The Mini-Bus

So Josh and I decided that we needed a little bit of action on our weekends (plus we heard there was a 'mall' with goods that we cannot get here in Zomba, i.e a coffee maker) so last Saturday we decided to brave the mini-bus and go to Blantyre. Blantyre is the commercial hub of Malawi so because of that there is decent infrastructure and it has a larger international presence. When we heard that the biggest 'mall' was in Blantyre with the largest 'Shoprite' (grocery store) and 'Game' (kinda like a wal-mart) we (probably more me) was stoked! We have desperately been missing drip coffee (all they have here is instant) so we were on a mission to find a coffee maker and other things we can't get here like cheese and canned tuna. The only thing standing in the way of us and our caffeine fix was the distance. Blantyre is about 55km from Zomba, and it takes about 1.5hours to drive there because the hwy is in pretty poor condition. If you don't have your own car and driver, the next best thing is mini-bus. These are the main mode of public transportation between cities. Now these mini-buses are just vans that hold about 12 people, but at one point in time we had 17 ppl in ours.. but i'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning...

Early Saturday morning josh and I walked to the bus depot, already sweating and thirsty from the walk (about 15 min.) we enter chaos. "Where you go? Where you go?" is all I immediately heard and I saw josh say "Blantyre". He was immediately whisked into a mini-bus that was at the front of the line of many other mini-buses while I was led to a mini-bus further back, "I'm with him" I say to the guy leading me, and I run ahead to see where Josh went. He is asking the driver how much, and the front door is opened and he is put into the front seat. The van is about 1/2 full with 7 people inside already, so I slide into the back of the van, not knowing really where i should be sitting. Josh then tells the guy he wants to sit next to me and crawls into the back. We are now 3 in the back next to a man carrying a field hockey stick. He shakes both our hands, and the side door closes and we slowly leave the depot. As we head along the main road the guy who I think is 2nd in command hangs out the window and yells "Blantyre, Blantyre" and tries to persuade more people to get into the van because we aren't quite "full" yet. As we drive along to the gas station, snap, our trunk flies opens and suitcases fall out.. Josh and I just give each other the 'what have we gotten ourselves into??' glance. Haha. We all just laugh as they try to shove the suitcases back in and slam the back trunk closed.. now i wish we took a photo of our mini bus.. because that really would tell it all (the one above is just one that I took from google images, but is similar). This thing was rickety, rusted, beat up, the seats were broken.. no way was the trunk going to close.. so the solution, just tie it down! As they were doing this, we noticed that they also started changing one of the back wheels while we were all still in the van.. hmmm. But, quickly this was done and we were off.. We stopped a couple more times to pick up some people and now we were 12, flying down the hwy. I'm not exactly sure what speeds we reached, but it was at least 130-140km at points.. the whole time i thought, 'well, this might be it!' but all the while feeling the exhilaration of doing what we were doing. In these situations it's hard to explain, but you kinda just gotta go with it and pray that somehow things will work out.

So about an hour in to the trip we stopped to pick up more ppl, 'where are they going to sit??' I asked myself, pretty sure Josh was thinking the same thing- well they looked at us in the back seat said something about "Muzungu" (which means white ppl) and then squeezed in a 4th and 5th person in the rows in front of us. They proceeded to do this for the next 10 or so km and at one point there was 17 people in the minibus literally sitting on each other. I guess Josh and I got preferential treatment because we still only had the 3 of us in the back seat. I really couldn't believe that people were ok sitting right on each other.. but I guess this is what is done here!
So the mini-bus actually stopped at Limbe, the city right before Blantyre and everyone got out. Josh and I just looked at each other, huh? I thought Blantyre. So we asked the driver and he said well we are stopping here and gave us a "Welcome to Africa!".. it was actually kinda comical.. except now we didn't really know how we were going to get to our beloved mall. So we started walking, and asking people were it was, and they would point us in the direction. Little did we know it was probably still about 5 km away, so luckily another mini bus driver started shouting at us and we ended up getting in that mini-bus, and then he dropped us off near the mall.

SUCCESS! We had made it.

We spent the next 5 hours just basking in the air conditioned stores and looking at all the products (all imported from south africa and $$$) and bought our coffee maker, cheese and some other goods and braved the mini-bus again to get home. But by now we were old pro's and more comfortable. So we knew the routine. And i'm happy to report that the driver on the way home was not as crazy and drove slower and didn't pack us in like sardines! So I guess we just got a driver who was in a major rush on the way there.

So our first mini-bus experience was very cultural, one that I know we will do again! Although there were moments of pure skepticism about whether we were going to make it, everything turned out in the end. And I feel that if you only traveled by car and driver you would miss out on these exciting adventures!