This Time for Africa!: VI. Leaving Malawi
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 Edit This
We left Cape Maclear early on the Saturday morning and Sean and Andrew split the drive back between them. It rained heavily for the most part. The majority of the drive passed very quickly but the traffic into Lilongwe was quite bad and it took forever to get through. We decided to go to the supermarket first of all. Got there and were as usual harassed by people trying to sell us things. The names they'd given themselves were creative and varied- we encountered Innocence, Respect and Captain Jack Sparrow. We also picked up our Schisto meds- all of us needed 5 tablets bar Marz who needed 3. We then went off on foot to buy bus tickets. It was raining and muddy and the backs of my legs were completely splattered. It was pretty gross. After all that, we were told when we got there that actually there was no bus to Zambia from Malawi on a Sunday and the next one would be on the Monday.
This came as a bit of a shock. I had no rush to leave Lilongwe (although also no desire to stay in Lilongwe) however Sean, Maryam and Rachael were due to start their electives at St Francis Hospital in Zambia on the Monday... We drove back to the camp to consider our options. The man at the hostel bar said he had a friend who could drive us to the border where we could probably get a minibus. A series of negotiations were carried out by Marz and she managed to get us a lift with the friend to the Malawian border and a lift with the friend's friend to Katete from the Zambian border for a price of 90000 Kwacha (this equates to 22.50 each). For a 4-6 hour drive this seemed pretty reasonable, especially given coach tickets aren't all that much cheaper.
Next point of call was to drop Andrew of at Nkhoma Hospital, where is going to be for the next 10 weeks. Rachael drove us there and we said goodbye to him at a very lush looking guesthouse (in terms of greenery rather than facilities.) I think Maryam and I were feeling more sentimental about the goodbye than either Andrew (who was going to be on his own - although in new company of several pretty looking European girls) of Sean (who had been travelling with Andrew for a couple of weeks).
Anyway we were all in bed and asleep by just after half 9 for a 5am wake up. Our ride arrived at 6am and I was doubtful that we would manage to fit 3 rucksacks, a holdall and my farads backpack into the boot. Somehow they were all crammed in. He headed off towards the border stopping every 5 minutes or so at a checkpoint where they would ask for his license/to look in our trunk/where we were going/his car permit details and at one point, they even did a horn check (!) in the hopes of finding something to fine our driver for. It was a bit ridiculous. I spent most of the journey asleep or lamenting the fact that I hadn't had a chance to buy my usual keychain, fridge magnet and snow globe in the way of souvenirs.
Eventually we made it to the border (I think it was around 8am, perhaps earlier) and got our exits stamped. Then our second car and driver were acquired for us and we went to the other side of the border to buy our visas etc. At this point we were being harassed by people asking us to use our remaining Malawian Kwacha to buy Zambian Kwacha. We refused /'d went to buy our visas. When we emerged our driver was standing with these crooks looking pretty clueless. They said we should change our Malawian Kwacha to Zambian in order to pay the driver (we had agreed to pay in Malawian.) We refused. They tried to tell us it was not right etc etc. The driver continued to look clueless. Maryam then piped up that we could pay the driver in Malawian Kwacha and he could then change them to Zambian with these guys at whatever price they agreed on. Neither driver nor crooks seemed thrilled at this idea and eventually that was that. >
We finally made it into the car, and our driver for this leg was really quite comical. He looked and had the attitude of a 15 year old boy. He drove at around 180km/hr obnoxiously parping his horn for any reason he could grasp at. He wore far too many bracelets and necklaces. He spent ages fiddling with his radio and then also would shout at top volume into his mobile phone. Any time this happened the car would swerve into the middle of the road and Sean later admitted he'd been at the edge of his street ready to grab the wheel. His tank was largely running on empty and at one point he stopped at the side of the road and seemed to get topped up with vegetable oil. Eventually we did make it to Katete though, though neither we nor anyone in Katete seemed to anticipate our arrival.
Stools: had been runny, but seemed to resolve somewhat (6 to 5)
