At 5am we woke to Paige’s preset watch alarm, packed everything up in the pitch dark by Maglite, knocked on Gilbert’s door to wake him up, and the three of us drove out to the intercity bus terminal rubbing our weary eyes in the hazy bleakness of a Lusaka pre-dawn morning. As the light began to break over the smoky garbage-strewn landscape, our confidence regained its full composure and we suddenly had all the strength to not only get through and conquer this leg of our trip, but damnit, to enjoy it too. We were excited to be heading into Malawi, excited to see a huge expanse of the Zambian countryside, and excited to hang out with a busload full of locals all day. Maybe it wouldn’t actually be so bad, I mean, if we really wanted to just get to Lilongwe then we should just pay a buttload of money and charter a flight there. But that just wasn’t an option, and not necessarily for the monetary issue: we really liked the experience of getting from "A" to "B." This would be the greatest trip we ever took.

Brimming with newfound confidence and excitement, we said our heartfelt good-byes to Gilbert in front of the terminal, shouldered our packs and headed between the soon-to-be set up hawker booths towards our Lilongwe bus. Chaos all over again.

Paige immediately got on the bus (and in our "reserved seats) while I organized getting our packs up on the roof and strapped down. No way were we going to spend 16 hours with our packs in our laps or crushed against our legs again like in Zimbabwe. We’d try to watch them, but if something happened to them, then so be it, we were not going to be overly paranoid if we could help it. I watched in the growing morning light as our packs and the belongings of others made their way through the system of workers hauling them up the side of the bus and then strategically stacking them skywards, always ready for both more stuff and the possibility of an armoire or king sized headboard or something. These guys were good.

After the packs were safely crushed and tied down into place on the roof, this little guy suddenly approached me by the side of the bus and started talking. His eyes were blood-red, his speech was slurred almost beyond comprehension (not to mention that his English was nearly non-existent anyway) and it was painfully obvious that he was extremely high on some
intense drug. After a frustrating and frightening attempt at understanding, I finally got that he wanted me to pay him tourist money so that my bag would be watched in case there were any "thieves" scoping them out. Did this mean that he would watch my bag as it was heisted away, or that he was offering to notify me if something happened or even stop the robbery himself? A quick reality check, and it was painfully clear to me that I’d better pay this guy some money - not to protect my bag, but to pay him off for NOT stealing my bag. Who knows, if I refused to pay he might get angry in his drugged stupor and vow vengeance on our bags. A little inexpensive precaution never hurt anyone, and although he was demanding K5,000, I offered him K1,500 and he walked away with a gleam in his blood-engorged eyes. Maybe he was offering to protect our bags...all I figured was that I’d just paid some stranger NOT to steal them, and that it was an investment that I was prepared to make over and over again, given the opportunity.

It was now just past 6am, but the bus didn’t seem anywhere near ready to leave. Paige wanted to stay on the bus, figuring that she was less conspicuous to staring locals there than out in the open, but I figured that I better enjoy walking around while I could because I was on the cusp of a long day of sitting. I took the opportunity to strategically place myself in a spot amidst the chaos where I could see a bunch of different buses going about their morning business. People were everywhere, talking, yelling, coercing, selling, haggling, arguing, screaming, spitting...chaos. At one point, two different buses, both going to Harare, were parked near each other which allowed the drivers to yell at and then argue over every potential customer. These buses really don’t leave until they are as full as they can possibly be, so each and every person walking by is an incredibly important commodity. About ten guys, all workers for the two buses, were screaming bloody murder at each other, getting right in each others’ faces and gesturing wildly.

Finally, one of the buses started up its engine, put it in gear and strategically pulled the bus up alongside of the other so that it blocked the entrance to the door within an inch. The blocked driver absolutely erupted, standing on the other driver’s front grille and seemingly preaching: shouting, screaming and waving his hands all over the place. I couldn’t understand a single word they were saying, but it really didn’t matter at all. After ten more minutes of pure screaming hell, the blocked bus pulls forward, only to have the other bus again start up and pull within inches, again totally blocking the door. This was better than anything on TV! I never would have believed that such an intense and physical competition for passengers was the integral part of the business...but there it was unfolding in front of me. I pulled out a banana and slowly peeled it, savoring every bite as I re-immersed myself in the action.

The yelling and screaming finally came to a head when the blocked driver, realizing that he was fighting a losing battle, lost it completely and hurled himself in the throng of workers for the other driver, swinging his fists and hoping for contact. But it ended anticlimactically as the workers easily withheld the driver, tried to calm him down and took him back to his bus. Beaten but still needing to save his dignity, he proceeded to stand alone preaching at the other bus, who were now completely ignoring him, until he finally got back in his own bus, pulled out and parked it across the lot away from the "destination-Harare" winner. I was sad to see it end. I wanted more.

