All I Wanted Was a Flushing Toilet

             Remember back at the beginning of the trip when we left a few days early to cushion any unexpected travel problems? Well we kinda overestimated because we arrived 2 nights early. The manager had previously told us that if travel plans changed he could probably take us a night early, however we were incommunicado for the previous 3 days and were unable to contact him that we would in fact be coming sooner than expected.

            Now Mayoka Village is beautiful and I will detail it more later but let me paint a picture for you. Upon arrival at our water front lodge on a rift lake (like continential rift) we have to go almost all the way down to the water to reach reception. I might be overestimating but in the state I was in this seemed like 4 or 5 stories, maybe it was only 2 or 3, I don’t know. I’m carrying an over weight hiking backpack on my already top heavy body. Actually I am trying to carry it. The previous three days the furthest I have had to carry it has been between busses, no big deal, but now I am scaling down a mountain. I haven’t used my legs in like 8 hours and before that I had been sitting on another bus for 18 hours, so my not-cardio-ready body is riding the struggle bus. It didn’t help that every single step was uneven and there was no railing to grip for my life. I don’t know if this was a decoration detail or due to the recent landslide but I just couldn’t wait to get myself into a nice comfy bed.  Actually my mind was being torn between a comfy bed and joining everyone else for happy hour drinks overlooking the lake.

And then I was punched in the gut. They had no room at all. Everything was totally booked until our reservation 2 days later. Good news is that they called the place next door and they have room and would love to have us. Oh thank heaven! How do we get there? scale back up the mountain of course! You have got to be kidding me. I huff and puff back up to the top just to walk next door and have to go back down to their reception. The Butterfly Space was much more natural, a super cool place that I will detail more of later but their steps, while were thankfully not uneven slippery rocks but rather uneven root systems with random bricks. Or maybe they were bricks with random root systems…We order our dinner, ask where the bar is, and get directed tour room. Oh our room is back up at the top near the entrance. This whole time I was kicking myself for not being more fit and active but then had to remind myself I was just on a bus for 3 days…but still. I once again gave my life an ultimatum, if I didn’t die going up and down these stairs I was going to have a butt of steel at the end of this week. Or live on the lake and never go back. (Sorry for the spoiler, but I came back and alive)

We get to our room and it is a two room beach shack-style all natural cozy accommodation. It was super cozy, like a small table, a bed, mosquito net, door, and two shelves. No mirror, which was probably a good thing, one light, probably another good thing, and a screen door. Not the luxury I was expecting to be greeted with upon arrival but I can be patient. Omg I am going to sleep so hard in this bed. Now lets get this girl a toilet she doesn’t have to pay for.

The accommodation we got was with a community bathroom, which thankfully we didn’t have to climb stairs for, just over the stairs and around a tree. Unfortunately I was then nearly pushed over the emotional breaking point, they don’t have a flushing toilet, it was compost one. Thankfully it included instructions on what to do. I’ll give you the reader’s digest version: They encouraged number 2, it was better for compost. After doing your number 2, you throw a scoop of ash, twigs, and leaves to aid in the composting. Close the lid to limit flies. Too much liquid is actually bad for compost so they encouraged that to be on any tree of my personal choice. Time 43 that I wish I was a male on this trip. At this point I had already peed on the side of the bus, in the bush, on a few trees, and in toilets I really should not have paid to use. While this was not what I was expecting at the end of my 3 day bus trip, I knew I would live. And lets be real here, this nicely built compost toilet with an actual seat and lid complete with a light AND instructions was much better than what many Peace Corps Volunteers around the world have. I’m just spoiled with a flushing toilet (#thirdworldproblems?)

Don’t let my initial reactions after an emotional 3 days influence your thoughts on this place. The Butterfly Space was actually really cool. It is about 8 years old and completely run by volunteers. They began as a co-op for volunteers to Malawi to come live and work in the Nhkata Bay community; it then expanded to welcome just travelers staying for shorter periods of time. They are really committed to limiting their environmental impact, they have solar heaters for water, they filter the lake water to use for showers, sinks, and cooking, they recycle and compost all food waste (human also), all their meals are made to order from their organic/local garden, fires are made to cook the food (only on special occasions do they use the gas oven and stove) and all their buildings are made from local timber and rocks dug up from the water. When we were there they were in the process of building a family suite and every day men would canoe up from down the coast line unload all the rocks then carry them one by one up the stairs to the site.

