Hello From...

Dedza Mzimba. My itinerary for this week's travel was switched up yesterday. Instead of making a one hour drive south I'd be making a five hour drive north to Mzuzu with only two hours of daylight left in the day. But wait, you're in Mzimba, not Mzuzu? Yes. Because we never made it to Mzuzu last night. Sometimes in Africa you get the worst case scenario and that's very nearly what happened to me and my driver last night.

First, we left Lilongwe too late to make it north before dark. Second, I left the city with only one bar of cell phone battery. And third, I was with a Ministry of Health driver and car that I've never used before. When dusk started falling we realized that our headlights were essentially useless. I told the driver we'd just make it to the next town and sleep there and continue on in the morning. Ten kilometers later our car died for the first time. Dusk was rapidly turning into night. Keep in mind that night time here means total and complete darkness, without a pinpoint of electricity to be seen anywhere. Last night happened to be moonless as well.

We got the car going again and I sat hanging out the passenger window over the hood of the truck, using the flashlight on my cell phone to illuminate the white line in the road. Every time a car passed I ducked back inside because being white in a crippled car is like pouring blood in the water for sharks and I didn't want anyone to see my face. I knew this wasn't a sustainable solution since I had only one bar of battery but the closer to Mzimba we could get, the better. It didn't work for long. We lost power again about five kilometers later.

We hopped out of the car to look under the hood one more time. The narrow road was lined by trees on both sides. It was DARK. I had the equivalent of five years' salary for a typical Malawian in cash in my backpack. I could feel in my bones that we weren't safe. The driver must have felt so too because this time he demanded that I stay in the car with the doors locked. He banged on the battery with a rock for a minutes (seriously) before hightailing it back into the car.

"What's wrong?"
"I hear the voices of hyenas."

Ohh. We're both starting to get nervous because the car is clearly done for the night. We start calling our colleagues to see how far they are and can they maybe come tow us? They're an hour out. I stare out the window. I am completely unsurprised but utterly dismayed when I see the flash of a cellphone in the woods next to us. I tell Thoko, the driver, that there are lights in the woods. He says "noooo." I say "Well maybe it was just a reflection," though I'm 98% sure it wasn't.

When I see it again one minute later I reach over and touch his arm. We both watch the moving lights for a second before Thoko quietly breathes "God will protect us."

This is when I realize we are utterly screwed. There are people in the woods who have seen us break down and are waiting until the traffic on the road disappears completely before robbing us. I don't care about the cash, the camera, the ipod, but I do care about the work on my computer so I hide it under my seat and begin saying a mental goodbye to my other belongings. I send a text to Jonathan and to Zach so they'll at least know where I was/am if something happens because my phone is about to die. Thoko and I are both mentally resigned to the fact that we've been found vulnerable and are going to be victims.

Still, Thoko suggests maybe they're hunting? Yes, they ARE hunting. Hunting for mzungus with five years' salary in a crappy old backpack and tonight they've gotten lucky!

"Hunting for what?"
"Bees."
"In the dark?"
"Yes because it's cooler than hunting in the day."
"Yeah, you also can't see anything, so maybe hunting in the dark isn't what they're doing."
"True."

I highly doubt they're hunting for bees. I repeatedly call my colleagues in the other car, demand that they not stop in town to get the spare part we need (but they do anyway) and that they step on it until my cell phone finally dies. In the meanwhile Thoko and I sit in the car silently, searching the trees when trucks come by with headlights. We're both trying to breathe normally and speak in normal tones while counting down the seconds and praying for cars to keep zooming by. We get a car passing us about once every three or four minutes.

We know none of them will stop to help us because it isn't safe for them to do so. We might be clever criminals who stole this UNICEF car and planted it on the side of the road to wait for people nice enough to try to help someone. One does stop one hundred yards down the road, waiting for Thoko to come out to them to ask for help, but he says he can't get out of the car because we don't know the intentions of the people in the woods. I tell him there is zero chance of me allowing him to get out of the car and we watch the tail lights finally pull away without anyone getting out to check on us.

An hour later we were rescued. Why didn't they rob us? I don't know, but I'm sure glad they didn't. Thoko and I were thoroughly creeped out and exhausted from trying to keep the adrenaline under control and keep a straight mind out in the dark in the middle of nowhere Africa. We limped into Mzimba with no headlights but with all our stuff and our lives.

You know what never once occured to me out there? "Maybe we should call the police." In America they'd have been there in five minutes with a smile and a friendly greeting. In Malawi they'd have taken two days and then robbed us themselves. In Malawi if you get broken down in the pitch black in the middle of a forest 30km from anywhere, you're on your own.

Scary.

So now I'm hanging out in a hotel room (if you could call it that) in Mzimba, waiting out the five hours it will take to fix our car.