Ok so the Peace Corps office is located in the central region, in the capital city of Lilongwe. It takes about two days to get there if you get good transport. Just to recap I live in Chitipa, in the northern region. It is the most remote region in Malawi. Anywho I was visiting my friend Brianna, a health volunteer who lives in Chitipa. She lives in Misuku, which is ridiculously hard to get transport to. She schedules her visits to the boma by ambulance so I did the same. I was helping with a project she was doing to teach her secondary school students different careers. I taught how to make mud stoves and how to make compost. Woo-hoo.
SO I get a call from my boss Weds asking if I could come down THAT WEEKEND to Lilongwe to help with the 'training of the trainers' before the new kids come in at the end of Feb. So if I said yes I would have to rush rush rush.
I said yes.
THEN I couldnt get out of Misuku. The ambulance came wednsday night, cool. We made sure he would not leave without me, even on a midnight emergency. Bree reasurred me that he never leaves her behind...So we are waiting around all thrusday for him since he is supposed to go to the boma...3'oclock rolls around. Yeah, he left on a midnight call of a malaria victum and left me...SO now its thrusday. And my hopes of getting to the boma early enough to bike to my house for nessesary things, reciepts, clean clothes, deodorant, razor, bathing stuff...not gonna happen. I have to travel GROSS. Im stressing out. Finally we get told an ambulance is coming to get me cause their dropping off a dead body in the village over one of the hills. Cool. (I try not to think about the fact that I'll be in a care, probably in the back where a literal dead body just was...There is no such thing as vehicle cleaning here. not really. SO
The ambulance comes around six and Bree decides to come to the boma with me to get some stuff done. We start driving, get a half hour down the road and there is construction blockign to road. No warning sign. Meanwhile both Bree and I are gettign motion sick from the speeding and curving road. Luckily im in the front seat but Bree is in the back...with four or five other patients. One or two of them start vomiting into jumbos (plastic bags). So now we have to back track to Misuku center where Bree gets out cause she cant handle the motion sickness plus vommiting (a guy puked into a bag then set it on her leg...in the morning it was NASTY.) SO now were are bumping down the long way, mist from the mountains sometimes completely obscuring the road. Animals are darting out of the road. I constantly have to push the guy next to me away cause he is falling asleep on me. His head kept dipping down to rest on my shoulder, jerking up just as it touched excpet once...then i had to jerk my shoulder and hasten his movement. Finally we arrive in town. I get to a friends, rearrange my stuff, take out unnessesary things and pass out.
I wake up early and head out to hitch. I break my rule of not getting int he first matola. We wait for an hour then i get fed up and walk. Im still walking when a few kilometers later they catch up to me. I hop in and luckily have the front seat again because it rains a little. I get to karonga and break my rule again, I hop into a minibus straight off the matola. Which is breaking another of my rules, dont get in mini buses. But there is no real choice because there is a diesel full shortage and there are no buses... SO we drive around for an hour trying to pick up more people. I literally am getting out of the car to get my stuff and the driver decided to leave. Luckily im sitting, where? in the front seat cause i only have to share with one person, and the driver. During the journy the guy next to me only does the sleepy head bob onto my shoulder once. I cant complain he did not smell, was clean, and not drunk. I could look behind me and people are sitting on each others laps, completly covered in Katundu (luggage) babies getting passed around, some people are without seats crouched over by the door. At one point I could only see Katundu, a part of a mans forhead and the back of another man, who was hunched over to avoid the ceiling...at least he gave me and extra 100 kwacha off my price.
We get to Mzuzu and I spend the night. My cold acts up over the mildew in the place we normally stay. I sleep crappy, and i hate travelling alone cause eating out alone and waiting alone sucks. I oversleep, cause its raining on the tin roof and i cant hear the alarm. And its raining, i have a flimsy semi water proof jacker on and my bag has no rain fly (smooth move on my part right? Buy a bag for a country with a rainy season and dont get a rain fly...) I start walking, 300 meters away a car is pulling out of a driveway and gives me a free lift to the road block. Awesome, now I can find a good hitch.
Well not exactly, the police stop the first bus that comes along and ask if I have money. The point of me hitching is to find a cheap ride. SO i say no, only 500 Kwacha (The bus is 1, 400) but the conductor says he will pay the rest. They all look at me like, ok its settled. so i sigh and get in the bus. Its not real crowded. then the guy tells me to keep my 500 and we will tell the other conductor I lost my ticket. Wow thatnks! Not only that but I got to keep the space beside me unoccupied by anythign but my katundu AND the guy said that whenever I want to go back to chitipa he will set me up with a free ticket to Karonga. SWEET.
SO even though my first day of hitching sucked and i didnt want to ride a bus and i was alone and it was raining, it turned out all right.
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