It was now 7am and our bus still wasn’t showing any signs of getting ready to leave. Paige was still happy on the bus, so I thought I’d continue hanging around outside. Again, I was the only white around, at least as far as I could see, and was constantly approached by locals. This was actually pretty cool because the ratio of nice people and comments to fuckers was about 10-1. Most people just want to say "hi," ask where you’re going, where you’re from and then move on with a huge smile. But every once in awhile, and usually in a group as opposed to an individual, I would get approached by a few guys who would proceed to taunt and fuck with me in a mixture of their language and severely broken English, laughing meanly and trying to get me riled.

These instances would usually go something like, "Hey Mista white man, you sooooo white, you go home, you get outta here, why don’t you give us some money, yeeeeeaaaah whitey white man!" Don’t really know how to respond to something like that, but if they actually asked me a question I’d usually try to answer. For example, "Hey white man, how you doing today?" might be answered by, "Well, I’m actually feeling pretty damn white," but unfortunately this bleak attempt at humor was usually lost on the taunters. Losing interest, they’d move on and leave me alone to survey the chaos.

About 7:30 I relented and got on the bus. The seats were just about full, the top was loaded with so much stuff it was beyond me how the roof didn’t cave in, and our packs were sufficiently and safely jammed in the middle of it all. We did get our reserved seats, and once the driver saw me sitting down he came over to claim his rightful money – it was an arrangement that was definitely beneficial for both parties. We were really relieved not to be stuck in the back, even more relieved that we didn’t have to be separated, and even more relieved that my spastic bowel didn’t seem to be making an appearance today. I vowed not to rock my internal boat by completely refraining from eating a single thing the whole day - better to be starving and emaciated than shitting my pants in front of strangers. You can quote me on that one.

Suddenly the drugged-out extortionist appeared at my window calling to me in a freaky whisper. "Miiiiiiister...Miiiiiiiiister!" I reluctantly gave him my attention and he proceeded to attempt to communicate with me, but I honestly had no idea what he was trying to say.

I nodded my head a few times, noticed that he was smiling, and figuring that that had to be a good thing, said "Hey thanks a lot for your help!" and waved him off with a smile, turning back towards Paige. I sneaked a peak outside and watched as he turned and walked away confused, either he was trying to extort additional money, was telling me that my bag was in fact safe and that I had made the correct decision, or was trying to buy my wife. Either way, I was confident that I had handled the situation in a textbook manner.

Again, like back in Bulawayo, hawkers were everywhere trying to make a sale: walking up and back alongside of the bus, yelling at every window and sticking their fruit or wares in peoples’ faces trying to induce interest, and then completing their sales tactics by getting on board and slowly walking up and down the aisle giving the "personal treatment" of sticking their fruit or wares in every face. This is constant. Also, for some reason, all the hawkers seem to understand "no" from the rest of the locals, but our "no’s" would go unheard. We tried different things, yelling "NO!" pretending not to hear them and talking to each other, telling them we already have a rotting piece of pineapple or whatever it is they were selling, but we found that the best tactic was to just ignore them completely. Hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is, and this fact is not lost in the world of sales. Hate is attention, indifference is pain.

Then, with a ear-piercing roar, the engine came to life at 8am, signaling that it was finally time to go. I turned around; every seat and then some were full. But suddenly and without warning, another 50 people stampeded the bus to get on; they’d been waiting outside like me, not wanting to get tired of sitting, but not really caring anyway because they knew they didn’t have a seat to begin with. This group proceeded to first park their butts in the aisle (starting with an enormous lady right there in the front of the bus directly next to Paige), then when that filled up, they began climbing over the aisle people, over the seats, over the people sitting in the seats to find any area whatsoever that could support their body weight for the next 16 hours. Personal space is for sure not a concept in Africa. People were on the back of our seat, up in the overhead rafters, standing on and over the aisle people, smushed against the "seat" people - it was ugly. No less than five separate people had body parts smashed against every other person - even me who was sitting in the window seat next to Paige. The bus revved up and slowly pulled out of the dirt lot, gusting dust and garbage up around us, and jostling everybody against and into everyone else. Sixteen hours to go baby.

Two minutes into the ride, the bus pulled into a gas station to load up on petrol, and there we proceeded to sit for 45 agonizing minutes doing nothing. Even though everybody had fought and battled their way for their own space, every single person plowed off that bus like they’d been cooped up on it for the entire day instead of 120 seconds. But I can’t blame them, we were relieved to get off and walk around again. We joined the 50+ line to the sole unflushable toilet and then just stood around the bus waiting for the driver and his helpers to come back from wherever they went. After a half hour we finally saw them sitting down in a nearby shanty-restaurant shoveling down heaps of breakfast. People on the bus started getting angry and yelling at them to hurry up (actually, I have no idea what they were yelling, but "Hurry Up you f-in
imbeciles!" was definitely the appropriate thing to scream), and fifteen minutes later the group sauntered over with their arms filled with snacks, soft drinks, candy and fruit for themselves. It was going to be a long ride.

