Criminals at Lusaka Inter-city Bus Terminus 21/06/10

My visit to Zambia didn’t end with a good note.

I booked a coach ticket from Lusaka to Lilongwe yesterday, that should depart from Lusaka at 12N. On getting off the taxi at Lusaka Inter-City Bus Terminus, my luggage was immediately grabbed by a group of guys who allegedly ‘helped’ me with my ‘very heavy’ luggage. It was useless to shout at them. Holding my luggage ‘hostage’, they demanded ‘luggage fee’ (which was totally unheard of) from me in order to ‘transfer it from Lusaka to Lilongwe’ – so the coach fare I paid didn’t include luggage? Oh obviously NOT! I have spent all Zambian Kwacha so I had to pay in Malawian Kwacha – and these greedy barbarians took opportunity again to manipulate on the exchange rate to extort more money from me. I ended up paying 4 times higher than usual – a REAL mzungu price! Anyhow I later found out that most passengers didn’t pay at all even though they travelled with 10 bags or more!

Well as I said the coach was supposed to leave at 12NOON. The name of the coach company was Zambia-Botswana Luxury Coach Service. And it wasn’t cheap – the price was ‘luxury’ indeed, but service was the lousiest! Instead of departing at 12N, we departed at 1500. For three hours, I was just sitting in the bus watching vendors coming up and getting down the bus. Basically they moved the whole market up into the bus. They sold everything you could think of – from food, drinks, gloves/socks/scarves, phone credits, items you could normally think passengers need; to peculiar items like wigs, half-length mirror (how on earth do I carry this if I purchase the mirror?!), primary school exam questions, television (???!!), etc etc..
Before we left, we had to change to another coach at 1430. I saw everybody suddenly rushing down the bus and I didn’t know why. Nobody said anything to us. I tried to ask but nobody spoke to me, or spoke to me in the local dialect. When I finally found out that I needed to move to the second bus because only the second bus was ‘licensed’ to cross the border, I found my luggage was locked in a compartment in the first bus but I found nobody to open that for me. And the stupid thing was the second bus had less seats than the first one – so everybody squeezed into the second bus in panic. I was panicking too – as I had to get in the second bus to grab a seat; but I couldn’t leave the first bus because my luggage was kept in the locked compartment. I was worried the first bus would leave with my luggage and the second bus would leave without me.. I tried to get some help but had nobody to turn to. All the gangsters who extorted money (for ‘luggage fee’) from me just now just disappeared. They didn’t issue receipt for the fee I paid so obviously they were just robbing me because they knew I couldn’t do anything but to obey. And now I was in the situation with absolutely no help, and no idea what was going on.. It was the first time during my whole trip I felt so helpless, so lonely, and so angry..! and the next thing I knew was I started to sob uncontrollably. May be they were not just tears out of today’s frustration but an accumulation over the past few weeks.. I had been feeling so lonely, and so scared at times; I thought I was strong but at this moment I was not at all.. I felt I just wanted to give up. I don’t want to travel alone anymore. It is just too tiring to be constantly on the watch-out for bullies, for people to take advantage just because I look different from the others, constantly planning and budgeting not to spend too much, constantly worrying for not getting home before dark....... ahhh it’s just too much... I just want to go back home.. hoME... HOMEEEE...

Perhaps the tears saved me. One of the guys came forward to help me move my luggage to the second bus and explained me what was going on in English. I couldn’t thank him enough, though he was actually one of them who sold too many tickets for too less the seats. These greedy bastards don’t care for safety, they just wanted to make money. They just issued tickets to whoever came forward without taking into consideration whether we fit in the coach or not. If you don’t get in the bus, you lose your money anyway. In the end, the whole bus was overloaded. Luggage was everywhere, from the luggage compartment to every corner of the coach especially the aisle. There was literally no space to walk – you had to step on other people’s luggage to ‘walk’. There were a few times my arm was nearly stepped on as somebody’s legs had nowhere to stretch but to step on somebody’s arms!

I thought I could finally rest after the coach departed at 1500. But it only moved for 15 minutes before all passengers were asked to get down the coach because coach needed diesel refill. I asked why we needed to get down for refill oh the reason was they were worried the coach would ‘catch fire’ during refill. Oh very considerate indeed of our safety! But strange enough passengers gathered right beside the coach.. so if there was indeed fire, what’s the difference for you to sit in the bus or to stand right beside the bus?!?

I don’t understand why but the refill took 30 minutes. You really can’t get impatient with such ‘luxurious’ service you are just wasting your energy.. so oh fine we moved again at 345pm. I closed my eyes and thought oh great I would reach Lilongwe 4am instead of 1am as promised earlier by the coach company.

But NO, reaching Lilongwe at 4am next morning was indeed a LUXURY. The coach stopped again at 5pm – it broke down because one of the water pipes burst and some other problems. The driver and bus conductor spent 30 minutes to repair it just to get the coach to run for another 10 minutes. And it stopped and got ‘repaired’ again for 10-minute running. This tedious cycle was repeated 3 times before the bus driver finally convinced that this bus couldn’t run anymore.

We were left stranded in the coach for the next 8 hours. No rescue bus came. Most passengers slept in the bus. Some left the bus to have some fun in the club at a nearby village – don’t worry, be happy, always! I just slept I was too tired to worry anymore. But the elderly uncle who sat beside me didn’t allow me to sleep too long.. he accidently spilt half a bottle of coke onto my trousers and woke me up completely..

The rescue bus finally came at 2am. There went another frantic fight for seats in the new bus. Everybody was panicking. Everybody was trying to save his/her seats and taking care of the luggage. So you saw people squeezing into the bus to grab a seat, then squeezing to get down the bus to move the luggage over to the new bus. As most people had more than one luggage (I always think people in Africa move their house with buses, or sometimes even minibuses.. they have so much to carry! You would lose count of how many gunny sacks they carry!!) they had to run up and down for many times. The whole process of switching bus took 2 hours can you believe it.. because we need to allow time for argument (about whose seat was ‘stolen’, about people from which part of the country are greater.. etc etc). It was just a total MESS...!
Finally the bus moved at 4am. We reached the border at 12pm next day. And the rest of the journey was uneventful (even if something happened again.. didn’t surprise me anymore..!). I got to my new place in Lilongwe at about 2pm.

I swear this was the first time and also the last time I would ever take this coach! And I would never travel alone at Lusaka – just too much harassment, too much mzungu price!