Our first trip to Chipata started at around 5:15 am, around the time many days start. We got up and had our breakfast and gathered our things. We both brought our large backpacks since we knew there would be a lot of things to bring back. Since you cannot get a taxi from the school, we had to walk to the junction where the school road and the great east road meet. That was where we were told to wait for the “green bus” which comes at 7am. For reference this story is from Saturday the 15th of September but I haven’t had a chance to write about it until now.
We were waiting for about 10 minutes since we had got there a bit early. It was already light and beginning to get warmer by this point. Then a small minibus arrived at around 7:05. On the side of the bus was written “The yellow submarine”. We asked where they were going and they said Chipata. We checked the price was K50 which we were told was the standard, about £3.30, significantly cheaper than any bus journey I’ve had in Warrington despite the journey being around 40 miles. The bus wasn’t too full there were a couple of spare seats. We didn’t stop at many places which made it quite a quick journey. The bus itself seemed quite safe although the engine sounded like it had seen better days and the driver seemed to be struggling to get it to change gear.
We heard a lot of murmuring about “muzungos” while we were on the bus so we could tell we were being talked about. It’s rather annoying that there are no major similarities between Chinyanja and English. I am hoping to learn how to speak it although it seems like a lot to do on top of my day job. It’s not helped by the fact that the way the language is structured is quite different to English. I think once I’ve got the basics I will be able to make progress it will just be a matter of putting some time aside to learn about the grammar.
We were dropped off at the bus station in Chipata which is quite busy since many bus companies operate from there. We got off and as usual were the only white people around; this meant that we had many people coming over to “help” us. They usually expect you to pay for the help that they give you and since we knew what we wanted to do we were trying avoid this. However we looked puzzled as we wanted to find the bus office to book a return bus at 2pm but were struggling to find it. We couldn’t work out where it was so had to get some help and they asked for us and said that the person in the office said that bus wasn’t running. However we weren’t sure if he was telling the truth since we never heard it for ourselves. We decided to leave the bus station and head to the shops and sort out transport later. We had arrived at 8:30 so we thought there would be plenty of time to do everything. As we left we were asked if we wanted a taxi to the shops as the driver quoted it was 30km and we couldn’t walk. We both knew this wasn’t true as Chipapta itself is probably not much wider than that as a whole city! We decided to walk since we could see it was less than 1km to the shops on google maps.
We walked out of the station to find a chaotic street which had taxis trying to flag us down by honking their horns and ”bus” drivers asking if we wanted lifts in their overcrowded vehicles which are effectively the same size as a small van but have around 10 seats. Some of them even had people standing in the doorway holding onto the roof bars half outside the van as there were no seats. We walked up the other side of the hill with the many other people carrying varyious items including chickens, buckets full of water, shopping bags, trays of nuts and other items to sell to passers buy. As with every area with a reasonable amount of people there were plenty of mobile phone credit stalls. At one point I decided to count all the ones in view and I got to no fewer than 12!
As we approached the “Great east mall” we were offered Malawian Kwacha and US dollars buy many men waving large wodges of cash. This is because Chipata is almost a boarder town many people need dollars for the visa to enter Malawi and kwacha to spend there. The great east mall is not very large it is not like the shopping centres in Lusaka as all the shops open to the outside not an indoor corridor. For those of you reading this who come from or know Warrington, I could describe it as being like riverside retail only about half the size and with more smaller shops. We went round some of the shops to start with to get an idea of what they had and the kind of prices since we wanted to bulk buy a lot of things like rice, pasta chopped tomatoes and other tinned items. We also wanted to buy a kettle and chopping board since we both agreed that this would be something that would improve the kitchen a lot. As it turns out a decent kettle is only £13 so it wasn’t too bad. We went to the spar supermarket as well as shoprite which was a long walk away. We were offered yet more taxis but this time to the Malawian border along that road so at least we know how to get to Malawi now. We went to choppies which is now our favourite shop due to the price and range of items.
After having a look around we decided to walk back to the bus station we were constantly being asked if we wanted a taxi or a ride on the back of a bike which does sound like something I’d like to do at some point just for fun but I didn’t want one at that time. I don’t think our large travelling bags helped the situation as many backpackers travelling to Malawi come through Chipata and we looked the same as them. When we got to the bus station we established the man in the morning was right the bus wasn’t running today as it had broken down before it had got to Mambwe. So we went to check another bus company but the bus left at 1pm and we had to board at 12:30 and it was already 10:30 and we hadn’t been to the bank or bought anything so we decided we might have to get a shared taxi home.
So we left the bus station once again, having learnt nothing new and were welcomed by the onslaught of honking and taxi offers yet again. All the while it was very hot but not as hot as Mambwe so it didn’t feel too bad compared to normal. We went to the bank where we withdrew some cash since there are no cash machines in Mambwe. We also grabbed a sausage bap from outside the spar shop which was very tasty and only K8, about 60p. We also managed to change all of our K100 notes into smaller denominations which has made life so much easier in shops since then.
We then went back to the furthest shop where I got a box mosquito net to give me more space to move in my bed which I have been glad of. We also got some cleaning products and cloths to make the house a bit better. Went out of the shop and packed the shopping into our backpacks but not before the security guards, who are at almost every shop, checked that you had a receipt. We then walked back to the other shops to get the rest of the items. We had a lot of stuff by the end of the shopping trip. I had 5kg of rice and 3kg of pasta, bottles of cleaning fluids, orange juice, meat and vegetables. Our bags were completely full of stuff and we had carrier bags too. The walk back to the bus station was tough and we knew we had missed the bus by over an hour so we knew we would have to get a shared taxi. When we got to the bus station the bus company said they would sort us out with a taxi which seemed nice however when we had started loading the bags into the car they said it was K100 each rather than the usual K50 for a shared taxi. We think this was because the bus company take a cut. We now know where to get a sharing taxi from thanks to some of the teachers at the school so we wont be making that mistake again!
The taxi ride was rather long and uncomfortable. There were two school children in the back with Andrew and I so four people on the three seats in the back. Then in the front there was also four people. One person was even sat with the driver in the driver’s seat! Before we left, we ended up with a tour of Chipata. I think, one of the girls wanted to say bye to her boyfriend but no one knew where he was! We never found him in the end. We also went to a petrol station and several roadside stops for food and other things and a change of driver too. In total we spent 40 minutes going around Chipata before leaving. The car was very overloaded so had very little give in the suspension meaning we had to slow a lot and go over speed bumps at an angle in order to not break the bottom of the car. In the taxi on the way home I could feel the temperature rising as we got closer to Mambwe which wasn’t surprising but it was an annoying end to the day.
When the taxi dropped us off at the school it stopped at the end of the road to the school so we had to walk the last 1.6km down the road with our bags. It was a tiring end to the day but at least it was a successful shopping trip. We looked forwards to cooking ourselves something different to pasta with tomato sauce that night. I can’t remember what it was we cooked that night but it did taste good.
Unfortunately, as you can see by the lack of photos, I was too busy that day to take any pictures. I’ll try to take some next time I go. Instead I can leave you with a very poor picture of some of the many chickens around the school. These were wandering around outside the staff room.
Jack in Zambia 