9:10am, and we were finally REALLY off. Since we were now a minimum of three hours off the "schedule," we realized that we’d be lucky to get to Lilongwe by 1am the next morning. We were worried before that we’d be arriving in an unknown town in the dark, but now we were really pushing it.

This whole bus experience was really crazy. We were travelling in a glorified school bus without the comfort. It does appear that there might be padding on the seats, but it’s a total mirage, instead it’s a quarter inch of "pad" resting on a thick hard board. It’s so old and worn that it’s actually vinyl resting on wood. Our butts were sore before we even took off, and we had another 16 hours to go!

Furthermore, just because there happens to be an aisle down the center of the bus does not imply whatsoever that that is the preferred path of travel from one end of the bus to the other. Long before all the seats are full, people plant themselves, their bags, chickens and everything else they brought right there with them. If you happen to be sitting next to the aisle and find yourself with a giant suitcase crammed in the spot where your feet are supposed to go in front of you and a baby being handed to you while her mama eats her lunch, bask in the cultural differences. At least this was what we kept repeating over and over to ourselves as more and more people crammed up against us from every possible angle, sweating, smelling and not caring at all about anyone else.

Strangely, with all this chaotic congestion, most everybody has an innate need to travel up and down the bus constantly. And the people/bags/chickens/babies in the aisle do NOT move, in fact, they’re offended when anyone even implies that just because they’re in the aisle they should move. Instead, everybody in the immediate vicinity of the person trying to get by smashes up against everyone else directly adjoining them in every possible direction, leaving no additional space for the person to get by but making it look like they’re at least trying and cramping the people around them even more drastically. The passenger trying to get by will inevitably relent and start crawling directly over the seats and people sitting in them, avoiding the aisle entirely. Throughout all of this, hawkers are constantly coming and going, crawling around and over everyone else; there’s obviously no room at all, but that’s obviously not a deterrent. But in a display of pure talent (and a lot of experience), these guys somehow make it all look easy, which is probably the reason why so many passengers think they can get away with it too.

The hawkers are an entirely separate story. You would think that people would effectively try to sell things that the passengers could actually use or need on the bus: fruit, drinks, etc. And a select few hawkers do offer these staples. But every time you pull into a different town the bus is besieged by local men and women offering loads of the fruits, foods and drinks that are prominent in that particular area. There is a lot of competition. Therefore, in the big bus terminals, a huge group of hawkers have tried to sell things that no one else offers, thereby cornering the market. Theoretically at least. The only problem is that these guys tend to try to sell things that (a) no one can afford, (b) few people have a need for, and (c) no one wants anyway. But if they can make a single sale, it will most likely make their sales quota for the month. Unfortunately, the pioneers in these respective fields must have actually made a couple sales, because on our bus no less than three separate guys pushed and crawled their way through all this pandemonium trying to sell beard trimmers. I have yet to see a single person with facial hair.

So anyway, we were finally fueled up, loaded down and off. The first couple of hours are fairly quiet, except for the scream of the engine which is located inside the bus right in-between the driver and the door. Since there’s only a piece of wood covering the open engine, the noise is deafening. The driver has three other guys working for him: one to collect, keep track of and maintain all the tickets/money, and two to open and close the door, deal with bags and handle any other shit that comes up. They all stand or lean packed in the front window or door for the entire trip. The driver himself is adorned in a blazing pink T-shirt, his head wrapped in an American flag bandanna, and has a walkman with earphones jammed in his ears - continually changing his tape selection as they finish until his batteries finally wear out. He is undoubtedly in control, and orders his three workers around to his every whim. They grab him a cup of water from the dirty vat up front, they open his Coke and retrieve his tapes. He rarely blesses them with conversation or a smile, but when he does, they beam with pride and delight.

As we entered the mountains, the road changed. That is to say that it ended. We went from "paved" to "dirt" to "paved" to "dirt" many times, each lasting for maybe a few kilometers or so. This was OK until we ended up behind a truck just as we were entering another dirt road section, and the air and bus itself were so completely encased in dust that you couldn’t even see three feet in front of you. The brain surgeon helpers using a tactic beyond comprehension or basic intelligence started shouting for everyone to open their windows wide, instead of closing them tight, perhaps thinking that the laws of physics would change this one time and all the dust would just be blown out of the bus. But of course it didn’t, and everyone buried their faces in their shirts for a good 30-40 minutes until it finally started to dissipate. Afterwards, everyone was absolutely covered in dirt, it was really disgusting and quickly combining with our sweat for an extra added bonus. We had dirt "sleep seeds" in our eyes the size of bugers, and speaking of these, you couldn’t even breathe through you nose because it was so clogged.

