Somewhere Between Countries - Part V

I don’t really know where to start with this. It’s been almost a full year since I wrote the last chapter of our crazy train and bus adventure across Tanzania – and now we are back where it all first began; the photo I took from the back of a bus at about 6am, our heavy packs stopping the blood flow to our toes. We were beyond exhausted and extremely hungry but filled with optimism and excitement about what lay ahead… Malawi!

It was an incredibly cold morning, and our thin safari pants did nothing to stop the cold from seeping in. The other passengers were cloaked in cosy looking jumpers and colourful kangas. It was fully packed and the heat from our bodies being crammed so closely together created a little bubble of serenity that began to lull us into a gentle snooze. As the sun grew stronger and streamed through the bus windows, the blueish tinge that cloaked our surroundings was lifted and replaced by a warm glow. The vibrant patterns on our fellow passengers clothing seemed to come to life, dancing with the infectious music blasting from the tinny bus stereo as we lurched and rattled down the highway.

In hindsight, we would have been much wiser to take a DalaDala to Nane Nane, but we didn’t have that information on hand at the time. We were on an 18-seater minibus, thanks to our friend Robert Langdon, which was heading in the right direction. The bus did stop at Nane Nane, a much smaller and far more reliable ‘bus exchange’ a few kilometres out of town. Here we collected a few more passengers that would not fit, as there were no seats left, and a few passengers took advantage of the corn being cooked on the roadside braai. Again – in hindsight, purchasing an ear or two of corn would have been a great idea, but we were firmly wedged into our seats by this point, and moving seemed like too much effort.

Before we took off, a last-minute passenger boarded; a young lady in a bright red kanga, who kept her eyes down as she walked toward the back of the bus. The cranky bus driver yelled at her to take a seat, but there were none, so she began to prepare to sit on the bus floor. It was cold down there; my numb feet could attest to that, and no-one deserves to sit on a scabby bus floor, so I offered her my seat, the idea being I could sit on my pack. I wasn’t sure how to mime that, and she graciously refused. As an alternative I offered her my backpack as a seat in the isle. At first, she refused with hand gestures, and I argued back with her, in English and bad miming… I was never very good at acting. I put my pack on the floor and sat on it quite heavily, bouncing up and down a few times to prove my point; her small frame would not affect the contents of my pack. She smirked, nodded, and took her seat on my pack in the aisle of the bus. I took my seat again, grateful for the blood flow returning to the lower half of my legs. The bus driver glared, I shrugged and smiled back at him.

As we trundled off, the lady turned and made eye contact with me. Her brows furrowed together as she concentrated “Madam”… she paused “thank you”. I don’t know if it was the severe fatigue, the lack of food, or the emotion in her voice, but I felt extremely teary about the whole thing. I only wish I knew how to reply. ‘Hakuna Matata’ seemed to lack the sentiment appropriate for that moment (damn you Lion King!). Either way, it was cemented in my mind that this would be a good journey.

The rest of this bus ride is a bit of a blur to be honest; I think we stopped off a few times, and the journey was a couple of hours. Dom had a bunch of annoying teenagers doing what they do best – poking him through the gaps in the seat and just being general pains in the ass. Something teenagers do in every country in the world. He did his best to ignore them, but when another passenger spotted them slipping their hands into Dom’s pockets in an attempt to grab some cash, and saw Dom's hand clamp down on the youngster's like a massive vice grip, they were politely asked to leave the bus by the driver.

There were multiple stops with friendly new characters getting on while others departed, providing a constant flow of new people to chat to. At this point though, we were so tired that we mainly just stared into space with our mouths open; not really asleep, but also not really awake. Gradually the number of people on the bus reduced to just a handful of us. We were able to spread out a bit more, remove our jumpers and watch the scenery change once again as the thermometer crept upwards.

Around mid-morning the bus started to slow and made a turn-off onto a dirt road, coming to an abrupt stop. I figured we were now at Kasumulu, a town close to the Songwe River Crossing. Up ahead we could see the road continued with a trickle of people walking and using bikes to traverse it. We asked the driver how much longer. He advised us we could either walk or catch a motorbike to the border. He asked another man to start carrying our bags towards a stand of rather average looking motorbikes. I looked at Dom to see if I was the only one who thought riding dinkie on the back of a motorbike while balancing our packs, and day packs, was a bad idea. I was not alone.

“Whoa whoa whoa” said Dom, “can we walk?”

“If you like” came the reply, “but it’s hot, and it’s about a kilometre away” He raised an eyebrow as his gaze flicked between myself and Dom.

