Headed back to site on Saturday only to find out I couldn't get there...

Carolyn and I left Lilongwe Saturday morning, amped up to get back to site. We head to area 25 and about 20minutes get picked up by a nice British woman who was a former VSO(British Peace Corps) in Malawi in the early 90s. We get to Salima the turnoff point for the road going north to our sites around 10 and decide to eat lunch in Salima before heading home. We were making great time and didn't feel the need to rush. About 11 we head back to the roadblock that has the road going north and wait. About 15minutes pass before a police officer informs us that there is no travel up the M5 as the bridge has been washed out along with parts of the road. Hmmm....well Carolyn and I are bummed but figured out our back up plan. We hitch back to Lilongwe with a nice guy that works for the electric company and decide to head north to Mzuzu. We may not be able to go up the M5 but we could come down, hopefully. After 5 rides we finally make it to Mzuzu around 7:30pm. Our plan to sleep there at the Peace Corps respite house and then leave early the next morning. We head to the AXA bus station the next morning and are told that no buses are going down the M5 due to the roads. We dismissed what they said and decided to try our luck anyway. We get a hitch to Nkhata Bay which is the turnoff to the take the M5 south. The police officers told us that no one is traveling as far as where we need to go, but then again people could be wrong. We wait about 2 1/2 hours, no traffic, and realized that maybe they were right. We call our supervisor who told us that if we could we should come back down to Lilongwe and we can figure out a plan once at the office. So Carolyn and I, head back to Mzuzu. We stopped in the store and luckily ran into the guy that gave us a hitch to Mzuzu the day before. He was heading back to Lilongwe that day and said that he would give us a ride. Perfect! We travel comfortably back to Lilongwe. Today Carolyn and I, talked to the our other boss and was told to take the Kasungu rd(which technically is off limits because it goes through the wildlife reserve and we're not allowed to go there but I guess it's ok in this circumstance)so tomorrow we are going to try our luck again and take that route over to the M5. After travelling over 1000 kilometers(which may not seem like much but try doing it relying on rides from other people), paying 390kwacha total in transport(free rides most of the way!), lack of sleep, stability, and solid meals, I have learned a valuable lesson. I will never complain about being stuck in traffic because at least there is a road to be stuck on. Next time you're stuck in traffic remember this story. I'm not sure when the bridge will be fixed and once I can get to site it won't matter much anyway. :)

Love,
Court


p.s please laugh it is quite funny that out of the two people who are stuck OUT of their sites, it's probably the two people who would want to be stuck IN their sites.