Our next adventure was the addition of "pot holes" to the "road" for the remaining 14 hours. The simple term "pot holes" just doesn’t do these babies justice. These holes were upwards of 15 feet across, 6 feet long and 1-2 feet deep...and they are strategically and pleasantly placed anywhere from ten in a row to one every thirty yards. The driver had to violently swerve - constantly - to avoid damage to the bus, most of the time half off the road in well worn shoulders by every other vehicle forced to do the same thing. Between the slow swerving around the ragged pits and the less-than-walking pace up the hills (due to the extreme weight on the bus), it was easy to see why approximately 200 miles could take upwards of 18 hours. It was easy to see, but not so easy to accept.

The scenery was fairly consistent throughout: dead-looking skeletons of trees, dead meadowy grass, and sporadic grass huts and villages. The day moved in slow motion as the minutes reluctantly ticked off. The only thing keeping us sane and somewhat relaxed was imagining and picturing exactly what we were doing at the exact same time a year before at our wedding. It was remarkably easy to visualize, even on this damn bus, and was a welcome mirage that maintained our sanity. Somewhere during all this reminiscing, I remembered an airplane bottle of Bailey’s that I still had stashed in my small backpack from the Air Zimbabwe flight, and whipped it out to the astonishment of Paige. We toasted our one year anniversary and downed the bottle with a gulp each. It was very romantic, but mere seconds after that tiny bottle was gone, we were forced to return and deal with the reality at hand.

The bus did not stop even once for the first 6 hours of driving time. We were really itching to be on the road rather than wasting time at a rest location, eating or getting more petrol, so this was a really good thing. Plus, after the Zimbabwe chicken bus experience, we were anticipating that the bus would be stopping constantly for people alongside the road. Bus this practice thankfully didn’t get started until around 3pm when the frequent stops for people to get off or new ones to get on began. Sometimes we’d stop to drop off one person in a tiny village, sometimes so the driver could deliver a loaf of bread to a friend or relative standing by the side of the road in the seemingly middle of nowhere - looking like he just knew exactly what time the bus would be passing, but probably having had stood there for the past 6 hours. We were also somewhat excited to see that the amount of people getting on the bus was not corresponding to the amount getting off, and if this continued then we’d actually have some personal space in a few hours...

Although I had vowed to eat nothing the whole day, I broke in the late afternoon and ate a banana, a couple cookies and a handful of granola. We strategically and very infrequently took small sips of water, finding the exact balance between total dehydration and not having to go to the bathroom whatsoever. Neither of us went between 8:30am and 9pm. The bus didn’t stop even once for a "bathroom break," but you couldn’t help but notice many stragglers whose bladders were hanging by a thread hop off the bus when it made a quick stop to drop someone off, whip it out (or hike up their skirt in the case of the women) and let loose right there next to the bottom step of the bus. With this tactic, they were able to end it prematurely and hop back on the bus if the driver started pulling away before they finished. Although we would for sure take care of business if nature demanded, we were preferring not to give the entire bus a view of our white butts in the act of desperate urination, and I’m happy (and proud) to report that we succeeded.

A while after dusk fell, and as we got closer to the Zambia/Malawi border, more and more people were getting off. It started looking like a definite minority was going all the way to Lilongwe. In Chipata, the last major city in Zambia on this route, only a quarter of the bus was full, finally giving us some room, although by then it was 8pm and we had completed 14 of the eventual 18 hours. Still, four hours was infinitely better than none. But once the sun went down the whole frightening experience increased a thousandfold. We were now driving in the pitch dark, still constantly swerving to avoid the bottomless-pot holes, where it seemed that although the oncoming vehicles were few, they all only used their high beams. Plus, every once in awhile we’d realize at the last possible moment that people were either walking or riding bikes in the middle of the road. I don’t know how the driver did it, but that’s probably the reason the workers idolized him.

Shortly before 9pm an ungodly huge moon rose up above the road, illuminating everything outside the glare of the high beams in a surreal blue-ghostly glow. And then there we were: Immigration! We’d actually made it to the border! Everyone crawled off the bus, our ears ringing from the 12 hour roar of the engine, and Paige and I frantically looked for a toilet thinking that the Zambian immigration officers might not appreciate our white butts as much as the rest of the locals do. But of course: no toilet. Our bladders were stretched beyond specifications, but we were being corralled inside the building. Once inside, we found that the office had no electricity; they had a single candle lit and placed up on the counter where a guard was grabbing peoples’ passports and stamping them without a single glance. It was like some freaky dream; we stood there in line, exhausted, dirty, sweaty and incoherent, waiting for an exit stamp in the dark. No longer caring, and figuring that if anyone else did they wouldn’t be able to see us anyway, the second our passports were stamped we scurried outside and peed on the side of the building - perhaps the longest and most rewarding pees of our lives.