He was right – the sun had a real kick to it by now, and the thin safari pants which were earlier severely inadequate, now seemed like an overkill. Our 20kg backpacks were not looking all that inviting either. I looked over to a lady walking towards the border crossing carrying a stack of belongs on her head and felt ridiculous for considering the bike ride. Plus, the bike looked like a death trap.

“Thanks, but we’ll walk” we said in unison. “So, we just follow everyone going that way?”

“Yes. Good luck”

I thought that was a bit of a weird parting message, but we swung our packs on our backs, loaded our daypacks filled with our camera, passports & daily essentials over the front of our chests, and started our walk.

I think we were about 100 meters into it when I decided I was not prepared for the walk. A 20kg on my back and 8kg on my front was a lot more weight than I had been accustomed to. We had been on a safari for the past couple of weeks which involved sitting on our fat asses in a safari car, camping in tents and eating tasty food. It’s not like you can go for a jog in the National Parks. I mean, you can, but you’ll end up as something’s dinner. To say we were out of shape was an understatement.

The intensity of the sun continued to increase and the motorbikes hooning past kicked up the fine dust which swirled around us and choked our breathing. I looked over to Dom and exhaled loudly. He looked up at me.

“Fuck me” I exclaimed.

He laughed. Exactly. Whose idea was this hey?

We took small sips of our water which was fast running out, but with the border not far away we thought we would be able to restock on food and supplies. Most people heading to the border were happy and cheerful, they all smiled and greeted us with variations of ‘hello’ and ‘good-day’. They were all carrying much heavier loads than us and walking much faster than us. Slightly embarrassing. Eventually though, we reached the border.

The first step was to enter the Tanzanian immigration building; a big block of cement plonked on the searing hot bitumen without an ounce of personality or charisma to it. Much like the employees working inside on that day. We walked in, and lucky for us, there was not much of a line for international travellers. It seemed not too many Westerners utilised this method of travel or this border crossing. In fact, in the last few days, the only other international traveller I had seen was Dom – it was great.

The line for Tanzanian/Malawian residents stretched out the doorway. A little battered sign that looked like a relic from the 1950’s indicated where we needed to stand. There was no-one else in the line, but the immigration officer made us wait a good 15 minutes before he called me forward. Dom started to step forward with me, I think out of sheer excitement to be getting to Malawi, but a sharp yell from the immigration officer stopped that. Dom froze, and I cautiously edged forward.

“Jambo” I offered with my cheesiest smile. The end of the greeting fell away from my mouth as I met his gaze. He was not impressed with my poor attempt at Swahili. I toned down the smile a notch and handed over the necessary paperwork and passport. He performed the same ritual that immigration officers have perfected the world over. It doesn’t matter whether you are in Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, London, Poland, French Polynesia or Uzbekistan… they all do the same thing.

“Where are you going today?”

Resisting the urge to say “where the do you think”, I instead replied with “ahh, Malawi”

“Do you have accommodation booked for your next location?”

“Yes” I lied.

I didn’t even know how we would be getting to our next destination, let alone know on what day we would arrive, whether or not we would make it in one piece, or if our desired accommodation would have availability.

“Hhmmmpphhh” he replied.

He held up my passport at eye level and scrutinized it for a while; as he looked over the top of it at me, I did my best to look like the chubby teenaged boy I resemble in my passport photo. I threw in a smile for good measure. His eyes narrowed so I ditched the smile and held his gaze. He let out a slow and laboured breath and began flicking through my passport pages.

“Hmmmm… Zimbabwe?”

“Yes, just for one day. Beautiful.”

He looked up at me, eyebrow raised.

“But not as beautiful as Tanzania” I blurted out quickly with another cheesy smile.

He rolled his eyes and kept flicking through the pages. He looked up at me one last time with the stamp poised in his hand. With a grunt he bought it down with such conviction it felt like he was exorcising a demon. With his right hand he flipped my passport shut in one fluid motion and flicked it back to me while simultaneously motioning Dom to come forward with his left hand. I cheerily said thank you as I walked off and looked nervously over my shoulder. He now had Dom locked in his sights, and this made me nervous for two reasons.

The first, is that Dom loves a challenge.

I feared that the officer glaring at Dom may trigger some kind of epic stare-off that lasts for hours because neither party was willing to look away. Totally fine for the immigration officer who gets paid to intimidate people for a living, not fine for us... we had places to be, busses to catch.

The second? I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Dom’s passport photo makes him look like a terrorist. In his passport photo he’s got a big bushy beard, a death stare glare and he’s probably at the darkest tan level he can achieve… we’re talking Kalamata Olive Supreme. I find it adorably hilarious because the photo is so far removed from his personality.