They offer really neat opportunities for people looking to volunteer in Malawi. For a flat weekly/monthly fee you can have living accommodations and two meals a day. They will then help to set you up with a local organization that you are interested in whether that’s a school or a health clinic or a business or what ever your dreams desire. Then as long as you commit to working a few hours a week with that organization you have free reign of the place. We met some really cool people there from all over the world. One girl had just graduated from high school, another was taking time off from college, an older lady had retired and was volunteering her way around Africa and then there was a French wilderness man who was really intense. Some are there for three weeks, some for three months, you make it your own experience. The owners ate meals with the guests, were interested in their lives and what brought them to Malawi, the atmosphere was just wonderful.

I would recommend it fully to anyone interested in in volunteering. I mean two home cooked fresh organic meals a day, the best tasting avocados and tomatoes in town which resulted in the best guacamole ever, and every morning we woke up and had nothing to do but sit by the one of the most beautiful lakes in the world and enjoy life. I can’t stress enough how cool the place was, it just wasn’t exactly the ideal vacation place for someone who was already a volunteer. But if you want that volunteer experience in Africa but don’t want the major price or time commitment of other volunteer opportunities, Butterfly Space is the perfect place.

Samosas? Yes I'll Have 5

             Just outside the doorsteps of our lovely little hotel was conveniently a fish market complete with secondhand clothes piles, fat cakes, soda pop, and homemade samosas. One of the final legs of the journey was upon us oh hallelujah and we were told to expect maybe a 1 or two hour ride up to Mzuzu. We find a few busses going that way and they heckle us for our business. We now feel that we are pros at what scams to look for so we go through the basic questions: how much is your ticket, does that include baggage, what time are you leaving, are you actually leaving at that time, if the bus is not full at that time do you leave still. Okay cool. Now what time will you arrive? 5 or 6 hours?! Well we were not anticipating that, that sucks a bit.

OMG comfy seats and Cher!

We wait on the bus in really comfy seat for about an hour, Cher’s greatest hit music videos are on as well as some 90’s classics. Derek and I enjoy ourselves thoroughly. The bus leaves the station with a few extra passengers standing in the aisles, maybe they are getting off soon or someone is and then they’ll have a seat. We quickly come to find out that they don’t and will not. I hope that it is against the law in Malawi and that this bus company was just breaking that law but the bus was oversold and there were many people that stood for the whole 7 hours. Yes this trip ended up being 7 hours long. I’ll return to this exhaustion later.

            Coming out of Lilongwe it was actually very beautiful. There were beautiful gardens and well maintained streets. I want to assure everyone that the hotel we stayed in is not an accurate representation of the rest of the city. Brandon tried to reality check my horrified face walking into the hotel the previous night saying that my standards were probably too high for a third world country. They were not. Lilongwe was quite pretty from what I saw.

            Traveling through the highlands of Malawi and in between taking non-consenting pictures of each other sleeping, and trying to politely ask the man standing in the row next to our seats to move his butt out of June’s face we absorbed the sites. Malawi is a tropical country, very green and lots of agriculture everywhere. There were fields of corn that stretched on for miles, banana trees everywhere, and tomatoes that were grown on the side of the main road. We saw that Malawi also has a timber industry and at one point through our open windows (remember the ONLY open windows on the bus because people apparently don’t like fresh air and cool breeze) Derek yells OMG throws the window open and takes a deep inhale of the air outside. It was pine. They were harvesting it and were burning some pieces, which gloriously wafted to our deeply inhaling nostrils. It was glorious and smelled like home. My eyes may have teared up a bit there.

