Blantyre Walking Adventure #2

Kayla had to make one last trip to the Immigration Office to extend her visa for the rest of our trip. As with our first walking adventure (see previous post), we didn’t want to use the fuel for the church minibus, so we decided to walk to town. We went during the day this time so it was much safer.

We left in the morning after teaching English. The day had started out fairly sunny, but about halfway to town, it began to downpour. We got very wet, very quickly and decided to take a minibus the rest of the way to town. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long for one to pull up and we were both able to sit up front because the people had just gotten out. We knew that the price into town was K50 per person (about 30 cents), so when we got in, we handed to conductor a K100 bill. He said no, it is K100 each. I got a little frustrated when I heard that because I figured he was just trying to take advantage of us because we were white. So I said, “I thought it was only K50 from Shoprite to Blantyre; is it because we’re azungus that it is K100 each?”

He didn’t have an answer for me and the rest of the passengers on the minibus starting laughing and so I knew I was right. We didn’t give him any more money and they dropped us right where we needed to go. It was a good feeling to know that I didn’t just give in because I was told something and expected it to be true. Now, I realize that knowing I would only have had to pay another 30 cents is not much, but it is the principle of the matter that really counted.

We stopped at the bus depot area for a while because it was raining so hard. The driver started chatting with us and asked us where we were from and what our names were. We asked him for his name and he said, “George. George W. Bush.” and then laughed. He was really nice and we were glad to have a friendly driver willing to drop us as close to the Immigration Office as we needed.

It wasn’t raining as hard on our way home, though we were still pretty wet once we got to the house. We did catch another minibus part of the way home, mainly because we wanted to be able to say goodbye to the kids before they left for the weekend.

Kayla and I both felt like more seasoned Malawians because we ventured out on our own. I was also excited to show her another way to walk home that I had learned when we went on our hike during YEP Camp. All in all, this walking adventure was much more productive, safe and fun. J