Out Of Malawi And Into Zambia: It Nearly Goes So Well
Before we leave Dedza on that journey to Lusaka which is filled with potential pitfalls, we really can’t leave the pottery without a Monday morning tour of the factory. A willing employee named Owen walks us through the entire process from raw material to finished product, and we have to say that every single stage is fascinating. If you’re ever tempted to order any Dedza pottery, we can guarantee that the legend “handcrafted” is absolutely genuine – despite its global appeal this is very definitely a cottage business using only time honoured processes.
Yes some of the machines reducing the raw material to powder are driven by electricity, but from that point on it’s potters’ wheels with treadles, skilled hands delicately shaping the products and gentle touches creating intricate paintwork as each item is individually decorated. The identical and uniform nature of the items which are the finished products is nothing to do with mass production and everything to do with individual skill. Watching these guys at work is so stimulating: the potter revels in our awe, whereas the painters are barely aware that we are there.
Soon enough it’s time to move on and start the journey away from Dedza which will eventually lead us to the capital of Zambia, dragging the Toyota in its red dust cloak for one last slog along the potholed roads. An event free journey means that by the time we reach Lilongwe we have over the last couple of weeks covered 1,326 kilometres of Malawi motoring without major mishap and, moreover, without falling foul of Malawi’s notoriously punitive police.
We’re warmly welcomed back into the Lilongwe hotel like old friends, and then Leonard the car hire man provides the only hitch of the day by pulling the “card machine not working” trick which necessitates a detour to an ATM to settle in cash. Next morning Yami, a guy we met first time round in Lilongwe just over two weeks ago and hoped would be reliable, turns up fifteen minutes early, smartly dressed and car freshly cleaned, to drive us to the border. We are over some of the potential pitfalls already, but the bigger hurdles undoubtedly still lie ahead.
British nationals don’t need a visa to enter Zambia, but we’ve read accounts of demands for the 50 USD fee anyway, plus challenges about the length of your stay and proof of return ticket or onward transit, neither of which we have. In the event the guys at Zambian immigration are polite and friendly, slap the required entry stamp into our passports and we are soon through into a new country.
Our next perceived hurdle is money. Obviously we will need immediate cash for transport from the border to Chipata, half an hour or so into Zambia, but you can’t get Zambian kwacha in advance, and the border has no ATMs or official exchange bureaux. Black market rules the roost here and the only way forward is a battle with dodgy guys in the street offering ludicrous exchange rates. We’ve been unsure about this bit from the start.
In truth it turns out to be a bit of fun. At Mchinji on the Malawi side, we are surrounded by – and we mean ABSOLUTELY surrounded by – shady characters surreptitiously showing wads of cash and shouting out numbers. We ignore them and press on, figuring we might get a better rate on the other side.
From here, the huge hurdle, the major pitfall where everything could collapse, is transport. First we have to get to Chipata, our next one night stand, but we don’t have any local currency. Second, and by far the biggest hurdle, is that tomorrow we need to catch a bus from Chipata to Lusaka, and we don’t have tickets. Online information is extremely sparse, none of the bus companies have a website and the only piece of solid information we have is that the latest bus leaves at 6am.
And here’s where things could really fall apart. How will we get to Chipata? How/when will we get bus tickets? Will there even be tickets available? Even if we get tickets, how will we get from hotel to bus station so early in the morning?
More shady characters approach us over the border, this time offering lifts in clapped out cars, there’s not an official taxi or bus or even an overloaded minibus in sight. They tell me their fee.
“I don’t have Zambian kwacha”, I tell them. They go into a huddle.
“You got dollars?”. I do, but I tell them that I don’t.
We haggle, we barter, we reach a deal and we feel happy, even a little smug, with our work. Buoyed by our success, we play games with the next set of shady money changers and end up only being ripped off to the level we had budgeted for (and we’re not talking big numbers, we didn’t of course leave ourselves with wads to exchange, just enough to get to Chipata).
And then, from nowhere, lady luck kicks in, that dash of serendipity which cuts through all the crap like it never existed, and everything starts to fall into place. Our driver, amused by how we’ve conducted ourselves with the dodgy border people, introduces himself as Soven, and launches into helpful chat about Chipata, about Zambia, and, more importantly, about onward transport. He gives Michaela his WhatsApp number and says to message him if we need anything. We do, of course, need quite a bit.
So after dropping the backpacks at our Chipata digs, Soven picks us up again, drives us into town and takes us on a tour of bus company offices. He recommends one – the oddly named Power Tools Bus Company – as the most reliable, and the safest. “The others have too much speed”, he says, and we know exactly what he means.
Power Tools’ office lady is not only helpful but blows the “latest bus leaves at 6am” myth right out of the water: the last one is in fact 9:30. Tickets snaffled, Michaela asks Soven if he will take us to the bus station at 8:15 in the morning.