            Don’t let my depiction of the sites outside the confines of the bus fool you into thinking this was an easy trip. With people crammed into aisles and the twisting and turning road through the highlands, people were falling all over. You’re probably thinking well, why weren’t they just holding on? Well you see, there were no overhead hand grips, just the shelf that people packed all their belongings into so that they don’t have to waste time at the end of their trip waiting for their bags to be unloaded (sound familiar?). I guess you could hold on somewhere but here’s the kicker, no one is wearing deodorant (in all reality, we really weren’t either…). So either they hold on to the back of your seat and fall on you if they are not prepared for the sudden curve or they find something to hold onto and you have the ripe human stench engulfing you. Sometimes you just can’t win and have the unfortunateness of both. Sorry June for calling the window seat on this leg…

            Just like with every other bus we were on, this bus stopped at least once an hour. Maybe one or two people got off and then like 10 got on. Not a good ratio but all we cared about was that we had seats. When the bus pulled up to the little road side village, just like in the middle of the night with the memes and bananas and little boys and hard boiled eggs, these people ran to the bus side with goods on top of their heads selling bottles of water, bottles of pop, bags of chips, boxes of cookies, eggs, bags of tomatoes, and our favorite samosas. They were dirt-cheap and so every time the bus stopped we would have our eyes peeled for a man with his samosas and then almost buy his whole stock. Oh and to wash down the greasy deep fried goodness, I’ll take an orange Fanta too. I like to see it as us eating our feelings.

            After 7 long hours we arrived in Mzuzu so close to our destination but we needed a break. We were overwhelmed with everything, we wanted real food, and to like relax for just a second. We found a supersize grocery store indulged in some deli sandwiches and set off to find a ride to the beach. We found a mini bus which was essentially scrap metal tied together with wire and made our way down the mountain. It was quite uneventful, maybe I was just too tired to think about anything but we arrived in Nhkata Bay found a taxi to take us back up another mountain to our lodge, we had finally made it. Or so we thought.

Our Bus Ride Through Zambia

 The bus finally rolls out at about 2pm. Oh thank the baby Jesus in heaven, we were on the road. June, Brandon, Derek, and I were nestled comfortably in the second to last row on the bus with an extra empty seat between June and I in case anyone wanted to stretch out. We soon regretted this choice of location on the bus as we were bounced off our seats at every speed bump. Either speed bumps in Zambia are deadly or the driver was going too fast (forshadowing – we ultimately found out it was the driver.)

About a half hour into our trip we had just exited the city and the bus comes to a screeching halt on the side of the road. Pretty much every single person jumps off and runs into the bush. It was like a mass exodus. Now I don’t know if there was an old lady or a little kid or this was a scheduled stop but we quickly concluded it was a pee break. All we knew was it was the last chance.  I personally did not want to drop trou in the middle of a foreign country’s bush so I did not partake however this was one of the many times on this trip I wished I was male.

The bus starts moving again and I’m so excited and relieved and ugh its so nice however I notice the little girl in front of me staring at her mother silently crying. Like tears flowing down her face. She was really cute and looked about 6 but her big brown eyes were just faucets. Her mother just ignored her and so I thought that maybe she was sad she was leaving Lusaka or that she wanted to sit with her mom or something like that (Hint: it was nothing like that)

Throughout the first few hours of our journey June and I attempt to play cards but our open window doesn’t want us to. I have found out that people here don’t like to have their windows open, like they would rather all suffer and suffocate in the heat and stench of everyone else than breathe fresh air and feel the cool breeze on your face. So we were faced with a really tough decision here and decided to call it quits on the cards. Another justification for ending our attempt at card playing was that we were now traveling through the mountains, twisting and turning up and down, seeing potential death down the cliff side out our window. Now I don’t know if this was just Zambian driving custom and safety standards but as we fly through the mountains every time we pass a vehicle on the opposite side of the road the driver slams on the breaks and swerves half off the road. So in other words, were in an overloaded bus in high altitude taking in the beauty that was Africa when all of a sudden you are slammed forward into most commonly the seat in front of you (unless you were unfortunate enough to stand up and move around at this point) then as soon as you can realize what is going on to then readjust yourself you are thrown to the left on top of the person next to you or into the aisle as the tires of the bus try to gain traction on the mix of gravel and bush and then quickly to the right as the driver repositions the bus on the designated road. I thought to myself that either I was going to die on this bus or I was going to get used to the movement. Neither happened.

