Lusaka to Salima

We got up the next day at about 0430 to make it to the bus station by 0500, for the 0600 bus. You can reserve a ticket the night before (which we did), but you cannot purchase a ticket early. I’m told it confuses them. Their system of selling tickets is out of a carbon copy notebook. There are no computers anywhere at the bus station. In fact, the Juldon bus company’s “office” is a press-board shack with a tin roof. The dimensions are roughly 4 feet wide, 7 feet high, and 8 feet deep. I couldn’t tell how the guy got in there. We bought our tickets and pressed through the crowd of advertisers to squeeze towards the bus. See, as soon as you drive into Lusaka bus station, you are inundated by people shouting the praise of their bus company, and desperately urging you to buy a ticket from them, and not their wicked competitors. The first time I came here, it nearly frightened me... now that I understand what’s going on, it’s tolerable.

8 hours later we arrived at Chipata. The Mwami hospital mini-van that was SUPPOSED to meet us was no where to be seen. Was I surprised? Nooooooooooooo! Jim called on the cell phone. No answer (no surprise). He sent a text, no reply (no surprise). 1 hour later we hired a taxi to drive us there. How long will this take,” I asked. Of course, I already knew how long. I had ridden the road before. I was just curious to see how badly the driver would lie, or how badly he would estimate the travel time. “20 minutes.” Hmph. Just what I suspected. Off by 100%.
We got to Mwami 45 minutes later.

Once we arrived I checked in on how the new machine was doing. The anesthetist told me it was doing just fine, even the halothane leak had stopped. I suspect that the thymol preservative had plugged the hole as small amounts of halothane leaked out over the past 2 weeks. However, a huge leak had developed in the old Drager 2A. I took a look, confirmed what I had been told, and quickly realized that there were no tools to disassemble the thing and try to repair it. They’d have to use the 50 year old Boyle’s machine as their back up, like they did before the glostavent arrived.

I went to bed, again, face down. It was hard to sleep without the fan I had become accustomed to during my time in both Lusaka and Yuka. I couldn’t tell if it was me I smelled, or just memories of the people I’d spent the past 2 days with on the bus.

The next morning, the Ang and Peduche families (Philipinos, both) and I loaded into the Toyota 4 wheelers to drive to lake Malawi (WE left on time, and bought fuel legally! Where’s the fun in that?

It took about 25 minutes to enter/exit Malawi/Zambia. The guy on the Malawi side recognized me and said, “Hello Mr. Cobos!” I hadn’t even given him my passport yet. (It pays to have friends in high places!)

After getting to Lilongwe, we stopped at 4 or 5 stores to buy stuff for the weekend. Most of the businesses are owned by Indians or Mid-easterners. A large procession was passing through the main street, mostly in purple. I had forgotten it was Good Friday (purple being the symbolic color of repentance, used generously in Catholic festivals).

We arrived at an estate on the shore of lake Malawi, near the city of Salima. Our hosts are a wealthy Muslim family who happen to live back in Chipata, Zambia and have been patients of Mwami. They invited the doctors to join them for the long holiday weekend at this retreat, which they themselves hadn’t stayed at for over a year. We stayed in 2 guest duplexes (3 other Philipino families joined us), next to their own main, large, house. Local workers cleaned for us, and it reminded me of Africa’s old slave age.

The first thing you notice about ANY building that Islam has anything to do with in all of Africa is... it’s clean. And in Africa, that stands out like a sore thumb. A beautiful, magnetic, sanitary sore thumb. I love it. Ah, to be clean :)

Iqbal’s family came to Zambia nearly 100 years ago, as negotiators between the Zambians and the English. Now, they’re traders, and run a farm with 500+ employees. They dismiss dishonest workers on the first offence (stealing is a major problem, and they claim they could write a book over 1000 pages long describing all the methods the Zambians have stolen from them).

The electricity went out, as usual. It was hot, and I couldn’t sleep in the heat. Eating a big Philipino dinner hadn’t helped either. I woke up in a sweat about 2 AM.