Left my guest house at 6:15 a.m. and boarded a minibus for Lilongwe at 6:45 a.m. So far, so good. Nice and early. An hour later, we're still sitting there. We finally left at 8:45 a.m., two hours later, and I was thinking that I could have slept in. Oh well.
The biggest problem came shortly after we started moving. I didn't feel too well. The minibus was crowded. Fortunately, I was sitting by a window, which helped slightly. After 2 hours, the minibus had to stop at a police check and I took the opportunity to go relieve some diarrhea. Felt a bit better for a short while. But an hour and a half later, I had to ask the conductor to please ask the driver to stop. "I'm feeling sick." How could he refuse that? Did he want me to barf all over everybody? So, they pulled over pretty quickly and I ran into the bushes for another round of diarrhoea and no barfing, though I thought I might.
Felt slightly better after that for a short while, but when we hit Lilongwe, in the stop and go traffic, things got REALLY bad. My eyes were mainly closed, but sometimes I'd open them dileriously. Kept putting my head out the window to puke on the street, but failing. I noticed many of my fellow cramped-in Malawian travellers looking at me worriedly, clucking, and saying things like, "Poor mzungu. Really sick." I WAS really sick. Sweating profusely, beads dripping from my forehead. My neighbor, sitting scrunched next to me, patted my back a few times (I was leaning my head against the seat in front of me) and said, "Be calm."
When the minibus finally arrived, it was about 2:00 p.m. People outside started asking me if I needed a taxi. Several of my kind fellow passengers told me not to trust "just anybody." Then, I tapped one of them and said, through my sweat and delirium, "Can you help me get a taxi?" He and another lady helped me, very nicely. Got my bags and bike out of the minibus for me and walked me over and put me in a taxi and told me how much to pay the man. They were so nice.
But then, miraculously, by the time I reached Kibuku Camp, where all my fellow TDA friends were, I already felt 1,000 times better! Maybe I just needed some fresh air, I thought. A bit tired, but otherwise fine. If you keep reading, however, you'll see that this was just a prelude to
worse times to come.
Since I didn't manage to get any pictures of me with my head hanging out the minibus window, trying to puke all over the streets of Lilongwe, I'll instead leave you with a picture that Ruth took of me a few weeks ago, when we crossed the halfway point - half way across Africa!
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