Much of the beginning of the bus ride ended up being a lot of staring out the window, self reflection, and talking. We wanted to conserve our electronics batteries and doing anything else was pretty much out of the question. It was fine though, compared to the barren, desolate desert of Namibia, the rolling hills of green in Zambia were just beautiful. The only thing that slightly ruined the little bit of serenity I had was the little girl who was silently crying earlier was now throwing up. The first time this happened (yes there were multiple) I just calmly looked around seeing if I was just imagining the worst thing that could happen on this quickly moving non-stop bus. My friends had their headphones in so I casually looked under the seat to see if there was evidence of my imagination. There was none thankfully so if I couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it, then it wasn’t real. Growing up with a little sister who got so excited every time we went out to eat that she threw up every dinner my mom and dad bought for her, there was no way I could mistake the sounds of a little girl tossing her cookies unfortunately. It then happened a few more times to the point that we offered the mother a bottle of water and toilet paper but she just casually ignored it like it wasn’t a big deal. Whatever woman.

The sun set and at about 8pm we stopped at a small village with a bathroom and a place to buy hot food. There were little boys selling fresh hard boiled eggs and memes selling bananas for a dollar each. The bananas were delicious, local, and organic, I bought like 10 and ate them all. We jump back on the bus I nestle into a window seat and literally just as the bus starts moving the little girl has her tiny, crying head out the window hurling all over the side of the bus. Without being too graphic, let’s just say I now can’t open the one window I have access to on this stuffy bus. She did this every hour when the bus stopped for 30 seconds to let someone off. I felt really bad for the little girl, she probably had motion sickness really bad which is why she was crying so badly when the bus started moving. However my trusty travel companion told me yes its either that or she has some horrible stomach bug or parasite that we are now exposed to. Oh dear god I am going to die when I am in Malawi. I will get there, get deathly ill and die in my remote lakeside resort. Didn’t sound too bad, as long as I actually made it to the resort. This was probably somewhere around the 12^th or 15^th time on the trip so far that I thought I was going to die.

Aside from the activity going on in the seat in front of me the trip was uneventful until we get to the border. At this point there are maybe 10 people on the bus; the 4 of us, another young European traveler, two Zambians, and the mother with the pukey daughter. We get to the Zambian border post and all jump off to walk across the border where we will meet the bus. We wanted to stretch our legs and maybe find somewhere to use a bathroom. I strangely notice that the mother in front of me makes no effort to move. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she had some special arrangement where the border guard would come on for her or she didn’t want to leave her children or she had no idea what to do. We exit Zambia, and enter Malawi we’re super excited and we get back on the bus and meme is still casually sitting there. Everyone gets back on the bus and then a border patrol man casually walks on. He immediately goes straight to this woman, she shows her passport, they exchange words, and he escorts her very calmly off the bus while everyone tries to get her children to stay on. The four of us are extremely confused until someone decides to clue us in. Turns out this woman is a Malawian and violated her visa time in Zambia and is now trying to get back into Malawi as quietly as possible in the middle of the night with her sick child. I don’t know the specifics but it gets better, Malawi will let her in but with a bribe. Oh she had 2500 USD on her on the bus and someone stole it so she has no money. Like this woman was the shady-est person we came in contact with. You are on a bus for 12 hours and 2500 USD just goes missing while you are sitting by 4 Americans and you say NOTHING to anyone. Like no big deal my daughter is barfing her guts up in the back of the bus and I also lost all this money and I’m trying to get back into my country with a violated visa. The bus was held there for a bit while she took her dear time figuring everything out and thankfully we weren’t pulled into it with her missing money. Red flags were going up but the bottom of the line is this woman picked the wrong people to tag because we literally had no cash on us. They could have searched through all our luggage looking for this “stolen” cash and would have found miscellaneous currencies of volunteers. Sorry woman.

I wish I could say this adventure was over, it was not. We still had 2 hours to the capital, no where to stay, and no information on buses leaving to Mzuzu which is were we then could get to Nkhata Bay. Thankfully June had been talking to one of the representatives from the bus company for a majority of the ride (which did include how disappointed we were in the service we were given). He said that there was a place that we would be able to stay which was safe and the bus drivers stay there all the time. Perfect maybe this company is slightly redeemable. So about two hours later after a glorious nap across our own rows of seats the bus stops. We are not at a bus station, not even really a parking lot, it was like just a street but a street out of every iconic superhero action movie where someone gets mugged or stabbed and Peter Parker saves the day. Like fires in garbage cans and people sleeping under scaffolding. Now yes we are in the third world and this was a scene you could probably find in downtown Detroit, but being dropped here at 2 in the morning was not gonna lie, kinda terrifying.

