Safari attempt 1

On July 5th, Casey, Jayme, Annie, and I headed off at 6:45am to meet with Daniel to start out journey south to our safari. After waiting for a while, we finally got a minibus to town. We got to the main bus station and located the bus that we needed to be on in the nick of time because we literally jumped onto it as it left the station. In Malawi, they are a firm believer of inclusion- meaning even if there are no seats they will still let people on the bus and they stand in the aisle. Needless to say, we were standing the front of the bus….well more like wedged in the front of the bus. Nevertheless we were on our bus and on to our new and exciting adventure of SAFARI….or so we thought! We were not even 5 minutes out of town when we hit a road block. We were asked to get off. At first it seemed that everyone was being asked to get off. When we couldn’t produce our passports with the stamp we received upon arrival in Malawi, we were detained. I guess in general if you ever had to be detained you would want to in Malawi because its not very harsh or trying.

We explained our story to the immigration officer (at that point we were only dealing with one, a woman) that we were traveling to safari and that we would miss our boat if we were detained. She seemed to not care much even when we added that it was already all paid for. We did not have the document that she wanted to see. She was asking us, “how do I know you are really missionaries, you have no documentation that proves it”. Yet we had her talk to our connection with the Ministry of Hope (Daniel). So there we were- sitting in a small office on a bench being detained because we had only copies of our passport and no copy of the arrival stamp. Another immigration officer (male)enters and introduces himself to everyone in the group (very usual behavior in Malawi) and starts some small talk- where we were from, why we were there, how old we were, etc. He finds out I’m the oldest and he stops. This is how the conversation went:

“You aren’t the oldest!?”
“Yes I am”
“You don’t look the oldest”
“Thanks I do get that a lot, but that doesn’t change the fact I’m the oldest”

(reader, keep in mind im frustrated already because we are detained, not being told what’s going on, are told over and over that we just need someone to bring our passports (which are in our rooms and we have the keys so no one can just bring them to us), the officers are cracking jokes to an extent at our expense..etc)….anywho

The officer leaves for a moment. There is time to just sit and reflect …then..
“Smoke?”
I look at him and he’s looking directly at me.
I reply “What?”
Him: “Smoke?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you smoke?”
The other officer chimes in, “they are missionaries they are not allowed to smoke”
“Oh! No I do not. Why?”
“I have a smoke and I wanted to know if you’d like one”
“Oh, no thanks”

-silence- (but he’s still looking at me)

“So you are the oldest?”
“um, yep, you have my passport copy you can see that I am by the year”.
“But you don’t look it….single?”
“ehhhh..”
Casey chimes in, “we are all single”.
The officer smiles and continues to me, “ do you like African men?”
“Alright….I’m going to stop you right there!” (as I stare at the ground)

After a short period of being left alone in the office, the officers return saying there is a nice bus for us. We get into this bus (they don’t tell us where we are going again)and the male officer jumps into the bus smiling at me. Im thinking “what, no! you stay at your post I leave!” He stared at me during the trip and asked me name again. I spoke as little as I could because I still have to talk to him he is a government official and I am detained (but it was very unprofessional). He got off early when we went into town. We were taken to the immigration office where they were like “we just need to see your passports”. I explained to the gentleman that we need to get them in our rooms and it would have to be us because we have our keys to our rooms. We got back into the bus and we told them where we lived. Yet we still had to give them directions, which I am very thankful that I pay attention when I am walking because I was able to get them to our teethsaver’s house. We thought that was the end of the road by showing them our passport, but we had to take our passport back to the office. After the wrote everything down, we were good to do!

The rest of our day consisted of making lunch, going to the nursery, and getting dinner as a group out on the town. It was our first time out at night which was exciting. Annie’s friend Buse took us out in his friend’s truck and we all sat in the bed. We went to a Chinese restaurant, which was really good and had pool tables. It was a great time and tomorrow we try to get to our safari successfully! (Daniel had called the place explaining what had occurred and changed our booking to the next day so nothing was lost!)