LAKE MALAWI

When the standard size bus arrives at 6 AM in Monkey Bay, it is already full.  At least 25 people are standing in line waiting to board.  All find passage, though not necessarily a seat.  The fare is 1900 Malawi Kwacha or close to $4.50 for the three-hour ride to Salima, where a transfer bus is to take me to Nkhata Bay, a place where the Malawi Shipping Company and its Ilana Ferry theoretically still operate so I can complete the journey to Likoma Island.  The trip is to last six hours.  The next three hours are spent standing in the aisle with backpack on.  There is no room in the overhead racks for baggage.

After a three and one-half hour wait in Salima, the journey resumes.  Once again, the bus is full.  I am at first standing in the aisle, though without backpack this time, waiting for a seat to open up.  The bus – though standard size – is not a “directivo” and acts more like a chicken bus.  It stops for whoever sticks their hand out dogging a ride at the side of the road.  At times, stops are made every quarter mile or so.  Progress is gained painfully slowly.

Along the way, I make the acquaintance of a quartet of missionaries from South Africa: Tricia, Hennie, Ronnie, and Leonard.  Hennie offers me a seat next to him.  This is his first trip outside South Africa.  He is quiet, but affable.  The trip is grinding, and we settle in to long moments of comfortable silence.

Tricia offers up that she has friends on the ferry who can arrange a special deal, combining a night on the ferry with first class ferry passage to the island for the price of the passage only.  She shows me the e-mail confirming the arrangement.  Since the ferry leaves at 6 AM the next morning (a day earlier than had been advertised on the shipping line’s website), I am grateful to have run into her.  Spending the night on the ferry saves having to get a hostel or guest house in town, having to get up early, and then transfer bags and packs to the ferry.

We arrive finally at Nkhota Bay at 8:30 PM after a 14 hour transportation day.  It is necessary immediately to visit the cash machine since the Malawi Shipping Company is not set up for credit cards and accepts cash only.  The machine will only dispense 40,000 kwacha (about $93) on any single day per customer.  This should be sufficient for spending the night aboard, 1^st class passage, meals, and a stay of a night or two on the island.  I already have some Kwacha sandbagged in my passport satchel and feel confident with the numbers package.

Once on board, however, and assigned a cabin, I am confronted for immediate payment.  It is nowhere near the 9000 kwacha displayed on the Malawi Shipping Company website for the trip to Likoma Island, nor the 5000 Kwacha Tricia indicated was part of her “special deal” arranged with a direct insider.  Instead 25,000 Kwacha is expected.  A price list is shown.  I suspect it is one of two price lists: one for locals, and the other that is derisively referred to throughout these parts as mzungu -- the “White Man’s Tax.”

I appeal to the batman in charge of billeting that Tricia obtained a special arrangement.  That the company website gives an entirely different (lower) cost altogether.  That I had attempted to call and reserve with the Ilala Ferry in advance via e-mail and at Monkey Bay was told the fare was MUCH lower.  And also that the cash machines only dispense 40,000 kwacha, when I would need 50,000 just to pay their fare for two tickets.  It all falls on deaf ears.  The crew deride me with “Why not just pay the extra and sleep in comfort?”

An argument ensues about “bait and switch.”  A term they choose not to understand.  Tricia and her entourage show the e-mails referring to their fare special pricing arrangement.  The young man she has corresponded with even appears and validates that he had in fact made the lower price offer.  It does not matter.  His senior attendants want 5000 Kwacha to spend the night on the ferry, and another 50,000 for two first class tickets to the island the next morning.  I barely have cash to support this, that would then short me significantly once on the island (where there are no swipe card machines).

It becomes necessary to leave the boat and prowl the streets, seeking a temporary room.  Tricia and her group, on Missionary budgets, can not afford the higher fare either.  They spend the night on the deck, without cushion or bedding, for 2500 Kwacha extra beyond the morning’s fare.  I find a flophouse 150 meters up the road that is the absolute worst I’ve ever stayed in (but for only 800 Kwacha --$1.75 perhaps?).  At least there was room availability.  The bathroom is like an open urinal without running water of any kind and I am afraid to touch the walls of the room once inside.  A demand is made for an extra sheet to be be laid over that already present.  But at least it has a mosquito net and is a place to get horizontal for six hours.

The same trendline continues in the morning.  I pay 25,600 for two first class fares to the island on the Ilala Ferry’s top deck and board at 5:30 AM.  I am the first to order breakfast at 6.  The cook asks when I want my meal.  “Now,” I say.  An hour passes.  No meal.  Others eat, including ferry employees and Tricia and her group.  I inquire about the readiness time.  The cook mumbles, speaking so softly his answer is unintelligible.  I make sure to clarify in three different ways that coffee refills are included.  They are.

At 8 AM, breakfast is finally served.  Fried eggs over-hard, bacon, boiled tomato, beans, toast, and orange juice.  I had to ask three times for the juice.  Upon requesting my second cup of coffee, I was told I’d be charged extra.  I remind the cook about our previous discussion of “free refills.”  The proverbial “perhaps you misunderstood me, Sir” follows – despite the fact I am the one who asked slowly and clearly about refills and he merely said “Yes.”

While eating finally, I learn from another passenger that the reason my meal was so tardy was my phrasing – if I wanted to eat right away, I needed to say “Now Now,” and not merely “Now.”  Who knew?  This quickly becomes part of my Africa vernacular, the same way “Bloody Hell” did on the first day of my first venture to Great Britain.

The Ilala arrives at Chizimulu Island, a preliminary stop on the way to Likoma with exactly one guest house.  I take great amusement at the unloading procedure.  There is no pier, so local skiffs loaded with wildly enthusiastic swim suited youth motor out to meet the ferry.  They appear initially as if pirates ready to board and plunder the ferry.  They go through a Keystone Cops procedure of unloading cargo one handful at a time (sans cranes, ramps, conveyor belts or forklifts); tomatoes, onions, lumber, juice, beer, milk, sugar, and even firewood.  Amazingly, cargo is placed aboard the skiffs first, and then passengers are allowed in the remaining spaces.