Anyone who claims to love travel can recognize that half the fun is the journey, not just the destination.
It’s the excitement of taking off in an airplane for an international flight and perusing the food options and movie menu (especially with airlines like Qatar Air!), thinking about the adventure that lies ahead.
And watching the countryside unfold while on a bus, seeing random villagers living life, with buckets on their heads and babies on their backs, while gorgeous mountains, beaches, and plains fly by in the distance.
Even that feeling of satisfied exhaustion when you finally arrive at your destination hostel or hotel to collapse in bed with anticipation of what this new place will hold the next day.
I can’t help but notice the double meaning of the old expression “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey” on a trip like this. Personally and spiritually, at the end of month 11 we usually find that the summation of the trip is what helped us grow the most, rather than any one particular place.
But for now, rather than carrying on about the spiritual journey, allow me to recall for you the random hilarity that unfolds during a usual World Race transition from one country to the next. Here is a random collection of moments we experienced between Gua Musang, Malaysia, and Kigali, Rwanda.
Our adventure from Malaysia to Rwanda began at 10:30pm at the train station in Gua Musang on Monday, June 25th.
My team arrived at the station after an amazing Chinese feast with our hosts, Auntie Kim and Uncle Chua, and proceeded to play volleyball, sit on our packs, and brush our teeth in the random sinks along the walls. We then boarded the night train to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, all talking in British accents as we pretended to be on board the Hogwarts Express.
After a night of chain-smoking bed neighbors, crying babies, and jostling train cars, we arrived in KL sleepy-eyed and disoriented after almost getting off at the wrong stop twice. Tasha, Chris and I explored multiple hotel options in the area that would fit our modest World Race budget, finally settling on one that seemed bed-bug free, and settled in for a couple of days of rest before leaving for AFRICA!
Two days later, 38 World Racers gathered at the Kuala Lumpur Airport the requested four hours before our flight. My squad mates could be found running at and hugging each other, playing guitar, eating McDonald’s ice cream cones, and recalling the adventures of the month in Malaysia. We then boarded the incredible Qatar Air plane and spent the next 7 hours being doted on with amazing food, free wine, candy bars, movies, and hot towels. On such flights, World Racers are often found scrubbing their necks with their hot towels and pocketing any pre-packaged food for later, while I loudly proclaimed that life on the plane was so great that I really had no need to ever disembark.
Landing in Doha, Qatar, my squad was quite dismayed to find that the wealthiest country in the world had little to offer in its capital city airport. We ended up crashing and sleeping in the only way possible…on the cold, dirty tile floor in the one massive waiting area, which resulted in me waking up in my usual confused frenzy and getting laughed at by squad mates who opted to sip coffee and chat all night. We all cashed in on the free breakfast of plain white bread and french fries, which ended up being a good warm-up for the food we would be eating in Africa.
Stumbling onto our next flight in various states of exhausted giggles, I noticed how overwhelmed other passengers appear when 38 young friends pile onto the same airplane exchanging non-stop commentary on various topics. I settled in next to Joe and Pat, two amazing men I have become good friends with, as they enjoyed a “golf and beer date”, sipping the free Heineken and playing the plane’s computerized golf game.
Finally arriving in Entebbe, Uganda, God blessed me in a huge way when a best friend from home ran up to me and literally threw herself on the ground in her attempt to hug me (love you crazy girl, Erin!) She was flying home from a mission trip to Uganda and we barely crossed paths halfway across the world at the airport! It was an amazing, needed, God-appointed moment! Dazed by seeing a friend from home, I hardly noticed that I was sitting on the floor of the van between the driver and passenger as two of my squad mates hung out of the sun roof.
After a few days of debrief at a lovely little off-beat hostel in Entebbe, we awoke at 6am on July 4th to board the bus “leaving at seven am!”, and spent the next 3 hours killing time (a skill we have quite refined by this point), before actually boarding the bus at 10:30. We flew wildly across Uganda’s beautiful countryside as Natasha, Caitlin, and I sang Mandy Moore and Taylor Swift songs far louder and for far longer than anyone cared for us to. We also had a fabulously compiled American music mix that we periodically sang along to in honor of Independence Day.
A breathtaking choir performance by our neighboring churches children's choir
Our bus driver ventured quite some distance down a road “towards Uganda”, before hitting a random road block and busting a U turn in the middle of the road. Doing so seemed to throw him for a loop, as we stopped in several small towns for the next two hours to make sure we were still on the right track. Ultimately, the seven-hour bus ride ended up being a 14 hour adventure of dwindling peanut butter supplies, truly frightening squatty potty encounters, inspirational movies (i.e., The Lion King) and ridiculous conversations.
We arrived at the Rwandan border just before dark, which barely saved us from having to sleep on the bus, a la World Race training camp scenario made reality. The border crossing was no more than a rusty gate which we walked right through, before being forced to dip our feet into a bucket of dirty water in order to rinse the Ugandan dirt off of our feet…this was literally one of the most senseless things I have encountered all year long. We then were forced to unpack our entire packs (which, by the way, packing them in the first place is no small feat) and throw away any semblance of a plastic bag, which are not allowed in the country. Our squad had bags of medicines, dirty underwear, journals, and toiletries scattered all over the dirty ground as we stood by helplessly and watched as our precious ziploc bags were confiscated.
Finally at 1am on July 5th, we were picked up in a gas station parking lot by pastor Robert and crammed into the back of a van, where we jostled and bumped our way down a hazardous dirt road to finally arrive at our final destination. A lovely little Rwandan home, housing some 8 other people, in Remera, Kigali, Rwanda would become our home for the month of July.
So after two trains, two planes, two vans, one bus, two weeks, lots of patience, lots of laughter, lots of irritation, and lots of awkward sleeping positions, God graciously brought 38 young missionaries to the Land of a Thousand Hills to share the love of Jesus! HUGE thanks to our logistics people, Tatum and Joe, for ALL of your hard work! We could NEVER have done it without you!
