get there.
I know what you’re thinking… “Woah! She must really be going crazy!” But before you call all the kings horses and all the kings men to put me back together again (childhood reference anyone?) let me explain to you WHY i saw God most on our insanely long travel days.
Let me start at the beginning. We have been planning this trip for a whole month trying to find out prices, and bus stops, and connections, and visas, and hostels. Its been a very long process for us.Something about planning a trip though in another country, is that plans don’t always seem to go as planned. You can’t always book ahead. We figured out the only things we could really book were the bus to Lusaka, Zambia, and our hostel in Livingstone, Zambia. other than that, we were just going to have to figure out everything as we went.
Being four white american girls, who don’t speak the native language and are perceived to have a lot of money, you can see why we got a little nervous about going. We decided that a trip to see the falls outweighed the negative possibilities so we decided to go ahead and take the trip.
Getting to the first bus station in Lilongwe, Malawi was pretty easy. Our host family called us a taxi that arrived at 4:45 am to take us to our bus that departed at 5:30 am. Our taxi driver was super nice and we got there and got on our bus with no problems. That bus was 13 hours long and took us to Lusaka, Zambia.
About 2 hours in to the trip, we had to cross the boarder. We were warned ahead of time to not exchange money with the men standing outside. They were all black market dealers and we could get arrested by working with them. So we got through customs to the point where we were supposed to pay for our visa. We walk up and Mags only has a card that she was going to get money out of the ATM with, I had $35 emergency U.S. cash on me and about $200 in malawian money on me, Jenna has a $110 in US dollars, and Hailey of us has $60 in USD with her. Our first problem when we got there was that the ATM’s weren’t working. So that meant none of us could get Zambian money out. That meant Mags couldn’t pay for her visa. We figured that with my extra malawian money one of us could loan her the money. Then we get to the counter. We were happily surprised with only a $50 USD visa fee, in opposition to the $75 USD we thought it would be. Hailey goes first and gets in without a problem. Then its my turn. I am shocked to find out that they don’t take malawian money on the malawian boarder. They only take USD and Zambian money. So that means there is now two of us who can’t get into the country. Luckily I have $35 USD, but that still means I’m $15 short. Hailey loans me $10 and Jenna loans me $5 and praise God I’m able to get in! Since Jenna has $105 left and the visas were only $50 USD she was able to pay for Maggie and herself!
We arrived at Lusaka at about 6:30. I was thanking God that he held the sun in the sky until we got there, because once we got to the station, we had a new challenge to overcome. We had to find our way to a bus that would take us to Livingstone late at night so we wouldn’t have to stay the night in Lusaka. Right as we were pulling into the station, God sent a man to my window who starting yelling up to me and asking if we needed t go to Lusaka! I yelled back “YES!” so he followed our bus to the stop. As we were about to step off the bus, a crowd swarmed to the door all trying to get the white people to get on their bus. It was super overwhelming. People were grabbing at our bags and all yelling at us at once. Then out of no where that same man came and started pushing people out of the way for us. He was yelling “LET THEM PASS, LET THEM PASS” to everyone, and sure enough a path was made for us to get out of the sea of people.
The man was very kind and helped us get to the atm so we could try and get zambian money out. Once we got there only Mags and Jennas cards worked. So two of us were stuck with out money, but gracefully the other girls offered to loan su the money to pay for our ticket to Livingstone.Before we got on our new bus though, the men helped us get to the Zambia-Malawi station so we could book our ticket for that Thurday at 2pm to come home. Then he guided us back to our new bus. Once we got on our next bus, some of us had to go to the bathroom before we traveled for another 7 hours. We asked the man in front of us where the bathroom was and he told us to wait until we get going and then ask the driver to stop at a gas station because the bathrooms there were gross. So we did what he said, but the weird thing was that once we stopped to go to the bathroom, that man disappeared and wasn’t on the bus. We never saw him get off the bus, but he simply wasn’t there anymore.
So we were on our way to Livingstone. The bus ride went smoothly, we all got some sleep on the way. The next challenge we had was to get to the postal that we pre-booked and hope they had room for us to stay that night. When we had booked it, we hadn’t planned on arriving at 2am. We thought it would be much later snd that we wouldn’t be as tired as we were, so we didn’t book for that night. Also, the hostel wasn’t picking up their phone, so we had no way of knowing if they would even be open. So we arrive in Livingstone. Immediately the same situation that occurred in the last bus station happened. But this time all the people wanted the white girls to get in their taxi. We frantically asked the bus driver to take us to the hostel and told him we would pay him extra. He said he couldn’t, but he got off the bus and found us a taxi driver. Then he guided us to his car and made sure the other taxi guys weren’t attacking us.
So we make it to a taxi, check! We tell him where we are staying and he gets us to our hostel. he honks for them to let us in. No response. We wait a few minutes and he honks again, this time longer than before. Still nothing. So we honk one more time. By this time our hearts are beating out of our chests because we don’t know what to do if we don’t get in. All of a sudden, a man opens the gate for us and we get in! We pay the taxi man and get out. Now we’re praying that theres a room available for us. The man asks us if we have a reservation. We say yes. He says whats the name. We tell him Hailey. He doesn’t look at a computer or a record book or anything. He just walks us to a room with five beds in it hands us the keys, and walks away!
God provided for us completely! The next days we kept talking about how cool it was that God provided and made a path for us. He put specific people in our lives who could help us out and it was so cool to look back and see that!
So I understand this is a pretty long blog post. If you’re getting antsy, this is a good point to get up, stretch a little, eat a snack, tip a cow, watch Iron man, call your mom, go mudding, blow up something, or just do whatever you need to in order to focus your mind. I promise though, you will want to come back and read the rest! If you thought all these events were crazy, just wait! Everything after this will blow your mind!
