traveling mercies...part deux

It's a long one folks, get ready!
So we arose early, drank some tea (please note that I did not get any coffee) and took off...this time for Lundazi. Dean (of Dean's campground) very nicely gave us directions. He said that the road used to be really bad, but they had been working on it, and it was much better now. He wasn't sure about the last 40km, though, as he had not been that far north in some time, so that could still be a little rough. This all sounded like good news to me. Lundazi is somewhere between 150 and 200 km from Chipata so it should be about a 2 hour drive (at 100 km/hr). Add in 40 km of rough roads, and you're looking at maybe 3 hours. It was 8:00, so we should be there by 11…12 at the latest. This won't be bad at all. Our first stop was to a "superette," (read: convenience store that doesn't sell coffee) to pick up some cinnamon rolls for breakfast. While the cinnamon rolls are a little light on the cinnamon, they are absolutely delicious. I'm not exactly sure why, but bread and baked goods in Africa are incredible, at least in our somewhat limited experience. We also picked up some juice and went on our way. Making our way north out of Chipata, the road was ok. It was fully paved, with no potholes, but the blacktop was grooved. It was akin to driving through a construction site in the states, where they've put down the concrete and roughed it up so the blacktop will stick better, except that this was the blacktop. Anyway, this doesn't really slow you down much; it just makes the ride really loud. So we were going, and we were going in the right direction, and we were going 100 km/hr, and I was happy. There are many less cars on the road in Zambia than there are in Malawi. I would assume that this is due to population density differences (Malawi has 109 people per square km; Zambia has only 15.5 people per square km. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density ), but I’m not really sure. What I do know is that in Malawi if a goat, or sheep, or cow, or any other crazy animal is on the road, they know that they need to get off the road when a car is coming. In Zambia, if one of the aforementioned critters is OFF the road and sees a car coming, they make their best efforts to get ON the road. Maybe it's because they're not as used to cars. Maybe it's because they're really stupid. I couldn't tell you the reasoning behind this odd behavior, but I can tell you that it makes your journey radically slower trying not to be the reason that some Zambian family loses their livelihood under 3,000 lbs of steel, plastic, and rubber. But we're still moving. After about 40 km, we have successfully navigated the road avoiding bicycles, pedestrians, minibuses, road crews (they were actually working!), goats, sheep, cows, other animals I don't want to kill, and chickens. Suddenly, and with no warning, the road ended. OK, it didn't exactly end. There was what appeared to be the remnant of a road ahead of us. The moon has fewer craters than 100 yards of what was left of the road though, and our Nissan Presea isn't exactly a Land Rover. Go ahead, do a Google image search, I’ll wait...
Did you see it? The first pic that comes up? The silver one from Sri Lanka? Yeah, that's what we're (I'm) driving.
So there we are in our 4 door, low slung, family sedan (her name is Rosalita, or Rosie for short, and she's a good girl who has since had 2 thorough cleanings and is resting happily) wondering if it's not just a better idea to drive back to Chipata, cross back into Malawi there, and drive up the M 1, which we know is a very good road. We decided it couldn't be too far to Lundazi, and the road can't be that bad for that long, so let's just go for it. They say hindsight is always 20/20. It was another 130 km to Lundazi from that point. The road never got better. It did get worse, at times, but never better. Our top speed for that 130 km was 30 km/hr, and that was only for about 20 meters. Most of the time we were actually driving off the side of the road, which was much smoother than the road itself. We have since heard the Zambian M 12 described as "a series of craters in the earth rimmed with blacktop." I couldn't put it better than that. We spent the next few hours going anywhere between 0 and 20 km/hr, trying to avoid the holes in the earth that almost certainly would take us directly to the north-west of Canada if we were to fall into one. Thanks, but no thanks. We also avoided more bicyclers and goats (though we still can't figure out where they were going to or coming from, this is literally the middle of nowhere). Eventually (many hours later), our path did lead us to Lundazi, where we stopped for a celebratory ice cold Coke and a short stretch.
We continued up the road a bit, expecting to see a boarder crossing, or at least a sign for a border crossing, but alas, there was none. So we turned around and drove back to a police station we had seen to ask for directions. As I approached the building, a very large Army official brandishing a very large automatic weapon just about ran to greet me. Now, I’m not sure of the proper etiquette in greeting a man with a large automatic weapon, but I thought I’d offer him a handshake and ask "How are you?" To my delight, the breadth of his smile matched the length of his gun, and he grabbed my hand for a hearty handshake. His English was very good, and he informed me that we just had to go up the road half a km and turn right on the dirt road after the airstrip. "That's the road to Malawi," he smiled at me.
"Great!" I was relieved that soon enough we would be back in the land of decent roads. "How far up that road is the boarder?"
"Umm," he pondered. "About an hour and a half."
