For those of you who don’t know, I am one of two logistics leaders for the W squad. Some of my duties include:
-Arranging transportation each month
-Prepping for debriefs
-Mailing receipts back to the office
-Making sure all the finance ladies are uploading their spreadsheets
-Keeping the office updated with where each team is and how to contact them
We have our fair share of interesting days throughout the month, usually revolved around finding a DHL, but our most ridiculous days are on travel days. Let me tell you, getting 50 people from point A to point B in 3rd world countries isn’t the easiest thing to do. For instance, our “4 hour” trip from Joburg to Mozambique 2 months ago actually took 15 hours and involved 1 easy border crossing, a 6 hour border fiasco (where we slept because it was 2 am), several extremely sketchy “bus stations,” running across highways for ATMs, and Godsend contacts who save our butts at the end of the day. Yep, that’s our life.
I’ve been thinking about which travel day I wanted to write about, and I think our travel day from Maputo, Mozambique to Mbabane, Swaziland is a perfect example. I’ll preface by saying it wasn’t supposed to take more than 5 hours once we left our ministry site.
6am-wake up and pack our tents up. We were all meeting at a contact’s house because Maputo doesn’t have a real bus station.
10am-We need more money for the buses so we send some leaders to the ATM
10:30am-Squad meeting
11am-Lunch with 50 people and all travel utensils that are supposed to be packed by the time the buses arrive
11:30am-buses are set to arrive
12:15pm-buses arrive. We meet with the drivers to see which teams would be in each bus and the routes they would take to drop off teams around the country. Also, they speak poor English and good Portuguese. Thankfully Spanish and Portuguese are pretty much the exact same….not).
12:30pm-Realize we’re still a few hundred Meticais short, but God is good and had the exact amount in my wallet.
12:40pm-Start packing the vans. I should point out that A)these buses have no cargo hold or trailer, so our 22-28 huge packs are inside the bus with us, and there are the exact number of seats for us. B)It’s really hot and humid, so I’m sweating profusely as we load the huge packs through the windows.
1:00pm-the packs are loaded, the people are getting on, and I am thoroughly drenched in sweat.
1:10pm The buses depart. There are 28 of us on one bus with only 22 seats. That means some people are squeezed into seats and some of us are sitting on packs.
1:20pm-Stop for gas. Why these guys don’t get the gas before they pick us up is beyond me.
3pm-Our bus overheats. Our driver gets some water, cools it down, and we’re back on the road 10 minutes later
3:30 pm-Arrive at the Swazi border. We all get off the bus, go through Mozambique customs, walk across the border, and go through Swazi customs. This was actually a really smooth transition. Our whole squad got through in less than an hour (that’s World Race code for lightning fast).
4:30pm- The first bus pulls across and says they will meet us at the phone store a few miles away while our driver gets directions or something.
4:40pm- Cory and I find out that our bus driver does not have a passport….WHAT?!?
He spends the next 2 hours trying to convince the border patrol to let him drive us across to no avail.
5:45pm-Since he speaks absolutely no English, we finally figure out that he is now trying to find a new driver for his bus. Yes, he is willing to give his bus to someone else and let them drive us through another country only to return the bus the next day.
6:30pm- We come to an agreement with a “driver,” only to have him walk away right after we make the decision. One of the border patrol spoke some English and informed us that the “driver” was drunk so had to find a new guy.
6:30-7:35pm- Cory and I are sitting around the Mozambique customs waiting for this guy to come back. The rest of the teams are on the bus waiting for us to come back. The power also went out and there was dense fog, so the whole situation looked like a horror movie. Oh, and the border closed at 8pm….Yeah, I was freaking out.
7:35pm- Our new driver comes and goes through customs, gets a rundown on the bus from our original driver, and pulls across the border.
7:44pm-We’re on our way again!
8:30pm- We ask 2 police officers for directions to the first site…in the pouring rain.
9:15pm- We arrive at the game reserve where the first team is getting dropped off only to find out that the power is out and we have no idea where her house is, meaning we drive around aimlessly for about 30 minutes.
9:45pm- We get directions to our ministry site along with a sim card and some much needed food. Apparently we only have 2-3 hours left.
10pm-Sketchy ATM stop to pay this new driver.
11:30pm-We turn down the wrong road and have to pull a u-turn on a random dirt road. I thought for sure the bus was going to get stuck.
12:30am-We make it to the city before the mountain and start driving up the paved part of the mountain. I’ve been falling asleep now for the past 2 hours but I have to stay awake because I’m in the front seat with directions and a driver who doesn’t speak an ounce of English.
1:45am-We finally find our contact’s son at the bottom of the dirt road to lead us up. If he had not been there, we would have never found our turn off. It would have been tough in the daylight; nighttime was impossible.
2am-Our bus stalls on an extremely steep hill. We pull all of our big packs off the bus and put them in the contact’s truck. We then have the girls start hiking up the hill and the guys push the bus to get it back into gear. At the top of the hill we climb back into the bus and follow the truck
3am-our contact drives too fast and we get stuck at a fork in the road. We wait 10 minutes until he comes back and slows down for us.
3:30am-We arrive at El Shaddai, unload our packs, and pay the driver. I’m sure this random dude hates us now because he has no idea what he got himself into.
3:40am-Our contact mentions that A) we have dinner waiting for us in the kitchen and B) we have church the next morning at 11am.
4am-We finally clean up the kitchen and make my way to my room.
9:55am-Nicole knocks on our door and says our contact wants to have a group meeting before church….
Welcome to Life on the World Race.
Now all of that my sound like Hell on earth for some of you, but truth be told, I really enjoy it. You don’t realize how much you need to rely on God until you’re stuck at an international border with a bus full of people and a driver without a passport. God’s great at giving you a paddle when you’re in the middle of Lake Titicaca without a paddle.
