On the morning of November 30th at 5:30 am we boarded a bus for a 7-hour trip from Livingstone to Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city. As we waited to leave the station we were afraid of how much ear drum damage we would have by the time we got there as the speaker overhead was pumping out deafening Zambian music. The seats were comfortable (we had seats together on the 2-seat side of the bus) and we felt like we had a lot of room. As we got going the soundtrack changed to a best of Phil Collins and the song “We are the World” before switching to Zambian gospel music. The countryside was beautiful with a mix of scrubland and small farms.
Five hours into the trip, the music stopped abruptly only to be replaced by African nature films with titles such as ‘Royal Blood’ and ‘Cycle of Seasons’ on the onboard video system (which we had not even noticed until this point). We were roused from our tv-watching stupor part way into the second nature film as the brakes began to squeal while were turning left down a rainy hillside. As the bus skidded and nearly tipped over, many on board screamed and we all frantically looked around at each other for cues on how concerned we should be. The bus driver must have been scared too: he stopped the bus as soon as possible to check things over. The brakes and wheels must have been in good enough shape as we soon resumed the trip. Lions continued their struggle to survive on the video screens as we continued on to Lusaka.
The Lusaka bus station was a frantic place with aggressive taxi and mini bus drivers shouting “Big man” and “Boss” at Rich to try to get his attention (and business). With many offers for guidance to whatever we needed, it was hard to tell who to trust and where the scam might be coming from, but we managed to get led to the ticket booth for a bus company that reportedly could get us to our next destination the following day – Chipata in eastern Zambia. We purchased tickets from a somewhat sketchy booth for another seven-hour ride the next morning leaving at 7:30 am with a 7 am boarding.
After an interesting night chatting with fellow travelers at an odd hostel in Lusaka, we returned to the bus terminal the next morning, November 31st. A man who helped us find our bus told Rich, “NPS…it is unreliable, you should not be on it.” By chance we happened to arrive early at 6:40 am and after getting (we are pretty sure) scammed out of 20,000 Zambian kwacha (US$4) to put our bags below the bus, we boarded to find all but three seats filled. We wedged ourselves into the two remaining seats at the very back of the bus between the 4 other passengers already in this row, Carissa with her feet on a box another passenger was transporting with them. Despite our guide’s warnings that the bus was unreliable, the ride was fairly unremarkable through short on space.
There was no music or videos on this ride, but the landscape was pretty. Through Namibia, the desert had transitioned into scrubland as we headed north and everything has been green since Botswana. The big difference in Zambia is the soil. Even in western Zambia, the consistency of soil was largely sandy, but it has been a richer, darker red since entering eastern Zambia. More organic, we suppose. Farm plots are small and people are plowing them with oxen or by hand with hoes, but there is definitely more agriculture. And much more hilly terrain – really beautiful.
One of many road-side markets we passed between Lusaka and Chipata, Zambia.
Chipata is the easternmost city in Zambia on the highway that heads to Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. Bicycles are everywhere. This is the first place we have seen them as a common form of transport in Africa. They all seem to have racks over the back wheel and function as single-occupant taxis or as cargo-haulers. We are also now commonly seeing influences of Islam now—shops that are advertised as halaal, the dress of some people, and the large yellow mosque across the road from our hotel. We don’t know what was said during the live singing of the evening call to prayers from across the street, but it was melodious.
When we arrived in Chipata, Zambia, our bags (and only our bags) tumbled out of the luggage compartment of the bus into a massive puddle of red mud. Rich is attempting to remove some of the mud from them in this picture. They are still muddy.
A new month brings a new country…so on the 1st of December we awoke with the goal of getting ourselves to Lilongwe, Malawi. It was only 130-km away, but with two long days of travel behind us, we were dreading that the border crossing would be arduous. After changing money from Zambian kwacha to Malawian kwacha, we hopped into a shared taxi to get to the border 30-km away. With 6 passengers and the driver in a Toyota Tercel, it was cramped, but not too bad and the trip up the mountain to the border took no time at all. We crossed into Malawi without any trouble, and caught another shared taxi to the small town of Mchinji 12-km from the border. In Mchinji we hopped into a shared mini-bus in Lilongwe. 3 hours total…felt like no time at all. Except for the bus station which was, as expected, a frantic hive of human energy, so far Malawi has been a very friendly and relaxed place.
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