Trips to Zomba, Immigration & the Police Station

Wow do i have heaps of news!! My last few weeks, actaully my last month has been pretty action packed, not really sure where to begin!

firstly im having major immigrtion issues, which have caused multiple amusments and worries... but the short story is that immigration have refused to extend my tourist visa any further, and i must wait until the working permit has come through, for which all of the paperwork has been lost. welcome to malawi. I have made about 4 lenghthy drama filled visits to immigration in the last two weeks, all of which have been unsuccesful. But i am on first name basis with all of the staff there now, and they havn't yet thrown me in jail, so i guess thats a bonus. Technically i am illegally in the country now, however apparently its all ok because my paperwork is "in process" but i have seen there filing system... so im not holding out much hope. The only real issue for me in the short term is that i can't leave the country until the permit comes through, because they wont let me back in as i have over stayed my tourist visa... this is a problem, as i was really hoping to spend christmas with my good friend wheka and her family over the border in zambia. which would be just awesome!! so if you could all be praying for that to resolve itself, before the 24th December, i'd really appreciate it!!

Two weekends ago five of us decided we would hire a car and take a trip to Zomba for the weekend, so we loaded ourselves up in the car for a big journy. Zomba is about 350 km from Lilongwe down south toward blantyre near the southern lakeshore. we set off nice and early Saturday morning, it was fabulous to see another landscape, as even though I had seen it before, it had become a whole new world after the first rains. The land had become a vibrant green, with patches of freshly prepared land ready for planting, people scattered all over the fields sowing the maize, it was an amazing journey. I was the driver though, so had to stay 120% focused upon the road which is an obstacle course rated most difficult!! The driving experience is one to be both feared and cherished… as it causes adrenaline rushes, moments of panic, laughter, amusement, bizarre observations, and absurd discoveries. It involves dodging chickens and goats and bikes loaded up with people, wood or eggs. You will find slow vehicles full of all sorts of kutundu (stuff) along the road. And in all sorts of places along the road.

People have no road sense what so ever, which I guess you wouldn’t if you havn’t driven yourself or realised that its very difficult to dodge people who walk in the middle of the road and change their direction without warning any time they please.
You will find people standing in the middle of the road having a conversation, or washing their clothes, or buying magnoes off each other, scattered around pot holes as large as small children.

Every 15 minutes or so you will come across a village having their monthly giant market, so the road can no longer be seen. An oxe cart will certainly interrupt your journey atleast a few times each hour. But there is also a few hundred photo opportunity stops, especially with a car full of muzungus who had decided we would allow ourselves to be tourists this weekend. We took photos of some hysterical signs above shops along the way… including “pack & go coffin house” along with “Only God knows supermarket”, “Jolly Hardware” and “Tamara Safety Products” obviously the last two were my favourite. “We think we’ll fix it repair shop” and “School for Smart kids” along with “Hope for the hopeless Christians” so obviously a few sign writers need to work on their English, or….advertising skills. We also stopped to take a photo of a young boy with rat kebabs… i paid for one so I could take a photo, but quickly gave it back to him so he could re-sell it….eeewww!! we found a stall along an abandoned road, nowhere near any villages set infront of some amazing mountains… and the stall was filled with all different hub caps.. sooo funny, and out of place!! We finally arrived in zomba township around midday, as we drove in the town I fell in love with it instantly, it looked rather like Marysville or Halls Gap… actually probably not like either of those really… but they were my comparisons at the time, which no one in the car had any idea what I was talking about, but it just had that mountainy town fell about it, streets lined with trees and set at the foot of some beautiful mountains. We explored the local market which was soooo amazingly cheap that I was a little bit sad at how expensive Lilongwe was in comparison. We gathered all sorts of beautiful fresh fruit and veggies for our picnic lunch and then searched the town for st marys secondary college where we hoped to find steve, an avi vol who was flying out the next day to home after three years in the country. He told us all about his planned trip to Ghana, morocco and somewhere else?? i have a terrible memory! so we were all a bit excited for him. I scored a whole stack of books, and as he’s a giant CS lewis fan, i was rather pleased with the selection... and heaps of cds that he was trying to find a home for, so that was rather exciting.

We then headed for the mountain, and I quickly realised the journey would not be easy with 5 people in the car, in a normal sedan vehicle on roads that were not very easy to manage. The real road finished pretty quickly and we were told it was another 5km to our destination... it took nearly 40mins to travel that 5km... but we made it in the end. I should take up professional mountain rally car driving i think... i seem to have a hidden talent!!

