Our travel from Mozambique to Malawi started on the 3rd of February. We all were pretty ready for a long ride ahead of us since we were in the southern part of Mozambique and had to travel through the entire country before even getting to the Malawi border. So that morning we packed all of our stuff and left Pastor Tienie’s house (our host) at 5am.
We took a chapa into the nearest town to meet some of the other teams and to catch the bus that would be taking us all the way to Malawi.
Sidenote- a chapa is a 15 passenger taxi van, but that means that 15 people would still have a little space to themselves, and that’s not how it works here. So with a total of 29 people plus some chickens, the driver felt that he now had enough passengers to make the trip worth it. You get real close with people, real fast.
Anyways, when we arrived and met up with the other teams, we found out that the bus we were taking only had 30 seats. And there are 35 of us, plus our stuff. So we all crammed in World Race style and started toward the border of Malawi. We ended up stopping the first night around 2 or 3 in the morning and sleeping on the bus so our drivers could get some rest before continuing on. Around 5am everyone loaded up and we set off again, only to realize that we were almost out of gas and no gas stations open until 7:30. Luckily, our driver made some calls and had some gas brought to us within the hour. The border closed at 8pm that night (so we thought) and we were supposed to arrive around 4pm that night. Well, come to find out that it was actually closing at 6pm. No problem, right? Well, our bus started having electrical issues with the tail lights on the trailer and we couldn’t start moving again until it got fixed…2 hours later. The possibility of us having to spend another night on the bus was looking pretty good.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was so cranky at this point. Usually, I love travel days and the hiccups that happen along the way are just added memories, but when you literally can’t stretch out for an entire trip and you realize that you still have another 10 hours to go and you already haven’t slept at all for the past 36 hours, it changes. You that point you get to when you’re not sad, but just so exhausted that everything makes you want to cry? I was well past that point.
We ended up getting to the border just after 6pm that night and they were still open! We had all been praying that by some miracle the border would be open and we would have enough time to let all 35 of us through, and man did God answer that prayer. It took 4 hours to process our visas going into Malawi and these amazing people at the border worked until midnight to get us all through. That’s not something that should’ve happened at all. We got stopped by the police in Malawi and even they asked us how much we had bribed the people at the border to stay open and let us through. God kept every door open that we needed during those travel days.
So yea, travel days are hard and sometimes they suck. And maybe it means you’re on a too small bus for 51 hours. But the thing is, travel days are so necessary. We can’t get to where we’re going without travel, good or bad. And the Lord grows us through those travel days with Him. Those in between periods of our life until we actually get to the destination He has for us can be scary, unsure, and trying, but it’s in those times that growth happens. That we learn of the sovereignty and goodness of the Lord in getting us through the travel days in our lives; just like on the Race.
