By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
It’s funny how I was counting the number of times he dropped the “h” and overstressed the “r” as it is the case with many French speakers. After the chat I told him how he was not speaking English but French to which another chat of him learning English language began. “So do you have an English tutor?” I asked and he laughed how instead he had a Chichewa teacher. “ Too many languages to learn, sometimes I am confused. In a day, I have to speak four different languages ayayayayayyaayya!” He told me amidst his unstoppable giggling, and it was so infectious that I joined in and in no time, tears of laughter were rolling down my cheeks. He was afraid that I was crying because he saw my tears. I said no, and we laughed harder. In the midst of all this, I heard him saying, “But why didn’t you respond to my texts on messenger?”. “Which one?”, I asked. Honestly, I saw his messages on Facebook messenger some days before but I just forgot answering replying, as was the case with everything in my life at this point in time. I remembered nothing. After we parted, I went to my room and responded to that text. Well, he became my friend instantly, and then after a year, we got married. He is my husband for two years now, the father to our adorable daughter, the greatest love of my life! If I knew that that text would lead to us visiting Rwanda, the land of one thousand hills, I would have responded earlier. We dreamed of travelling, anywhere at all, just to be lost in the vastness of the world, but together we realised this shared dream. I still remember the smell of the green tea fields of Eastern province, the soothing feeling of floating in Lake Kivu, one of the Great Lakes of Central and Eastern Africa, and also the awestruck feeling at the sight of those mighty volcanoes in northwestern Rwanda bordering Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo which is haven to the giant mountain gorilla and the golden monkey. I lived my wildest dream by waking up to the fresh air coming from Rutsiro hills that gave a sensational view of the Congo Nile Street, the birth place of the sturdy Nile and Congo rivers right from Nyungwe Forest Reserve. For a whole one year, this was my home, and I got used to the steepy terrain, the low temperatures, as low as sixteen degrees celcius, the heavy rains accompanied by robust thunders, and a moist atmosphere that for some reason was good for my skin. I was literally glowing in those hills! It could be the fact that my skin could not adapt well to the dry spells, low humidity and Malawian temperatures that are as high as thirty eight degrees celcius. After experiencing this phenomena, there's always a reason to travel with my husband, always. With Maldives, Guyana, and Morocco being on top of our list in the nearest future, we look forward to more life changing experiences and shifted perspectives on life as we know it. There's no way we can undo what we sparked. I took a leap into the unknown, and I fell in love with myself all over again. And sometimes, I wonder if some of those things were in me all along or I had to learn them along the way. Either way, I can see that taking the trips around the world did the most at reconnecting with my inner self and my forgotten hobbies. As it is now, I started writing again after a five years break, and I started taking care of my mental health better than I did before. So I say cheers to my Oooops moment! And I’m glad it was never my “what if”.