And my heart sunk. My face must have too. His smile transformed into a look of shame for what he had said. I didn't want him to feel bad, so I put a smile back on and thanked him profusely for all of his help. We shook hands again, and his smile returned before I made my way back to Kate and the car. From everything we could tell by the lousy map we had, we should have been able to walk to Malawi in less than 10 minutes, but at an hour and a half drive and the lateness of the day already (it was about 4:00 in the afternoon by this point) it would be just about dark by the time we got to Malawi. I told Kate what the nice man with the big automatic weapon had told me, sighed, and started the car. She gave me a nice pat on the leg, and I smiled at her, and off we went.
We made the right turn after the airstrip and started down the dirt road. The dirt road was far superior to the "paved" M 12 we had spent the last hours of our life on, and progress was good. For the first time since about 9:30 in the morning, I got the car out of 2nd gear. I got the car all the way into 4th gear. My spirits were improving, and though I knew there was a long road ahead, at least we were moving somewhat fast. Kate made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and gave me some juice. We have an iPod to tape adapter, so through the car stereo we cranked the Toby Mac album Portable Sounds up to 11 and drove on. To our amazement and glee, 20 minutes after we had left the police station, we were at the boarder. A couple of exit stamps on the Zambian side, and a couple of entrance stamps on the Malawian side and we were done. No questions, no money, no headaches, just helpful people who stamp passports with great authority because their inkpads are just about dried out. There were two exit gates so we asked the Malawian loud stamper which we should take to get to Mzimba. He told us to take the one to the right, and then he came out and opened it for us.
So off we went again. Toby Mac went back to 11, and our spirits were high. There was still plenty of daylight, and the dirt road was in pretty good shape. This would be a walk in the park. Another 20 minutes passed. The road was deteriorating fast. Toby Mac was back down to about 1 or 2 so I could concentrate on the new potholes and sand traps. Tiger Woods has had nightmares about golfing on this road, I’m sure of it. I had, by this point, become fairly road-weary and tired. I didn’t miss all of the holes in the road and nearly got stuck in the sand twice. Kate was being very encouraging, even through her own fatigue, and Rosie was a real trooper. We had seen no signs of civilization, not even a hut, since we left the boarder. I wasn’t sure that this was the right way to be going. Soon enough, we saw a sign. It said that there was a primary school to the right. I took this as good news. And then a second glance at the sign. Across the top, in big, bold letters it read, “MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, ZAMBIA.” I immediately became paranoid that the loud stamper had intentionally directed us in the wrong direction. Kate assured me that he would not have done such a heinous thing and that we should just keep driving. I thought this was a terrible idea, but she was so calm and sure that I said ok. After a few kilometers, we came upon a mud hut with a couple of women sitting outside. I stopped the car and got out to ask them where we were. They didn’t speak English or Chichewa, and I surely didn’t speak whatever language they did, but they informed me that we were in Zambia. But, they pointed down the road in the direction we were traveling and said, “Malawi.” I still wasn’t convinced, but Kate made me keep driving. Another 15 km down the road, we came across a family coming in from the fields. I asked the father where we were. Again, we did not speak the same language at all, but I got from him that we were in Zambia, and that Malawi was further down the road. I tried to ask him how far it was, but that was too much to ask of our multi-lingual conversation. I thanked him, and off we went. Something about this man made me feel a little better though. He was very confident that we were going the right direction, and I started to feel a little better. Almost immediately we saw a pickup truck with Malawian tags coming toward us. I flagged the truck down and the driver informed me that Malawi was a meager 15-20 km further. The road was still pretty bad, though it had some good patches. All the same, I knew now that we were on the right path. Kate knew it all along. I would, literally, be lost without her.
Toby Mac had long since ended, but we still had some good driving tunes going, so I turned the radio back up, and drove on. Soon enough, we were at a town called Jenda, in Malawi of all places. We had literally been in Zambia from the time we left the “boarder crossing” until this very moment, nearly an hour and a half later. I still don’t understand how that makes any sense. If you do, please explain it to me.
We drove through Jenda and the road ended at a T junction. We assumed that this was the M1, based on our lousy little map. I noticed a roadblock, so I got out to ask the very large Malawian Army official with his very large automatic weapon if it was, in fact, the M 1 and if we should turn left to get to Mzimba. Again, he was all smiles, but he wanted to know our itinerary. I told him we were going to Mzimba for the night and then would head to Mzuzu in the morning to meet some friends there. He told me that was a bad idea, as the road between Mzimba and Mzuzu was out, and I’d be going way out of my way (or something along those lines, I’m not sure…I was pretty beat, and Malawian English is not nearly as easy to understand as Zambian English). He recommended that we go straight to Mzuzu tonight, to save some time. I asked how far it was, and he told me that it was 133 km from this roadblock to the Mzuzu roadblock. I thanked him for his help and went back to discuss our options with Kate. She and I agreed that another 2 hours of driving wasn’t so bad, and would put us at the Bible College in about two hours, which would make it 8:00. We called Randy and Marty, who exclaimed that we were more than welcome to arrive that night. Exactly 2 uneventful (aside from a couple sets of rumble strips the likes of which Americans have never seen) hours later we arrived at the Bible College, haggard, tired, and kinda hungry, but no worse for the wear. Our Zambian adventure had come to a close, and God willing we will never have to go back there unless it’s to go to South Luangwa Game Park in a really nice Land Rover.