Traveling to Malawi

After weeks of preparation and a lot of waiting, our trip to Malawi is finally beginning!!

After a nice but short visit at Damien and Sara's place (Danny's brother) in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (and after picking up last minute essentials such as maple syrup and peanut butter!) on October 25th, Danny and I hopped into our rental car well before dawn and drove to JFK airport. The next bed we would sleep in would be in Zomba, Malawi...the likes of which we could not even fathom at this point.

To reach our final destination we had to drive 2 hours to JFK, drop off the rental car, check in, fly 16 or so hours to Johannesburg, wait a couple of hours, then hop a 2 hour flight to Chileka International Airport in Blantyre (Malawi's commercial hub), hopefully meet a driver who was to be sent by LEAD (Danny's work organization) and then drive 1.5 hours to Zomba, all the time not knowing what was ahead of us in terms of accommodation etc.

Checking in at JFK, the South African Airlines personnel looked at our final destination airport code (BLZ) and had to ask the person next to her whether that was in South Africa or not.....we must be going way off the beaten track if the airline didn't know even know where we were going! So 16 hours on a plane is terrifying for some people, but 16 hours with nothing to do but watch movies, read and be catered to with excellent airline food (tsk) is actually quite gratifying. Before we knew it we were descending into Malawi, with its red earth and scattered huts visible from above.

Hopping off the plane, the hot and dry temperature of 35C hit us like a wave (we were definitely not in Canada anymore leaving that cold rain behind us). After a long wait in customs we got our luggage (which was unloaded by tractor) and our driver was there waiting for us. Hooray! Leaving the airport about 5 men took over our cart to "help" us load our bags into the truck despite our constant "No, thank you's" (We should have tried it in Chichewa..... "Iyayi!") for money of course.

Driving to Zomba was a quiet ride. Firstly, we were exhausted (too much movie watching and no sleeping) and secondly, we were taking in the sights of where we now were. Africa! It was intense to go from the multi-freeway system, bridges and excellent infrastructure of driving to New York (despite my former thoughts that the odd US highway was patchy and poorly maintained) to the disorder of people, animals, bikes, & vehicles and the dismal condition of the main highway. This did not phase our driver as he reached speeds of 130km/h in a rickety truck, on a bumpy two lane road, passing cars into opposing traffic, honking at people (carrying their goods on their heads) to get out of the way, as cars whizzed by who were seemingly too close for comfort. Oh, and the seatbelts weren't working. "This is it," I thought. "Well, we had a good run, it's a shame we couldn't see more of Africa." We obviously arrived safe, but the difference between what is "normal" in Canada and "normal" is apparent. Welcome to Africa!

We've arrived safe and had a very warm welcome from LEAD. Upon arrival we were invited to a lovely meal at one of Danny's co-worker's although my ability to converse was limited having been awake for the last 30 hours! LEAD provided us our own house within walking distance to Danny's work and the main Zomba town centre. They even stocked our cupboards and fridge with food so we wouldn't starve our first days here (chicken, eggs, rice, sugar, flour, water, just, fish, beef, oil, soaps etc).

It will be quite the adjustment here but we're excited to be here...and we are excited to share more of our experiences with you all. We'd love to here your feedback, comments and so forth!