Greetings Friends,
Month 7 and 8 were spent in Malawi. Long story short, when we arrived at the Mozambique border at the beginning of August, immigration would not let us in despite the fact that we had our visas. My logistics partner, Cody and I spent 3 hours fighting with the border officials. They ultimately said nope, you’re not welcomed here (for no good reason really, we had everything we needed to get in) and sent us back to Malawi. We then had to try to get immigration officers from Malawi to come back into the office (they had closed their office at this point) and let us back into Malawi. The squad was basically stuck in limbo between 2 countries. Mozambique wouldn’t let us in and the Malawi side was closed. After much discussion with border patrol they made a call to immigration to come back and stamp us back into Malawi.
This was our dilemma: it was way past dark, I had 40 foreigners (38 Americans and 2 Canadians) camped out between 2 countries which was both a danger to us and the border, and no where to go. Yikes! Right…not to mention it was freezing!!!!!! African nights in the winter are pretty chilly.
We got the immigration officers to come back to the border and cancel our exit stamps out of Malawi. Once that was done, it was time to tackle my next logistical dilemma. Where do I put 40 people (we can’t stay at the border) on such short notice and how do I get them there??!?!? We were no where near civilization.
Not to brag or nothing, but Cody and I are logistics rockstars! While he communicated with the AIM office in the US (thank God for international data packages and iPhones) and explained our predicament, I worked on getting transportation for 40 people. Only by the grace of God was I able to get a chartered bus to travel 2 hours from the nearest city to come pick up the squad at 10pm… seriously, only Jesus! Cody confirmed an Aim contact in the nearest city who could take us in and I had a bus coming #WIN.
We pretty much went through the biggest logistical nightmare of the world race. You never really expect a country to Not let you in and then have to device and exit plan out of thin air.
Sooo there’s my long story short, ha! For the full version inquire within 🙂
In the meantime, enjoy this video on the things my team did during our 2 months in Malawi.
Stay Blessed
Kim 🙂