Okay we need to get out of here and get to our hotel. Oh this building we stopped in front of is the hotel…. we grab our bags and someone bangs on the door. A big scary bouncer-looking dude opens the door and unlocks the padlock on the metal gate allowing us to enter. We go up two flights of stairs to a small desk that says reception on it and another man shows us to a room. Now at this point there are 4 of us and two other Zambians and this room has one double bed. We are informed this is the only room he has. Seriously dude, this place looks abandoned, there is no way that you are full. Okay well I guess we are all tired enough the 4 of us could share this bed. We didn’t want to sacrifice anyone to the tile floor, it was already cold out and this place probably didn’t have extra blankets. We convinced him we were willing to pay the money for another room if he had it, we just wanted sleep. The bus to Mzuzu was leaving at 7am and it was already 2 we wanted to get up at 5, there had to be SOMEWHERE to rest my head for 3 hours. Oh magically the room across the hall opens up and there’s another double bed. We’ll take it! We go through all the security questions: Let me check the door lock before you walk away, is this the only key to this room, how do we leave in the morning, okay Brandon’s with me, Derek’s with June.

There were a few really interesting details about these rooms, the rooms were really spacious. There could have been more furniture or more beds in each I guess, my room only had one pillow, and there was a mini fridge. I don’t know, whatever. We all slept like babies and in the morning we got out of there as fast as we could for 5,500 MKW each. About 12USD.

It's Like Sky Mall LIVE!

After our break down incident we find ourselves safely in Lusaka at around 5am (12 hours after leaving the border town). The sunlight is starting to break, people are waking up, and a big coach bus filled with out-of-towners is pulling into the bus station. The second the bus is spotted men beginning running. I wasn’t sitting in a window seat and was too tired to take in the whole site of it all but from the glimpses I saw and from June’s commentary of what was going on the running men were not trying to get on the bus. I thought it was like an airline situation where everyone gets in line and pushes each other and cuts in front of one another so that they can sit in their seat that much longer waiting for departure. Not the case here, these men were taxi drivers and bus station workers jockeying for position to get your business. No lies here bus stations are what I imagine people saw when they came up with the phrase “dog-eat-dog world” or “cut-throat” (not in the violent sense, don’t worry.) What I mean is the bus is pulling into the station, like still moving and completely capable of running over a human being and men are seeing June’s white face, pointing at it and saying “white person! Taxi!” and running with the bus next to the window trying to get and keep a hand on the window because they think it means they have their business. It was hilarious, June was dying and I was laughing too but not gonna lie I was kinda scared for my life for a second. It doesn’t help that as the bus is slowing down and coming to a stop at the bus company’s booth we look out the window and who’s face do we see smiling up at us? Brandon J June, Derek, and I now make the horrible mistake of opening our window pointing our fingers at our white man we thought we lost. This now gives the green light for all people outside the bus to now start yelling at us for a taxi or another bus company. We try to ignore them thinking that they will go away, not so much, we then start telling them we do not need a taxi, no thank you, we are not telling you where we are going, we are perfectly capable of finding it ourselves, thank you, please stop talking to me, get out of my face. Now remember, we are still ON THE BUS. Like the door isn’t even open yet.

Once the floodgates were open I got my expected airline experience with everyone in a rush to go nowhere. This situation however had the added experience of the taxi drivers practically stepping ONTO the bus just to ask you if you need a taxi. The people at the back of the bus are pushing to be the first people off, everyone has a bag up top or a baby on their backs, and the damn taxi drivers think that if they come to us while we are trying to step out of our seats I’ll just give them my business. They were pretty good about taking no for an answer but they only heard “No I do not need a taxi” if I was looking them in the eye. Lets just say it was a very overwhelming experience at 5am after a sleepless 12 hour bus ride.