Trouble is, customs & immigration officials don’t know his personality. To Australian officials he closely resembles a notorious underworld figure. To overseas officials: Terrorist. I’m not kidding when I say this – every single time we have flown, no matter which country we are in (including Australia), they scan our passports, let us walk off and then out of nowhere, they pounce. A customs officer will “randomly” select Dom for a drug swab. I always ask if they want to check me. They always say no, and as I start to move away; another customs official materialises in front of me and I get “randomly” get tested for explosives.

Every.

Single.

Time.

Occasionally they mix it up for us and Dom gets tested for explosives, and I get a drug swab, but we always get checked. It’s become a bit of a running joke with us now – we try and guess which official will be the one to pin us down and who will get tested first. Once I got tested for drugs AND explosives… at my request.

The poor lass looked so bored that I said “why not swab me for drugs too? I have to wait for my husband anyway”. I motioned towards Dom who was being patted down by a big muscly guard. “Ok!” she said excitedly. Good times.

All of our other border crossings have been in an airport; and with the exception of going to Zimbabwe for the day, this was our first semi-remote, solo, land-based border crossing. I was unsure of the protocol if they decided they didn’t like the look of us. I had read some horror stories about the Tanzanian Police Force and immigration officials demanding bribes for some ridiculous reasons. And I knew from my solo journey here a few years previous, they weren’t afraid to take a bribe. Luckily he was in a non-bribey mood. He gave Dom the third degree for a little while longer, then stamped his passport with a force that made everyone in the room jump with fright.

We were out! As we left the soulless immigration building and walked towards Malawi, we were officially in no-mans-land. There were trucks loaded with cargo, people milling around, unofficial money changers trying to convince us to come around the corner to change our Shillings to Kwacha in plain sight of the armed guards patrolling. It was an interesting mix.

We approached the Malawian Immigration building with trepidation; the next step was to successfully gain entry to Malawi.

It looked much the same as the Tanzanian building from the outside, but the moment we stepped in it felt different. It was still cramped and smelly from the sheer number of hot bodies occupying a small space. It had the same rickety fans lazily turning overhead and providing zero relief from the heat. It was still a big lump of concrete on a hot bitumized expanse of land, but this building had heart.

As we entered and made our way to the international travellers line a loud friendly voice exclaimed “Hello! Welcome to Malawi!” I almost fell over. It was an immigration official welcoming me to the building.

This was unusual.

I made my way forward to the desk as I needed to first get paperwork for Dom and myself to fill out for an entry visa. Dom hung back based on the experience from a half an hour ago.

“Come come come” he said to Dom with a big smile, encouraging him to approach the bench.

“We haven’t filled out our paperwork for a visa yet, so we just need the forms”.

“Ok!” he said happily. He came back with the forms and handed them to me. I started to walk over to the benches that wrapped around the interior of the building.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Just over there to fill out the forms, I don’t want to hold anyone up”.

He sarcastically looked left, then right at the empty portion of the building “I think it will be ok” he said with a laugh.

This guy. I liked this guy.

“Ah, I don’t have a pen”.

“Here” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket “use mine”.

Yep. I was now officially on Team Malawi.

As I filled out the forms, he chatted to us about our upcoming adventure, gave us advice on the best exchange rate for money changing, told us where to head for the next bus, told us which cabs were legitimate and which ones were best to avoid, warned us that taxis and road travel would be expensive because of fuel shortages across Malawi, taught us some phrases in Chichewa and just generally had a laugh.

As I handed over the completed forms, I couldn’t help myself.

“This has been really lovely; you are so helpful and friendly. Just... thanks”

“Of course” he said a little surprised and confused.

“It’s just that the officials in the Tanzanian office were a little bit grumpy, and not very talkative” I said.

“Well,” he replied with a chuckle, “that’s because they are from Tanzania, of course they are grumpy, wouldn’t you be?” I couldn’t help but laugh at his jovial nature while throwing shade at his neighbours. He continued,

“I am from Malawi; it is beautiful here, so of course I am happy.” He passed back our stamped passports with a massive smile “Have a wonderful time in Malawi”.

“Thank you, we most definitely will”.

We shook hands with the Friendliest Immigration Official On The Planet, said our heartfelt Thankyous and Goodbyes, attempted to use a phrase in Chichewa and failed, but got a belly laugh from our new friend (which in my opinion was way better), and left the building – into Malawi.

Finally. We had arrived.