17 July 2011- Malawi.
I don’t think I can explain the feeling I am having three days into this trip to Malawi. Obviously it was going to be considerably different without Suzi, and that has such a major impact on me, but that is not all that it is. The situation in Malawi this time is so different. The fuel situation is unimaginable. This has been going on for nearly two months, and it has reached crisis stage. Tiny trickles of fuel are coming in, a station here today, one way over there tomorrow. As you drive down the street you approach cars sitting along the side of the road. The line may extend as much as a mile or more. In one case we passed a line that seemed about two miles long. Many of the cars were empty. The people had parked them in the line, and then gone somewhere while waiting for the fuel truck to come their way. Other cars and trucks, in fact most of them, just have people sitting or sleeping in them, waiting and waiting.
Yesterday we made our way from Lilongwe to Blantyre, a distance of 311 kilometers, and when we reached our destination at Thondwe, near Blantyre, the tank registered slightly below half a tank. That is the moment you face the panic. Less than half a tank. That means you are not going to be able to drive as far back up the road as you have come down the road. The mission where we are staying cannot help us, they have no fuel either. One of the destinations on our route in Senga Bay is holding some fuel for us, but how to get there? Another, back in Lilongwe, is also holding fuel for us, but how to get there? It is a feeling that is probably never felt in America. After all, we have an abundance of stations, and ample fuel.
Another interesting note to this situation is in the fact that if and when we find fuel the price is going to be someplace from $11.50 to $15 or $18 a gallon. And do you know that price doesn’t even bother me at this moment. I’d pay a hundred to see that gage back up around 3⁄4 of a tank. More on this in the days to come.
First Report — From Dick Stephens and Scott Gordon- The Webmaster