I do…

We are walking on a beautiful island. The view is stunning, nothing but white sand and turquoise water, and nobody around for miles! It’s absolutely amazing and incredible to walk along the beach of Magaruque Island.
Magaruque is one of the islands that belongs to the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique and that morning we sailed there with a traditional dhow-boat.

Suddenly Tinus asks me to sit down and magically pulls some sheets out of a bag that he apparently had hidden away before.
He starts a beautiful story about our lives together, and the fact that he was very proud to be able to call me his wife in Malawi. In Malawi you’re officially married when you live together for more then 6 months. But now, since we are going back to Holland, he looses that privilege. And he does not want to ;)
He gets down on one knee, looks me in my eyes and asks: Amy, will you marry me?

How romantic…Of course I said yes! So…we’re getting married! Party!

It’s a little bit difficult to imagine where we could go to for our honeymoon if you’ve been proposed to on a tropical island, but that’s something for later. As well as all the details. No, I don’t know how, what or even when, we’ll figure that out when we get back to Holland!



On the road to nowhere…
Unfortunately we had to leave our tropical island eventually to make our way back to Majete. It took a little bit longer than we anticipated.
First stop was Gorongossa. Where it rained!
The next morning we left for Caia. From Caia to Sena where we wanted to cross the bridge over the Sambezi to get to Muturara.
We drove the 65 km on a bad bumpy dirt road to Sena and drove up to the bridge…and then the road stopped! The bridge was closed. Or not so much closed, as well closed for cars. They had rebuild it to a railway bridge. And only did this a couple of months ago! How were we supposed to know? Aargh, that meant we had to go back to Caia.
In Caia we had no choice but to stay there for the night.
We slept at a locally run campsite and went to bed early. Somewhere in the middle of the night I heard something approaching our car, followed by a bump. A hippo did not see our car in it’s pathway until the last moment, but fortunately could change his path and he ran under the doors (which were open because of the heat).

The next morning we continued our journey. We had asked around and we could probably take a 4x4 route to Muturara. This meant we did not have to take a detour of about 450 km, so we decided to take a chance. It did mean however that we had to cross two rivers (the Zambezi and the Shire) on a ferry. Another challenge. And Bertha had not been on the water yet.

Bertha on the boat
The ferry over the Zambezi was fun. A lot of people and music and that at 7 am! It never ceases to amaze me how trucks, buses our cars have goats tied on the top of the vehicle and drive them wherever they go. Life goats, I might add.
Debating of a 4x4 track would have an official sign post, we missed the first turn off (no sign post) and drove 30 km too far before we decided we had to go back. So that was 60 km of extra effort and fuel. That made the total, including the way to the bridge and back, 190 km of unnecessary bouncing in Bertha!
But from there all went well. The road was not as bad as we had expected. Although we still could not drive any faster than 40 km an hour. But we were happy and Bertha was happy.
After a couple of hours we reached the ferry over the Shire. We were both a little bit scared that it would not fit our car and we would have to go back to Caia again, but it did!
Everybody was excited to see that big car on their little ferry and it was great fun. We reached the other side without any problems and continued our way to Villa Nova da Fronteira. The border with Malawi.

Villa Nova gives you chills
Driving there we made our way to a long stretch of former refugee camps. People who stayed there after the war or simply never left, because they had nowhere else to go. A lot of small houses and now and then Unicef Tents ripped apart by age gave it all a sinister ambiance.
When we reached Villa Nova it was like the air itself was holding its breath. The weather was hot, but the place had an atmosphere as cold as ice. Houses and even the building of customs had been ruined and you could see bullet holes in the walls. The guy at customs was very friendly though, but this place gave me the chills. Let’s go to Malawi!

Nothing has changed, Malawi is still corrupt
At the Malawi border we had no problems with our passports. Or not much anyway. Until we got to the next office for our car. The whole office smelled like beer. The eyes of the guy were red and he had taking his shirt half off. He was leaning back in his chair talking to someone on the phone. Although I suspected he was just pretending. This guy was obviously drunk and I could see trouble coming.
He checked the papers of the car and started babbling something about that we were not allowed to export the car for more then one month. We knew we could never win this battle and had to sit it out the best we could, hoping that somewhere along the line this guy would lose interest and let us go.
But he did not lose interest. He wanted us to pay over $ 200 to enter Malawi. We had no idea what he was talking about and suggested to call the headquarters of the MRA to check his story. But then suddenly he changed the subject started talking about blacks and whites and all the wrongs that had been done to him. We would never trust him blablabla. And he was right, I did not trust him at all, but this had absolutely nothing to do with the color of his skin!
In the end we had to pay him so he could buy drinks for his buddies outside. We paid and got away as soon as possible, both with a bitter aftertaste in our mouths.

To wash away this taste, we stopped in the next village to buy a Green! A Malawi Beer. To celebrate that we were back in Malawi again!!!
It was still a long way to Majete, but we were determined to reach Majete today!
And we made it! After the longest day of driving (13 hours) we had made our way back to where we had started.

Highlights
Almost 11.000 km through Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, South-Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique and back to Malawi again! We did everything we wanted to do and probably need another year or so to process everything we have seen and done. We have met some great people and had great fun. We are very proud of the fact we did all this in an old Landrover 109 Series III Ambulance and actually made it! Which proofs you can do anything you set your mind to!

We will stay some weeks in Majete to chill and visit the new community projects of Gift4Gift, before heading home end November.

I’ll try to update you some more on Gift4Gift, but unfortunately my laptop really died this morning (RIP) so I don’t have easy access to a computer anymore.

Lots of love,
Amy, Tinus and Bertha