“Of course”, he smiles. My God, we’ve nearly cracked this.
Zambia indulges in what is known as power shedding – long controlled power outages to conserve resources. We fall asleep in enforced pitch darkness, fumbling around without power but more than content with our day’s work. So far so good.
Day 3 of the journey is upon us with sun streaming through the windows and exotic bird calls heralding the new day. The power is still off. Soven, still smiling, is here early and tells us he’s been working four hours already, having started with a 4am pick up at the border. Without fuss we’re loaded on to the Power Tools bus, backpacks in the hold below, smiling with a sense of achievement and, we have to admit, patting ourselves on the back. We’ve cracked this. There may be an 8-hour bus journey ahead of us, but we’re breathing a sigh of relief. Two days ago this journey was shrouded in uncertainty and riddled with potential pitfalls; now we’re on the final leg. Next stop Lusaka.
And then. And then we get caught by the unexpected. Our Power Tools bus leaves promptly at 9:30, we’re off on the road, all pitfalls overcome and Lusaka in our sights. But it’s not quite done yet: fate, which has dealt us such a kind hand over the last couple of days, decides to give us just a few chunks of payback.
Monitoring Google Maps as we travel, it’s pretty obvious that this is never going to be done in eight hours: we’re four hours in and nowhere near half way. The African pop music on the video monitors which was a cool and fitting accompaniment to the passing scenery at first is now starting to grate just a little. Food sellers board the bus or approach the windows at every stop, the landscape outside becomes progressively more dry, people snooze, the African pop music, more often than not praising the Lord, blares on.
Sometime during the afternoon a fellow passenger who is way too close to us for comfort has an astonishing bout of motion sickness and fills nearly half of the aisle of the bus with vomit. Time for an unscheduled stop for the crew to buy mop and disinfectant, but not until after we’ve all had to cover our noses for half an hour. By now, this journey is becoming more than a bit of a tester: we are getting the depressing feeling that our day is unravelling and our good luck is running out fast. Darkness appears long before any hint of Lusaka does and we start to wonder if we’ll get any food tonight. The African gospel pop, so appropriate all those hours ago, grinds on, praising Jesus, asking for forgiveness. Michaela is developing the look of a caged animal.
By the time the hot, tortuous bus ride reaches its merciful conclusion we are nearly three hours late: the journey has taken just twenty minutes short of eleven hours instead of the scheduled eight. We left just after breakfast, we’re arriving long after dark. For the last couple of hours it has taken an enormous amount of willpower not to put a hammer through those TV screens and shut the f**cking African pop music up for ever. It’s a good job we don’t actually have a hammer.
But, like everything, it’s over eventually, and even though the bus terminus is the very definition of chaos it takes no time at all to grab a taxi and reach the hotel. Never has checking in felt this much like salvation; rarely has a hot shower felt this good. Half an hour later we’ve had a couple of beers, we’re tucking into a decent meal and we feel human again, happily relaxing our tense shoulders with that caged animal feeling banished and almost forgotten. I even catch a sparkle in Michaela’s eye. She’s got that sense of achievement look about her again. We made it.
What can you say, huh. All of the things we thought might go wrong – didn’t. The thing we thought would be straightforward – wasn’t. Such is travel. Such is life.
Let’s get out and see Lusaka.
31 Comments
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
Trapped in a bus for 11 hours, all that pop music (probably on repeat) and then a crowning glory of noxious odours? Yup, I definitely would have felt trapped, too! Glad to hear you made it okay. I would have drinking beer as well!
Phil & Michaela
Didn’t rate as our best bus journey ever 😂
restlessjo
Good job you can smile, Phil…. afterwards! I started out thinking how great to work in that pottery, doing something you absolutely love, and then the woes started to tumble in… or not! Onwards, m’dear! No other way….
Phil & Michaela
It doesn’t rate as our best bus journey ever, but I suppose that if you live to tell the tale with a bit of humour then everything is fine!
restlessjo
I’ve been comparing your experiences with those of Tish Farrell many years ago. I don’t know if you follow her but I pointed her in your direction this morning.
Phil & Michaela
Aha! I noticed that Tish gave us a like this morning so I’ll take a look at her site, as no we aren’t followers. Yet! 😃 Thank you Jo.
Alison
Loving your positive attitudes, I would have shed many tears! What a relief to reach your destination 😄
Phil & Michaela
It wasn’t easy to be positive for the whole journey, I can tell you! And yes, it was good to get it done!
Heyjude
Sounds horrendous. My worst bus trip was Tehran to the Afghanistan border. Without proper toilet stops. I certainly couldn’t do that now. I look forward to seeing what you make of Zambia.
