Tragedy has occured. This morning, in the hectic scramble that was TFU oversleeping and then trying to get out of the hostel, into a taxi, and to the bus station by 5:30, I lost my Indy hat. I KNOW. Devastating. Tash left her towel. And that was the beginning of a very, very long day.

We have learned that buses in Africa will tell you that they leave at a certain time, when in reality they leave whenever the bus is full. So this morning, that meant that TFU raced to get on this bus at 5:30, and it left at a quarter to eight. They also play music–loudly–and while I like African music just fine, for the first two hours of waiting for the bus to leave, they played the same five songs over and over again. The only thing stopping us from getting our murder on was the thought of Zambian prisons, where they also probably pipe music in all day long. There were two songs though, that deserve recognition. Choice, they were. Real winners. One, after it played about 3 time, caused us to look at each other and ask, “are they really saying what I think they’re saying? Wait, you hear it too?” Because the lyrics to the chorus sounded just like “why would you want to f*ck a boy”. Sung very cheerfully by a male chorus. The other song, which resisted our best efforts at drowning out with Beyonce, was some sort of heavily auto-tuned midget-voiced techno pop, with a long introduction of said midget laughing and giggling some sort of monologue.

Of course, another key component of our 14 hour bus journey was when we stopped at the Zambia and Malawi border, and Tash and I couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to be doing. We managed to find the exit immigration for Zambia, but then wandered around until someone pointed out that we had to cross the border on foot, and that Malawi was that way. At which point it began to pour. So TFU left Zambia, sprinting through the rain across that dark red earth, hollering, “is this the way to Malawi?” at the sensible people crouched under palm frond shelters.

To our credit, though, we did manage to survive food-wise on the equivalent of about 30 cents. I traded the coke bottle they gave me on the bus for water and a town we stopped in to refuel, and we bought a bag of peanuts and a bag of popcorn from the vendors that swarm the bus, holding their wares up to the windows. And of course, pap/nshima out of a bag! I had never had fresh peanuts before. They’re nice, sort of like chesnuts, only they’re a bit of a b*tch to open.

We thought we were probably going to get killed when we got to Lilongwe, as it’s rather dodgy after dark, but ended up at a sweet little hotel where we both got to shower and watch some movie we didnt understand! Taking a bus to Senga Bay in a couple hours. It had better not f*cking rain, although, that would just be typical.

That cabbie had better be taking good care of my hat.