Eating My Fear
An Adventure A Week
Part 1 of a 5-part Series
I often get asked if I was ever afraid on the road. My answer: not as much as I should’ve been. Perhaps my biggest failing while traveling solo around the world was an absence of fear.
Part of this is my personality. I’m a natural-born risk-taker, not daunted by the unknown or thoughts of personal danger. Another part may just be one’s instinct for survival. If you’re truly in danger, you don’t have time to be afraid. If your fear is suppressed, you can act.
At this stage in my travels, I seem to have gotten quite adept at suppressing my fear. I can recall clearly that during my most frightening moments, my voice drastically changed. It was constrained, slightly garbled, and gruff.
I remember thinking that while I didn’t actually feel afraid, I must be terrified because I didn’t recognize my own voice. I had ingested my fear.
While I concentrated on swallowing my fear, those back home didn’t put up the pretense. My closest friends and family were pretty much afraid the entire time I was traveling. And they had reason to be.
Braving the Zambia-Malawi Border
It’s not like I was a complete newbie to overland African travel. I had attended a graduate program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. And I had crossed the borders of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania as a solo traveler several years earlier. This gave me confidence that I could navigate a bus journey across Zambia into Malawi.
My idea was to travel from Livingstone in western Zambia to the capital, Lusaka, then onwards across the eastern end of the country to a small border town called Mchinji on the Malawi side.
I was going to Mchinji to meet a woman who worked with a local non-governmental organization helping to lower the maternal mortality rate in rural areas. After meeting up with her, I would venture to the Malawi capital of Lilongwe, finally heading up to Lake Malawi to scuba dive. That was the plan.
My itinerary consisted of a multi-day bus ride, and at first, things seemed to be going pretty well. That was, until I reached the capital of Lusaka. As we approached the main bus station, taxi drivers started to swarm the bus, picking out their fares through the windows.
As the only foreigner on the bus, I was creating quite a stir, and the bus hadn’t even stopped yet. As I got off, a fistfight broke out over who was going to drive me to the hotel. The biggest bully won, and he grabbed my bag. Yay me!
I wasn’t so keen to get in his cab, but bus stations can be dangerous places, and I wanted to get the hell out. I jumped in the back and asked him to take me to my hotel. But first, I asked him to stop at an ATM so I could withdraw cash.
This was maybe not a good move.
As he drove, I could see him looking at me in the rearview mirror, sizing me up. We both knew his chances were excellent if he wanted to rob me. Mercifully, he drove me to my hotel unscathed, and I gave him a big tip. It was the least I could do since he delivered me safely.
The next morning, I hired a reputable taxi from the hotel to drop me off in the pre-dawn hours to catch the border bus, which would be making local stops. These local buses aren’t as safe as the larger buses plying the international route, but I was aiming for the small town of Mchinji, so it was the local bus for me.
Before we pulled out of the station, food and trinket hawkers streamed endlessly up and down the aisles selling oranges and bread for the trip, small bags of candy, sunglasses, and newspapers. This is fairly common, but on this trip, we were also joined by a parade of pastors plying the aisles, Bibles in hand.
These various men of the cloth would stand up at the front of the bus and raise the Bible high in the air, preaching to us bus passengers and praying for our safe travel. I thought this was just for show, but as I looked around, many of my fellow passengers were listening and praying out loud.
The pastors were also making a bundle as they passed the hat. Perhaps I should have been concerned about why so many prayers were needed for this journey. But I didn’t dwell on it.
As it happened, I was seated next to a nice young man named Amadeus who was returning home to visit family during his school break. Turns out Amadeus was a huge action movie buff and kept asking me questions about Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jean-Claude van Damme, who I quickly pointed out was not American.
Amadeus told me he liked the directness of Americans. Actually, his exact words were: “That’s what I like about you white people—you just tell it like it is.” I found him rather frank himself.
Amadeus got off a few stops before my destination of Chipata, on this side of the Zambian border. I was sorry to see Amadeus go. As it turns out, he might have enjoyed the upcoming action. 🦋
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Christened “Wander Woman” by National Geographic, Erin Michelson has traveled to 130+ countries & all 7 continents. She is a professional speaker and author of the Nomad Life™ series of curated trips and travel guides, including the #1-ranked Explore the World with Nomads.
Want to read more about my adventures? Get the book “Adventures of a Nomad: 30 Inspirational Stories.”