Phil & Michaela
This one only had the one (brief) toilet stop too. We were very glad to reach our hotel and seek refuge. We’ve had a change of plan on travelling through Zambia…more to come…but Lusaka is definitely a step up from Malawi in terms of development.
Toonsarah
What a nightmare that bus journey sounds! But I’m glad everything else went pretty smoothly. You do seem to have a knack for identifying, and quickly building a relationship with, reliable locals like Sowen 🙂 I was interested that you managed to avoid paying the $50 ‘visa’ fee. We landed in Livingstone from Nairobi on our way to Botswana, and border control at the airport insisted we pay it even though we were only going to be in the country for an hour (the time it took to reach the border with Botswana)!
Phil & Michaela
We’d heard and read lots of similar tales, of the immigration staff demanding the fee even when not appropriate, so were on our guard but in the event it was all straightforward and no skullduggery. That won’t go down as our best ever bus journey, that’s for sure.
Helen Devries
Even the use of deoderant wouldn’t have helped in that bus!
Well done with the money changers! It’s not just the dodgy rate, it’s the trick of folding the notes over to appear double as well…
Phil & Michaela
Funny you should say that…one note was crumpled in the corner, the others weren’t ….when I unfolded it, it was a 20 that he was trying to pass off as a 200. Didn’t get past me though, I was well on my guard! Not our best bus journey ever..
Monkey's Tale
I had to laugh that you mentioned the vomit smells and then food in the same paragraph! Glad the border crossing went relatively well, you never know with some of those land crossings. Hope the Powertool isn’t an indication of the rest of Zambia. Maggie
Phil & Michaela
Ha yes I suppose I did. There was probably three hours between the sick incident and starting to worry about food though. Yep, like we said, all the things we were expecting to be a problem turned out OK, and then….well, you know the rest…
Annie Berger
Another tale in your adventure to tell family and friends back home about, Phil! The bus looked pretty upscale from the outside – hope it was a comfortable ride on the inside barring the loud music and the sick passenger. Holding my breath until the next update!
Phil & Michaela
Fair to say it wasn’t our best ever bus journey I think! Eleven hours would have been a torture even without the “incident”!
Travels Through My Lens
I’m still chuckling at “Power Tools Bus”, but also your photo of the “Food Palace”; oh my. You certainly earned the beer!
Phil & Michaela
It was all a bit testing even for experienced travellers like us! Ah well, rough with the smooth and all that….
WanderingCanadians
Oh gosh, there are so many things about this trip that would stress me out. Glad to hear that you avoided the major pitfalls and that mostly everything came together, and that you even had a bit of fun haggling and bartering! The bus ride doesn’t sound particularly all that fun though, but at least you got to where you needed to go.
Phil & Michaela
It’s never the things you expect to be bad that are the worst, is it!? With our kind of travel you just have to learn to take the rough with the smooth. And that bus ride was definitely rough. Ah well. We go again 😁
leightontravels
Ah I really related to this topsy turvy tale of victories and defeats on the road. So much of what you described reminded me of my very early travels in India, particularly that hellish bis journey. But as you say, god do these ordeal makes you appreciate the simple pleasures of food, shower and rest more than you normally would. I used to blatantly keep watch over the luggage compartment whenever I could too!
Phil & Michaela
Oh we did the same bud. Bit of an epic, that one. All part of travelling our way though huh…
wetanddustyroads
Travelling through Africa is never straight forward … which includes some places in South Africa as well. We visited an incredibly beautiful place this past weekend, but had to drive through quite a few rural villages where there are no road rules and animals take precedence in the roads (even the locals were surprised to see white people driving through their villages). But patience and kindness (and faith that everything will work out) are finally rewarded! And at the end of such a day, the beer just tastes better! Great story Phil!
Phil & Michaela
It’s a fabulous experience, made even more fabulous by the fact that it’s not always in the comfort zone. Even the challenges are great, especially when you reach the other side….and get that beer reward…
grandmisadventures
I think I would have felt like a caged animal during that bus ride too, especially having to wait while someone’s gastrointestinal issues were cleaned up. I really love that you saw the haggling as a great game, a game that you won too. What an incredible adventure you are on 🙂
Phil & Michaela
It definitely is, Meg, it’s a real adventure. And where we are now is just amazing, more to come on that!
Lookoom
It can be seen as an experience or a waste of time. You are wise enough to consider the first option and make the most of it.
Miriam
Oh my, you two deserve a medal for all that. On a hot, noisy bus for 11 hours with the joys of vomit and induced African pop music. Makes a Vietnamese sleeper bus look positively luxurious. But you made it. Together with dealing with shady dodgy characters and wrangling exchange dollars. Well done, you really are seasoned travellers. Take care and enjoy the next leg!
Phil & Michaela
Definitely did not rate as our best ever bus journey!