After a delightful weekend up on the Zomba plateau, the big red truck was headed back to Lilongwe... without me. I was headed to Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial center and setting for tomorrow’s National Fortification Alliance meeting. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For breakfast Ben had whipped up scrambled eggs and reheated leftover slices of Melody’s delicious veggie pizza from the night before. 8:30am, pizza number one.
After winding our way down from the foggy heights of the plateau, I parted ways with my erstwhile traveling companions and, after learning the next bus to Blantyre didn’t depart until two, schlepped over to “Tasty Bites” a freshly-painted coffee shop on the edge of town. “Coffee with milk, please.” “Do you want strong?” “Sure.” And sure enough, after a delay long enough that they could’ve been custom roasting the beans, my coffee arrived—strong enough that it took me the rest of the morning sipping to finish it off. Come noon it was time for lunch. The only veggie option on the menu? You guessed it: pizza number two.
With “fuel in the tank” so to speak, I trekked back over to the bus depot and sat down to wait for my departure. Two o’clock came and went, with nary a sign. I didn’t have a ticket (“buy on the bus”) and or any particular customer loyalty, so when a fairly functional-looking minibus with a Blantyre sign in the window started inching forward through the mass of touts, vendors, and assorted hangers-about I buttonholed the driver, learned the price (500 KW or ~$2.75) and hopped in.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal that I’m currently about half way through Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari” a by turns nostalgic and disillusioned recounting of his overland travel from Cairo to Capetown in 2001. Did his waxing rhapsodic over the truth to be found in traveling by chicken bus sway my decision? Perhaps. I will admit that travel in this manner, squeezed four abreast into the bumpy bench seats and hugging my daypack atop hiked-up knees with the open window blowing my hair back, has it’s charms. No meaningful other activity (reading, laptop, etc.) is possible so one’s objective becomes simply to arrive. And without the possibility of effecting the speed (or lack thereof) of travel, gone too is all responsibility for timeliness. We’ll get there when we get there, and that’s all there is to it. And when the bus stops in a totally unrecognizable market town somewhere outside of Blantyre, well, I’ll just get on another one. Having to rely on the kindness of fellow travelers to point me the right way, traveling light, and walking the last stretch to the hotel all took me back to an earlier time, when I wasn’t trying to solve any problems beyond how to get to the next town, where to find some decent food and a warm bed for the night.
But that was then, and this is now. After checking in it was back to reality; working email and the phones, trying to convince people to take the next little step, that their effort and engagement are needed, that nobody else can sort this out for them. Not exactly grueling physical labor, but still work enough to build up an appetite. Lo and behold, what should the hotel food court offer? Veg pizza. I suppose I could’ve ordered a salad, but what fun would that have been? Reading more Theroux and nursing a Fanta Orange I went for the hat trick: pizza number three. All in all it was a delicious day, a welcome departure from the norm.
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