With most of my underwear recovered, we were desperate to leave Mdokera’s campsite and head back to our nice hotel in Mzuzu. Mdokera was reluctant to let us leave, probably thinking up ways to explain the stolen items. He insisted on telling us in great detail about his nephew’s sick wife, and we assured him that he didn’t need to wait with us to find transport back to Mzuzu. Instead he should go to the hospital and be with his realtives. Finally, he retreated to the camp site leaving us on the hot and empty road, figuring out how to get ‘home’. Unluckily, we had just missed a coach that hurtled past. Worried about the temperature and our limited food and water, I flagged down an oncoming car, in the hope we might be able to hitch. The driver pulled over and we greeted him and his female passenger. He was on his way to Zambia but agreed to take us to Mzuzu for slightly more than the bus fare, reminding us that he was in fact a taxi and would get us there more quickly.

We chatted for a while and were a little concerned to find that he had started his journey in Dar-es-salaam about 17 hours earlier, and had not yet stopped for a break. This is quite common in Africa, even for bus drivers. He told us that the lady passenger was a police officer and we assumed he was driving her to Zambia, so were a little confused when she got out after about an hour. It turns out it was only the driver going to Zambia, and the passenger had been acquired at a police check point when an officer had asked our driver to take her to the next village. A few kilometres from Mzuzu, we were pulled over at the final police check point.

The officer, armed with semi-automatic rifle, began to question our driver (in English, luckily) about us, his passengers. It seems that although he was a licensed cabbie in Zambia, the car was not licensed as a taxi in Malawi (unbeknown to us). Our quick thinking driver politely told the policeman than when the previous checkpoint officer asked him to carry the police woman, he also told him to take us as a favour, and therefore he was just being helpful and was certainly not receiving payment. We held our breath to see if this story would be accepted. A head appeared at our window. We smiled and nodded politely. “Is this true..” he began. Dave kept silent and looked at me to answer. I certainly didn’t want to lie and corroborate with the driver about where we’d been picked up, but I couldn’t say it was untrue. Fortunately, the officer continued. “Is it true that you’re not paying this man anything?”. I smiled and replied in my girliest voice “Oh yes, he’s been very kind and given us a lift because we couldn’t find a bus”. “Good”, the officer nodded and waved us through. Phew. We let go of our breath. I turned to Dave and thanked him for letting me handle that one. :o)