Jun. 20, 2007 - Malawi...
We flew into Lilongwe, Malawi this morning. We had arranged to stay at the Baptist guest house in Blantyre for this leg of the trip, but never received confirmation. After picking up our luggage and waiting on the rental car, we saw some missionaries from IMB and said hello. Turns out they were from the guest house and returning from a year of stateside assignment...there was no one at the guest house and it had been and still remains closed. We were glad to have run into them to find that out. So leaving the airport, we are not sure where we are spending the night... 
Immediately you can see several differences from other African countries...it's neat how they each have their own character. Malawi is clean, mountainous and cooler. They people are gentle, gracious and genuine. We rented a van to hold all of us and our luggage and headed down to Blantyre. We first had to find World Vision in Lilongwe to drop off a package for someone. That took quite a bit of time because there are very few street signs anywhere to mark roads. We did the best we could with what we had. After stopping for the second time to ask what road we were on, we found a Nando's chicken place and ate lunch. After finally finding World Vision, we were then off to Blantyre. It should have been about a 4-5 hour drive giving us plenty of time to get there before dark...not so. In Africa, there are police check points all along the main roads. Since they mostly do not have police vehicles with which to patrol, they have check points. At the first check point, we learned that our van did not have proper registration. We explained it was a rental and we are just a family on holiday...about 30 minutes later, they let us thru.
On the road again...police check point #2. This one took about an hour. The police again explained that our van was not registered properly. We again explained our situation. He was not letting us thru this time. Come to find out, the van the rented us was not an offical AVIS rental. The company had rented a public hire van from a private person and then rented it to us. That van was only liscensed to travel to certain places and the owner had cheated on his registration by swapping out the tags...long story. We had to buy the policeman time on his cell phone to call the car rental office. Guy's mom had been driving at this point and the policeman told the man on the phone we would have to take the old lady to jail for the night and let her face the judge in the morning. He winked at Guy and told him he was just trying to scare the rental company. He gave us a ticket, took down the faulty registration stickers and gave us new documents for the rest of our trip.
Needless to say our 4-5 hour trip turned into an all day affair. We finally arrived in Blantyre after dark...and it was DARK! Had it been daylight, Guy and Patsy would have know where we were, but being so dark, they had no clue. We stopped at a petrol station and asked for a hotel. One of the men jumped into our van and took us to one...a nice one...it was sold out. On to the next one. One of the Protea hotels...very nice...like USA luxury nice. 
It was a welcomed site and they had rooms and a great restuarant at which we had dinner as soon as we settled into our rooms. Great food, great bed, internet, but too tired to blog. Checked in with my girls and went to sleep.
So glad this day is over... Praise the Lord for safe travel and Grandma is not sleeping in the jail.
Comments
Jun. 27, 2007 - Untitled Comment
Posted by SouthernBelle
Wow... sounds like you all are having a blast. :)
If you see this before you get home, tell Jackson I said hi, and that I want to see him when you get back.
Thanks, and God be with you in your travels!
Emma
