Nkhata Bay <--> Likoma Island, Aboard Ilala

During my recent year-end travels I spent a chunk of time in Malawi. After a splendid Christmas with friends in Mzuzu, I proceeded to Nkhata Bay. This place is like a freshwater version of the Caribbean, even in its laid-back attitude. Malawians slice through placid waters in dugout canoes as crystal clear waters in mesmerizing shades of azure, green, and turquoise lap their way onto course sandy beaches. It’s difficult to imagine that Lake Malawi could be home to a nasty parasite called bilharzia. The bugs surreptitiously enter (human) hosts through the skin and take weeks or months to make their presence known, wending their way to reside in and feast on kidney or liver tissue. Fortunately they’re quite susceptible to readily available antibiotics.

Cool offshore breezes betray the presence of kapenta, a small, sardine-like fish. Villagers splay the silvery, pinky-length stuff on long, bamboo mats to dry it in the hot December sun. The same breezes escort billions of tiny midges ashore. These minute insects live for only twenty-four hours. Towers of them rise like smoke over the lake, resembling dark tornado funnels. Nkhata Bay also buzzes with villagers jockeying around the produce market and stalls displaying of carved wood. The ferry Ilala sputters along the Malawian, Tanzanian, and Mozambiquan shores of this massive pool (~ 360 miles long x 50 miles wide), drawing people to the towns where it calls.

Ilala stops in Nkhata Bay twice weekly. I boarded the Monday 8 p.m. ferry bound for Likoma Island. The scene paralleled the description Blaine Harden penned of his trip on an African riverboat in Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent. The vessel reflects mid-twentieth century design, with her superstructure standing just fore of midships. That, along with her rusty hull and dry, worn wooden upper decks, give away her six decades of service like the ringed cross-section of an ancient Giant Sequoia. Still, hordes of us crowded aboard. We squeezed along the decks like shoppers squishing into a store at a day-after-Thanksgiving door-buster sale. Upon reaching the (open-air) upper deck, I scoped out a white fiberglass bin containing lifejackets, against which I propped my backpack. This would be a good place to sleep, more or less (mostly less!), with one eye open. Once underway, debris from the stack drifted aft and down onto my sleeves.

Since only a few shore-side destinations can accommodate Ilala, the boat usually alights passengers into its diesel engine lifeboats. The deck crew launches and recovers these creaky taxis with expert efficiency, far better than the crew on a typical deep-sea U.S.-flag merchant ship. Disembarkation is practically a stampede over the side, down the sole cargo net, and into the lifeboat. Sturdy African women, heads and legs wrapped in colorful chitenges (traditional, two-meter length multi-utility cloths), tote children in the chitenges strung across their backs. Watch out! Heads up! These same women swing huge bunches of green bananas to others waiting below! They shimmy down the net lugging bulging plastic bags and suitcases. Men heave sacks sagging with maize meal and blue barrels and bright yellow rectangular plastic containers into the lifeboat, and more bags and suitcases. Inattentiveness, poor judgment, or loss of balance can land you in the lake or the hospital. The system, if you can call it that, is neither efficient nor safe. Somehow, it works.

It is my prayer that Ilala and those who sail her never join the bloated ranks of two-thirds-world maritime disasters. This rust bucket is a lifeline for the people who live on and around Lake Malawi and the islands in its midst. I shudder to think how many lives will be set adrift on the day Ilala’s stack debris showers her decks no more, but as the sun slowly rises, it dawns on me that these hearty Africans have thrived for millenia before anyone ever thought of laying Ilala's keel.