It was actually a decent system that they have, aside from the hoard of taxi drivers at the beginning there are a bunch of people that wait outside the bus and ask you where you are going. When you tell them your destination they are quick with the times and prices and then begin to escort you to the company’s ticketing shack. We settle on the earliest bus we can get that is departing at 1030 (it was either that or 230) and decide to head over to one of the fanciest malls I have been in in Southern Africa to grab some breakfast. We cleaned ourselves up and then dined on a gourmet meal at the only place that was open. Okay it wasn’t really gourmet like you are thinking, it was actually a café that was part of a larger grocery store but like they had sushi and I had a salmon and cream cheese croissant with a mocha (which the mocha was a total life saver for what we were about to endure.) It was like a super treat, and very delicious.

We head back to the bus station and arrived at our bus at around 930. We found ourselves a whole row of seats intending to be as selfish as possible for as long as we could with the extra seat we saved to spread out with. The bus is filling up but as it gets closer to 1030 we think “yeah a whole extra seat to ourselves for the next 12 hours because this bus isn’t packed yet”. 1030 comes and goes and we casually think to ourselves “Well, maybe they are waiting for like a few more people.” The bus station was packed and we were giving the bus company the benefit of the doubt. (Side note: HORRIBLE IDEA)

As we sit there in our excited state of mind that we are traveling across southern freaking Africa we notice that there are numerous people walking on the bus with many items like a giant bag full of lunch size chips, walking up and down the aisles, hissing like snakes, and getting off the bus. I didn’t exactly grasp what was going on until a man shoved a handful of over gaudy watches in my face, I shook my head and then the man behind him shoved a bunch of perfume bottles in my face and goes “would you like?” These men were selling goods on busses to clueless travelers. It’s like having all the one-stop shops at an airport but now I don’t have to get my lazy ass out of my seat to get a pair of headphones, a bag of chips, and some boxer briefs. They come to me! Derek summed up all our thoughts by exclaiming, “It’s like Sky Mall LIVE!.” It totally was. There was even a few men selling weaves, in case I wanted a new hair-do while waiting for my extremely delayed bus.

Ice Cream? Yes please!

At this point we’ll say it is about 1230 and we’ve now been sitting on the bus for 3 hours. I begin hoarding frozen bottles of water because lord knows when the bus will actually start moving. I then began to realize that the amount of water on the seat next to me was going to turn into a super full bladder and a non-stop bus. So I stop buying but the people all realize that I purchased a bunch just to have and then try pushing more on me. I then try to have fun with them and say I will buy all their waters if they find me a mobile toilet to have on the bus. I don’t think they really understood because they just looked at me oddly and walked away. Fun over. I also asked a man selling watches if he had one that told the time the bus was leaving. I don’t think he understood that either.

All the while June is busy trying to figure out when in the world this bus will leave. Our irritation levels were increasing because it was now nearing closer to 2:30 in which another bus was scheduled to leave with a different company for actually a little bit cheaper of a price. The people with this Ronsil company continue to tell us that the bus is leaving in 15 minutes and we should get back on the bus so we can go. After telling us it is going to leave “now” about 3 times we’ve had it. We demand our money, oh you won’t give us the money, let us talk to the driver, oh the driver is no where to be found, let us talk to the manager of the company. The businesswoman in June handled most of this, but at around 130 I was beyond the point of sitting back and just needed to yell at someone. I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere, I was more so doing it to release the rage and frustration that had been building up inside of me before the bus begins its 12 hour journey. I get off the bus and start telling the young ticketing guy how its inexcusable to provide a service like this, and its disappointing that as a first time visitor to this country this is what I am experiencing so I wanted my money back or for the bus to leave now. I was trying to be calm but firm but when the man then continuously decided to ignore me, brush me off, and try to walk away from me as I was having a calm conversation with him I lost it. I don’t really remember what I said but I think there were too many big words. You know when you are really disappointed in a service and you threaten to talk to the manager and when that doesn’t work you ask to speak to corporate or the owner? Yeah well that doesn’t really exist here. The best I could come up with was threatening that I was going to give them a bad review online. I don’t think they even comprehended this concept because the response I got was from a random dude standing next to me, maybe he was friends with the bus wokers, maybe he worked with another bus, I don’t know but all he says is “Oh you know you are so beautiful.” My response was a snappy “Yeah well I’m a lot more beautiful when I smile!” I whip myself around and storm onto the bus. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with those guys but it was good to release the rage because we were about to be in the bus ride from hell.