In the early afternoon I took a break and went for lunch at Nando’s, a fast food chain specialised in chicken dishes and quite popular in Southern Africa. Luckily, they also had some sort of a Veggie Burger which wasn’t thrilling but eatable. Afterwards I set off to buy my bus ticket to Blantyre for tomorrow. This was kind of frustrating because after my last long-distance bus experience I had sworn that I would never expose myself to this kind of horror again. Unfortunately, this was the only way to get to Blantyre and I had to go there if I ever wanted to make it to the lake. At least, I went for the company that promised a non-stop transfer on a “luxury coach” and paid 20,- dollars for a one-way ticket, hoping that it would be worth it...

Afterwards I returned to the internet cafe to check if the hostel in Blantyre had confirmed my email reservation. Well, it seemed there was a problem with the internet connection but as this was kind of important, I sat down to wait until it would be solved. After one and a half hours I gave up. It was the end of the day and I didn’t want to walk back in the dark. There were two computers with internet connection at Kiboko Camp but their connection was VERY slow and using them was three times more expensive than in town. Today I had no other choice, so I returned to the camp and checked my emails there. As it turned out, the Blanytre hostel didn’t reply yet but there was another message from a travel agency in Cape Town whom I had contacted to inquire about my flight options back to Germany in August. They said that I could get a special discount of 5% if I still booked this month. As today’s business hours were over by now, basically the only day left was tomorrow. Shit, on the one hand I hadn’t made up my mind whether I wanted to continue the rest of my trip as initially planned but on the other hand, 5% on a plane ticket was definitely an opportunity not to miss. I knew I had to take a decision. Now.

Trying to analyse how I felt two days after my major crisis, I must say that I was doing already much better. I guess my break-down was mainly due to exhaustion and not so much because of my overall situation. Yes, it was hard and yes, I wanted to go home but I was not really willing to leave until I had seen the rest of the countries on my route. I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I would probably never go to Zimbabwe or Botswana. There was the diving course I had been looking forward to do at Lake Malawi ever since I first snorkelled in Egypt. I still wanted to see Victoria Falls, plus I had my friend in Cape Town who I definitely wanted to visit before going home. And after all, it was barely six weeks left before I would return to Europe anyway. So weighing my options, and being encouraged by other travellers who told me that such moments of crisis were totally normal, I decided to risk it and stay. It was today that I booked my return flight to Germany, leaving Cape Town on August 12th. And it was now that I started to count the days until I would be going home.

At the end of the day, I had banana pancakes for dinner (the cook already knew me by now) and went to bed early. I had actually moved from my private bedroom to a dormitory in the main building to save half of the price on my last night in Lilongwe. 44 more nights to go.