Katima Mulilo -Okahandja Long Bus Ride

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May 6 Journey to Namibia

I had a couple of hours sleep then woke up thinking about the logistics of the journey tomorrow. For about $40 savings for me I was causing Lovemore so much inconvenience and trouble. Then there was the uncertainty of the bus tickets because we never received the confirmation of the change. I kept thinking that I wished she handt changed the tickets. At 4am I picked up my book to read. I thought that the best thing to do would be to call the bus company in the early morning to see if we can change the tickets back to Livingstone, Zambia and eat the $160 visa charges. I was also a bit worried about the arrangement that Lovemore had made for our pickup at the border and taken to the bus. That would have left us waiting there for four or so hours by ourselves with all of our luggage. Not so safe in my mind. The next two and a half hours of early morning went by and I ventured out to talk to Lovemore. We came up with a plan. We agreed to try the Bus company and see if we can change the ticket back. If that didn’t work we would see if the guy who would pick us up in Namibia could take care of us for the in between time. If that didn’t work Lovemore would take us across himself. This discussion was really hard because I tend to cry when I am tired and frustrated and there were ants in the shoes that I was trying to pack… Well I used the cottage’s telephone to call the Intercape Bus office before 7am. He gave us our changed ticket numbers and told me that I can’t change the tickets back as there would be a charge that is not payable over the phone. So that answered that question. Then Lovemore called the pickup contact and it wouldn’t work out with him so the job went back to Lovemore.

We packed the car, ants and all, and headed for the Bots Border. On the road to the border we had to stop on the highway to let a herd of elephants cross the road. Only in Africa. We went across the border to Botswana with no trouble, I think we were across in less than a half hour. We went to the SPA in Bots to get some breakfast and lunch for the day and I paid with a credit card. We travelled through the Bots National Parka and watched another herd of elephants crossing the road. At the Bots immigration we noticed a nice calendar on the wall with great pictures. We asked the guy there if we could have the previous months page and he said yes. He tore out the month of March and gave it to us then we were off again to the Namibian Immigration. It would have been a long walk with our luggage from the one border across the river to the other side. We were in and out of the Namibia Immigration too. On the way to Katima Mulilo we had another look at that calendar page and noticed that on the other side of the page was October 2007. Oops. Its hot here in Namibia. The sun through the windshield was burning my sunburnt hands. We arrived at Katima Mulilo at about 12:30, the bus leaves at 3pm.Lovemore didn’t feel comfortable leaving us at the gas station that long even when there was an arrangement for our luggage to be stored for us. We spent an hour discussing and looking for another place to sit and wait. By then it was close enough. An hour and a half was not long to wait. So he took us back, left us there and started his journey home to Bulawayo. We found a nice lady to sit beside and made ourselves comfortable. Then bus came an hour late and we climbed on. After a little persuasion we got someone to move and we took our seats together on the top of the bus. We turned to look out the window and it was completely fogged up, you couldn’t see a thing through it. We don’t have much luck with window seats.

May 7th Arrival in Okahandja

We discovered that the bus wasn’t actually late we just didn’t realize that there is a time change in Namibia. 13 hours went by fairly quickly. Dakotah curled up on my lap and got a little sleep. I nodded off a few times too. We pulled in to Okahandja and the bus dropped us off at a different stop than they were supposed to so we borrowed a phone to call Charlene to tell her. It turns out that Charlene was still at home and the call prompted her to come and get us. She brought us to her home and we chatted for those morning hours. We then headed over to the CHI building to participate in the second day of their CHI Monthly prayer and fasting. There were a lot of volunteers there from different areas. That was impressive since I have never been in that kind of environment before. I stood up and shared about our experiences with CHI Zimbabwe. I participated in the prayers but not eh fasting since I only came in half way through. Dakotah stayed at the house and played with Charlene’s boys for the day. We all went over to the Ark for dinner together, then hit the bed early for a good night’s rest.

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