One of the things travelling overland from Johannesburg to Nairobi is the fact that people in most countries I travelled spend a lot of time waiting: waiting for electricity, to be connected to the water network, waiting for a better future, waiting for that one customer (like the people of the small family hotel in Dar es Salaam where I’m staying). It’s an art.
I made this impression of the Lilongwe busstation (capital of Malawi).. Days ago while i waited for a bus up North. And it came… finally after a slight delay of only six hours. And it brought me were I went: overnight mon execllent Malwian roads.
By the way: Good news for Malawians in the Lower Shire Valley in the far South of the country: the government is planning to make a canal to connect landlocked Malawi with the Zambezi River. European Union is co-funding the construction and Mozambique-government has said it would give Malawi all the possible cooperation. In the Southern town of Nsanje, preparations are going on for the construction of a port. And threadle pumps are being introduced for small scale irrigation (but that is another story).
After years of waiting this must be good news for a lot of inhabitants of the area that suffred a severe drought only months ago and were considered as a lost area by almost everyone.
A six hour delay isn’t that bad. When backpacking in India, I once had to wait 18 hours for a train. By the time the train had reached its destination, it was about 36 hours late. That way I had my birthday on the train – travelling in style in 3rd class