No-man's land

So I'll summarize our 2-day journey as follows: On our "comment/notes"-tab on the Excel spreadsheet of this country, I'll write "Not Recommended." Full stop. Not recommended travelling through (especially!), not recommended going to (definately not!) en not recommended climbing into a taxi with the local taxi driver (eish...). All right, so there is something I'll recommend for this country: I recommend that you pray for it!

Our journey consisted of an on-going 36hours through 3 different countries. We travelled in a short-seated minibus, over a river on a glorified canoe, 9 people in a 6-seater Peugot, Then 20 hours with ill-tempered, sleepy, swearing and money-grabbing taxi drivers and 6 dragging hours at 2 (or 4, however you look at it) border crossings. Now that was just the outline.

To fill in the horrifying picture: "Wait, wait and wait longer" is the overall motto. After you are done waiting longer the part off "get tired of waiting longer" kicks in. Then, after a massive intense negotiation with a boat driver, you jump quickly in the boat and wait some more. The official awaiting you on the other side, unpacks your whole hiking bag, flaring personal items in the air and then searches for anything to deport you back to the place you came form... like accusing our team member of a false visa. In between, one needs to negotiate a budget price with the taxi driver. It's not at all because you want to press every single bit of juice out of this poor man, it's just because one does not have any more money for the next three week's transport after this single trip... That happened twice. Then on our second blood-draining taxi-trip, the taxi-man tries to squeeze every bit of sanity and penny you have left (now going into accommodation and food money) out of you through intimidation, demanding tips and gifts, screaming and smoking. And then nervously driving with this man through no-man's land between border posts and seeing people who is stuck there - they can neither go back where they came from or go on to where they were heading... eish!

Well, now you can laugh with me (this is not an April fool's joke), and cry with me and feel sorry for me. But end off with laughing with me... I'm almost there. Because I now know that this was just a small thing to go through to get to the place Father has in store for me. I laugh because of relief - relief that it's over and relief that I'm not the one being called to go and live in that country in a month's time...

I sure hope that that piece of no-man's land will not see me again anytime soon.