Our accomodation was AMAZING!! we were staying in a lodge on the edge of the mountain near the top of the plateau (spelling). It was the most amazing little cottage with a view as far as your eyes could see!! i took about a hundred photos, especially as the sun went down. The sights and sounds and smells were so fantastic, that there was nothing i could do to capture them enough in my mind, photos didn't do it, words definately can't, and you really can't record the sound of birds and monkeys that are all new, and different and fascinating. i wish i could put the smell in a bottle. The mountain was filled with the greenest and freshest of trees, of which there is a massive shortage down below as everyone cuts thm down for fuel with absolutly no regeneration plans set in place... so the difference to be amongst the trees was so refreshing and beautiful. the cottage had no electricity, and yet we had a ten course meal (maybe an exageation), that was just sensational. we played cards and Bau for hours and hours. Before finishing off the most fabulously relaxing and peaceful evening by lying out on the grass under the stars that were brighter than i have ever seen here in malawi with the sound of the monkeys and baboons fighting over the trees in the distance. i thought about the disapointment of missing the U2 cncert that same evening at home, but decided if i had to be doing something else...it wasn't a bad swap!!!!!! The next morning i walked a little way and found a giant rock that perched out over the whole world... well it felt like that! and it was so breathtaking and peaceful that i didn't want to ever move. so we sadly had to say goodbye to our amazingly relaxing weekend to venture home again. we left in plenty of time to explore the top of the zomba plateau, to walk the waterfalls and do our weely shopping on the way down the mountain, as here you can find the freshest an most amazing blackberries, rasberries, strawberries, passionafruit, logan berries, mulberries, yellow berries & mangoes.

But... little did we know what was in store for our return journey... we certinly hadn't planned on getting hit by a truck or spending the afternoon in the police station having enlightening experiences of the malawi justice system....... but you never can plan these things really, after all, it is malawi.

I was driving, and it wasn't an easy job even on straight roads... but as we came around a corner i could see the truck approaching at a rather fast speed. I moved the car as far left as was possible on the edge of a cliff... and he slowed a little bit, but definately not enough, and the back of his truck hit the back of our car as he swung around the corner... and im talking a big truck to!!! he didn't stop at first, but we were pleased to see that the car behind his was a police vehicle which happened to have a traffic policemen inside (miracle number one) actually, now in retrospect, the first of the miracles was that we didn't go over the cliff!!! Anyway, its a rather long story, but we were all safe, there was a mighty big dent and loose bumper bar on our hired vehicle, the truck had insurance which expired the day before, we spent hours in the police station, and we sat back and watched an amazing display of totally absurd justice system politics as we fought for our rights, but also observed a really twisted system unfold before our eyes. our car was patched up for us so we could travel home...many hours after we had planned (and without our fresh fruit... which annoyed us all greatly!) so it certainly was a dampener at the end of our trip... but we were certainly pleased to be safe & alive, acknoweldging that God was definately looking after us that day!!

So sadly we had to drive home in the dark... which wasn't much fun!!

There is an interesting system of warning signals and communication between drivers, but I don’t think there is any consistency to it at all, which I find rather amusing. If a vehicle is in front of you and puts his right indicator on (without actually moving anywhere himself) this means one of a number of things. It might mean its not safe to pass now, or it might mean it is safe to pass now. Now… without to much thought on this, you can see there is a major problem here given that most drivers have a different code for these messages…!! And interestingly, the right indicator does not mean I am about to pass someone in front of me, and it doesn’t mean im about to turn right… (as we would all expect) and how I now this is that they never use the indictor on either of these occasions. Which as you could imagine also cuases some scary situations. Two indicators means its safe to pass on either side (!!... or atleast some cars have thought that and attempted it) and it may mean something is happening up ahead… but usually the universal code for slow down, there is something of hazard up ahead is a whole stack of branches and bushes along the road…. On the road… but often these well meaning clowns who are warning you, usually create an extra hazard because sometimes these branches look as big as trees.

We came across a set of traffic lights coming into town on the way home which had both the red and green light turned on. So we took an average of the two and pretended it was amber.

Some cars have no lights, some have only one, some have no high beams, and others have their high beams stuck in the on position. some cars forget which side of the road is theres once th sun goes down, and others seem to think its a nice decoration to turn your lights on and off and on and off for no reason as all!! so to finally arrive safely in lilongwe some 5 hours after we planned, with rain and lightening for further decoration and amusement, was certainly a relief, but an experience that took me many days to recover from!!