Thursday, February 16, 2012

Trip to Zambia - Part 2 (Lilongwe to Lusaka)

When we first got on the bus to Lusaka, we thought we had gotten lucky and that it wasn’t going to be very full. One side of the aisle had two seats together and the other side had three. We started out on the two seat side so that we wouldn’t have a random person with us, but we were actually able to spread out and each have our own seat all the way to Chipata, Zambia (the city just past the border). It was a little after 5 am when we finally left the depot; we had a nice hot breakfast of eggs, toast, beans & sausage from the hotel.

It was a quick ride to the border, just under two hours. No one from the bus company told us what we needed to do when we stopped at the border, which was a little frustrating. Kayla and I finally got off and followed the rest of the people to the Immigration Office on the Malawi side. I got a little nervous when they said my Temporary Residency Permit wouldn’t be valid when we got back into Malawi, but then I remembered that they give us a 30 day visa when you first enter the country, so I would be fine. When we came out of the office, we had a moment of panic because the bus was not where we got off. We quickly looked around and found that it had just pulled up to the Zambian side of the border and that we had to go into the Zambian Immigration Office next.

It is a little pricey to get into Zambia – we had to pay $50 USD each for our visa – but it was fun to have even more stamps in our passports! J We got in and out of the offices fairly quickly and decided to use the restrooms before getting back on the bus (because there wasn’t one on the bus and we didn’t know when our next stop would be). Of course, it was a paying toilet (K50 each – about 20 cents), though it was barely worth even the K50 to use it.

We started off again from the border and quickly arrived at Chipata, Zambia. Kayla and I assumed this would be another short stop, but we were wrong. We sat at the depot in Chipata for almost two and a half hours. This is where the rest of the seats started to fill up. I moved back over to the two seat side with Kayla so that we wouldn’t lose our seats and we talked while we waited. Neither of us thought to buy a Sim card for our phone to work in Zambia while we were here, or to change some of our Malawi Kwacha for Zambian Kwacha; we just complained about having to sit and wait and not know what was going on…

Just before we started to leave, a gentleman got on the bus that we thought might be a steward for the company, but again, we were mistaken. He started preaching to everyone on the bus and quoting scriptures about being saved, etc. It was an alright message and we appreciated that he wished all of us safe travels to our destination. We weren’t surprised when he started asking for an offering, though we were surprised that so many people gave him some money! He left the bus and we sat for another 20 minutes or so before finally pulling out of the station. The only good thing about having to wait was that was two hours less bus riding than we had expected. We knew the trip was going to take about 12 hours, so with our stop in Chipata, we were almost halfway there already!

The rest of our bus ride was a bit of a blur; some sleeping, shifting, trying to read, staring out the window, wondering why we slowed down and/or stopped at seemingly random spots – you know, the usual ‘road trip’ symptoms. We tried at one stop to use our Malawi Kwacha to buy a Sim card so we could contact Kalengule and let him know where we were, but it didn’t work (which didn’t surprise us at all). Kayla and I had a mini battle with the gentleman sitting behind us. We had our window open because the bus was very stuffy and the guy behind us reached up and closed the window. Kayla immediately looked at me and asked if I wanted it open and I said yes. So she opened it back up so we could get some air. He then tapped me on the shoulder and asked if we could close the window because it was blowing on him a lot. I said that we needed air and we could shut it a little bit, which I don’t think he was happy about, but there was no way we could handle not having any air flow as we traveled.

Kayla and I got very excited when we finally saw signs for Lusaka! J Though we again weren’t sure where to get off because we hadn’t been able to contact Kalengule yet and of course there was no one on the bus telling us anything. We figured it was safe to just get off where everyone else got off and that turned out to be a good plan. We gathered our belongings and saw Kalengule standing right near the door as we got off. He helped us gather our bags and took us to his car where we met his wife, Nsama. We were thankful that our day of traveling was over and we looked forward to meeting the rest of the Kaoma family at their home.

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