Ok, so now that you’ve gone and gotten all of your antsiness out of your system, I’d like to welcome you back to the Mind Blowing Travel Days Of Africa program.
So after having a blast in Zambia, it came time to leave and head back home. This time we made sure we had enough Zambian money to pay for Visas back into Malawi and to pay for our first bus that left at 5:30 am. We made it onto our first bus with our only problem being a flat tire. It only set us back about 30 minutes, so we were able to get to the bus station with plenty of time to spare. By the time we stopped to get onto our second bus, we were pros at navigating the bus station; so we didn’t have any trouble there. We actually had a pretty simple day for the most part.
Then at about midnight, we had to stop to get our passport business dealt with. We assumed it would just be a short process like it was last time. After all, all but one of us had Zambian money and Malawian money so there shouldn’t have been a problem. At first it seemed like we were going to have no problems. But then they called us back up to the counter. They were telling us it was $75 USD to get our visas. We knew we would have to pay, we just didn’t think it would be as much because we had just gotten our visas renewed a week before. We then found out that SURPRISE! We couldn’t pay in Zambian or Malawian money! Only USD! We we told the men we didn’t have USD because it had been 5 months since we were in the states, and they started to get very angry with us. They made us go back into their office and started talking over us telling us that USD was the only way we could pay and leave. We internally started freaking out. We couldn’t miss our bus, and we couldn’t leave. So what were we going to do? How were we going to make this work? They started telling us we had to go outside and try to exchange our money on the black market and that was the only way we were going to be able to leave. We told them “No! That was not an option!” but they insisted. Eventually they just gave us the paperwork to fill out and told us to go do it in the lobby. So we did. The whole time I was praying then as soon as I finished filling out the paperwork, I got this sense that God was going to take care of it. Everything was going to be ok.
So I started singing “Come, let your glory fall as you respond to us. Spirit reign, flood into our thirsty hearts again. You’ll come. You’ll come.” and “Holy spirit you are welcome here, come flood this place and fill the atmosphere. Your glory God is what our hearts long for, to be overcome by your presence Lord” over and over again. I felt like he was calling me to sing, so I did. They told us after we had finished the paperwork to come back into their office. When we got there, there was a man standing there that wasn’t in the room before. The officers told us that he was a black market trader that would allow us to exchange Malawian money into USD. We were still uneasy about the idea, but we said ok. The man told us the exchange rate was 890. We were shocked. Just the week before the exchange rate had been 690. We knew the man was just trying to make a profit off of us, but we also knew we didn’t have enough money to pay the amount he wanted. We figured out how much he wanted and “agreed” to pay that much. Luckily, before the trip I had gotten a ton of Malawian money out, so i was able to use it here. Which is really good because Hailey had $12 in Malawian money, Mags had $0, Jenna had a $100 USD and $21 Malawian dollars, and by the grace of God i had pulled out $120 Malawian dollars. But all of that added together still wasn’t enough to cover our visas with the black market man’s crazy prices. So, we didn’t tell them, and we just put on the table what we had. The Black market man had also given us 300 Zambian money to use which is about $30 USD. Again, by the grace of God, they didn’t check the amount! so we got our visas and were allowed to leave.
Then, as we were about to get onto the bus, they called us back into their office! We all thought for sure they had realized that some of the money wasn’t there. When we got in there we asked why we were back when they had already told us we could go. We found out the money that was given to us by the black market man was “missing”. The government here in Malawi can be corrupt sometimes. We knew we had given them the money. We knew we didn’t have it. We knew either one of them took it or it truly got mixed in with paperwork. We were tired, we were emotional. By this time it had been about an hour and a half of going back and forth with these men. So as a group, we were pretty frustrated. We helped them look, but when we couldn’t find it, we could tell they were hinting for us to give them more. We told them that it wasn’t an option. We told them we made sure the money was in their possession and what happened after that was their problem, not ours. Now, the whole time we were saying this I was praying that we wouldn’t upset them too much and that they wouldn’t throw us in jail. Finally, God changed their hearts, and they said “Just forget it, I know were abusing you, and I’m Sorry.” and just like that, it was over.
God completely intervened here. Theres no way I would have had all that money if I had pay Malawian for our first visa or our buses. God knew exactly what we needed, and He provided.
So, you’d think we’d be out of the woods right? Sadly, we had one more obstacle to overcome. We still had to get a taxi. Sounds pretty easy, but here’s the thing. Our phone with a local number was dead and my phone couldn’t call Malawian numbers. We had a certain guy we were supposed to call because at 3 in the morning, there are only so many guys you can trust to take you to the right place. To not take you home with them to do their bidding. On our first bus to Zambia, we mat this woman who spoke english. She had become someone we considered a friend. On our way back home, she just so happened to be going home that day. So she was on our bus! We got her to call us a taxi who was reliable and he took us home. We had absolutely no money left on us though to pay him, so he was kind and let us run inside to wake our friends up and borrow some money from them.
There is absolutely no way we could have pulled this off without Gods hand. He tells us to ask and we will receive, and thats what we did. We asked him to show up, and he did. So praise Him for all that He did this week!
Thank you all for taking the time to read this long blog. I plan on doing a photo blog soon to let you all see what I get to see every day! I also have lots of videos to post, but i have to wait until I get to somewhere with better internet to upload them. Team Jigsaw only has 4 more days left together, then we switch teams again! So if you’re looking for prayer requests, pray for my new team! I love you all very much! Thanks for reading!
