Dead rats and dirty mats: three days aboard the MV Ilala

The Ilala.

Transporting passengers and goods at the first stop.

The market outside the Ilala in happier times.

NOTE: The blog’s in Tanzania, I’m in Namibia, so I need to catch up. There’s all kinds of odds and ends I’ll have to throw in later, but I’m going to get caught up, skipping for the moment some gems from earlier in my travels. Also, I'm having trouble uploading photos, so I'll have to add them later.

Part 1

SOMEWHERE ON LAKE MALAWI, Malawi – The MV Ilala was everything I had hoped and feared.

In the mosquito darkness of Nkhata Bay we watched the sacks of maize and flour, vegetables, livestock, and massive logs loaded by hand onto the 60-year-old converted steam vessel. A mini-market sprung up outside the buzzing, stinking, overcrowded ship, with locals slinging cheap eats and trinkets to the Malawians boarding for the major market to market route the Ilala plies between Nkhata Bay and Likoma Island.

Connie and I ascended the steps, first through economy and second class, where Malawians reclined on bags of maize and vegetables, every possible sleeping space taken, every sweet and vile odor of the market filling the air, and finally to ‘first class,’ surely a moniker the Malawian staff invented to mock foreigners. 'First class' gives you the privilege of throwing down your sleeping bag on the open top deck of the ship, a dicier proposition in the rainy season than we realized.

The foghorn sounded and the noble Ilala, survivor of decades of rough seas and civil war, chugged off slowly into an inky, starless night, speckled with the dim lights of dugout canoes that looked like a Chinese water lantern procession.

Connie and I drank from sweaty bottles of Kuche Kuche beer and cheap brandy with the few foreign travelers aboard. A German taxi driver traveling with his Burundian girlfriend, whose English became progressively more difficult to understand with each drink, toasted us for stumbling onto such a weird journey in such an obscure corner of the world. We watched in fascination as the Ilala made it's first port of call, an island without a proper harbor, necessitating the ship to stop far offshore and painstakingly ferry passengers and goods back and forth in rough seas, via rickety motorboats.

As the night wore on, the German passed out on the hardwood, open-mouthed, one arm curled around a bar stool, still wearing his dirty converse. We all had a good laugh at his expense before laying down on verminous mattresses strewn haphazardly around the bar - the only covered section of the top deck - and drifting off to blaring reggae, Chichewe banter, and tip-toeing of a steady drizzle on.

Soon after I fell asleep to thoughts of the journey ahead, though, the rain picked up. I felt a few drops and simply turned over, away from the edge of the boat, thinking, “It will pass. It never rains long here.” It was the first of many cockeyed weather predictions.

Without warning, we were doused by a sobriety-smack of a lake squall that sent soaking, horizontal sheet of rain across the deck, sending backpackers and barflies alike scrambling for cover. Before we had time to pack our sleeping bags our clothes and shoes were waterlogged. It lasted five minutes, but washed every good feeling, along with dead rats, cockroaches, and garbage overboard.

Soaked, shocked and without a place to lay down (the Africans onboard had wisely snapped up the prime spots ahead of the storm), we huddled in a tiny, sheltered area below decks, sitting on the sodden, filthy ground next to a more fortunate group of Malawian soldiers fast asleep on their mattress. No one slept amongst the group of foreigners, save the Burundian woman, who seemed immune to consciousness.

We shivered through the night and waited for the sun. No one spoke.