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.