We sadly killed our morning hanging around and doing nothing with a few dozen locals who appeared to be doing even less. All of us occasionally bought snacks and soft drinks from 5 little children who were the only really productive humans in a half mile radius. Hard working children and do-nothing adults seemed to characterize Mozambique. It’s ‘easy street’ after you have kids here I guess. Besides, who says a two-year-old and his 5-year-old sister can’t look after their baby brother while manning a muffin bucket for 8 hours every single day?
After waiting for an hour, I began to inquire further and found out Liam wasn’t the only one who could be accused of not listening. Our ride would not be leaving until noon. Sigh… I just wanted to get to Blantyre…
At 11:55 we climbed into the back of a pickup that had been there all along, with all the other people who had also been there all along, and … drum roll please… with the driver who’d been there all along. Not a single soul had arrived or departed from the spot in 4 ½ hours. No one had anything to do but sit all day and wait for a truck that left at noon.
The ridiculous, slothful, inefficiency of it all made me want to scream, so as 15 people, 3 backpacks, several colossal sacks of Maize flour, a few chickens, and numerous small children bulged out from the truck bed, I clenched my jaw. Soon, a light rain began to fall and a few more people jumped on. The 4-year-old girl sitting next to me was set on my lap by her infant toting mother and though I’d smiled at the youngster earlier, she was having none of it. With a grave anger, she stared down the woman who had given her life. That woman betrayed her, handed her over to a monstrous freak. She didn't squirm or even move a muscle, but several silent tears rolled down her terrified, resentful cheeks. Several other passengers chuckled as they watched the drama, explaining to me it was the first time the girl had seen a Mazunga (white person). No kidding.
Halfway into the journey we approached a military checkpoint. When our truck stopped, a tall, good looking, young man casually wielding an AK greeted only the 3 of us and straight away (in great English) demanded to know what trauma had befallen my face. When I enlightened him, he shrugged and nonchalantly dismissed the event with a laid back, “This is Mozambique.” Ha! I mean what did I expect? An accident free trip? Nope! Not here. Silly me!
At the border we were BOMBARDED with aggressive bicycle taxis, one of them even going so far as to fiercely yank a small child out of the truck in order to try and grab the backpack under him and secure our business. Powering through their pushy attempts to obstruct our path, we hurled ourselves inside the haven of Mozambique’s rundown Immigration Office. Our trio exited the country and a half hour walk through a wide, populated (which is odd) No Man’s Land deposited us on Malawi’s southernmost doorstep.
As a fat, jolly immigration official named Bernard checked us into the country, we asked him how often people used this seemingly deserted border. “All the time!” he proudly defended. “I see someone through here every day! Yesterday, a man came from Mozambique on a motorbike!”
After procuring free passport stamps, we were ushered into another room and asked to produce our immunization records. Although many, many countries are supposed to check your vaccinations upon arrival, I’d been to 46 countries and this was the very first border I’d encountered that actually carried out that threat. Nervously I handed over various scraps of paper.
I have purchased immunity to most diseases by now, but I knew it would take a sense of humor to get my paperwork okayed. My yellow fever shot was given to me in Bulgaria, and though I did convince the stern nurse to let me write my own name so it, at least, could match my passport, the rest of the words on the form are typed in Cyrillic, letters that do not resemble those in our alphabet. Happily, Bernard believed my explanation and then took a look at my typhoid and tetanus certificates. I received these shots in Thailand, which date-wise, marches to the beat of its own drummer. Thailand is 543 years ahead of the rest of the world, and so my birthday and the date my immunity is set to expire are both quite futuristic. Liam joked about how drastically he was robbing the cradle, dating a girl born in 2523. I passed inspection, though to be honest, I envied Liam and Gavin’s compact, organized vaccination booklets given out to would be travelers by the Australian health department.
Our next step was to change our Mozambiquen Metcash into Malawian Kwacha. Bernard notified us that not only was there no bank in the village of Marka, changing money on the black market was completely illegal in all of Malawi but, with barely a pause between sentences, he commanded us to “Wait here one minute and I will go find a man who will change it for you.” Running out of the door, he swiftly returned with a gentleman who duly changed our money. It’s so nice when the government goes out of its way to help you make illegal transactions. Welcome to Malawi.
Pockets full of Kwacha, we set about trying to organize a lift to Nsanje, a bigger town (with a hotel) 12 miles north. A wily man offered to take us for $24 each and when we laughed aloud at his shocking offer, he quickly dropped it to $7 a person. That wasn’t nearly low enough. During the entire (English! Yay!) conversation, he kept pointing out how he had to start the truck specifically for us, and starting any vehicle requires lots of expensive fuel.
Walking deeper into the village, with the hopes of finding some other type of transportation, we immediately were accosted by a hundred children, in our faces, screaming, “GIVE ME MONEY!!” at the top of their lungs. Totally different from the type of kids we’d come across thus far, this was both extremely annoying as well as being a serious distraction. Though shabbily dressed, neither the children nor the village was particularly poor and not a one of them needed food. At some point in Marka’s town history, some patronizing white idiot came through handing out money or other free things to kids and every tourist from that point on has been condemned to suffer the consequences.
Well, no longer, part of me wanted to smack their greedy, naughty, little hands, but the thing about children is, that no matter where you go on earth, they are all the same. Adults are so affected by culture, religion, and/or politics that it is virtually impossible to believe we are all part of one human race…were it not for the kids. At young ages, they are indistinguishable from children anywhere else on the globe. These kids were not ‘bad’, they simply needed retraining. Dusting off my nanny skills, within 5 minutes I had the entire giggling mass clapping and chanting “WEL-COME-TO-MA-LA-WI!” Just a little attention and retraining.
Finding not a vehicle in sight, Liam, Gavin, myself, and a hundred chanting children returned to the man in the truck to reopen the bartering process. To our surprise, the man was gone. To Nsanje. Without us. Gosh, it takes much less petrol to start an engine for us, if you happen to be STARTING IT ANYWAY!!! Whatever.
Just when we were thinking we might have to camp in someone’s yard for the night, a blue truck seemingly came out of heaven and our prayers were answered. Two ministers and an African hitchhiker were headed to Nsanje for the night, staying at a budget hotel, and then going on to Blantyre the next morning. Instead of trying to rip us off, they asked if we wouldn’t mind paying the typical bus fare for the entire trip. We did not mind.
Jubilantly climbing into the back, I finally felt like I was making progress toward the city of which I’d been dreaming. Blantyre, here I come…
Day 10 Budget
$0.54 muffins
$0.49 souvenirs for girls I nannied for
$0.36 soda
$0.46 water
$3.57 lift to border
$2.33 lift to Nsanje
$5.83 accommodation
$2.45 dinner
Total: $16.03
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