Vacation

The ferry was leaving from Chipoka, a town about 30 km from Salima. I left the house in the morning to catch a mini-bus from town (about 8 km). I could jump on a pick-up that took me all the way to where the mini-buses left.

Then I got in the mini-bus and waited until it was completely full – I thought (see picture). But on the way we still managed to pick up some more goods and people. There were live chickens, huge bags of corn-flower and many people.

In Chipoka I took a dumper (bicycle taxi) to the place where the ferry left. I probably overpaid the guy with the 500 K (about 1.25 $), because I didn’t know how far it was, but who cares. The whole process only took me about two hours, so I arrived in Chipoka at 10 am, 2 hours too early. I walked around Chipoka a bit and finally ordered an egg-burger. But after 45 minutes of waiting on it (and the woman telling me for the second time that it will only be 10 more minutes) I said I had to leave, because of the ferry that was supposed to leave in 15 minutes from then (and I couldn’t see whether it had arrived yet from there). The lady was very understanding, but told me that there was no ferry coming today, as were the others there. The reason was that it was the first day in 2 years that Ilala came to Chipoka, and the people there didn’t know it yet. The schedule I had downloaded online was uploaded only two days earlier (I could also download the bar prices which was convenient, because that way I knew the prices better than the bar keeper). When coming to the port again, there was no sight of Ilala and there wouldn’t be for three more hours. Finally, I got woken up by some guy I had talked to before. He said “Ilala is coming!” and ordered me to come with him so he could show me. And yes indeed, there she finally was (I know it is quite poetic to call a ship “she”. But with Ilala it just feels right, she looks like an old lady). I have to admit that I was relieved to finally see her.

Sometimes random people will ask you to take a photo of them and then they do all kinds of poses...

Fishing nets

Very small on the horizon you can see Ilala

The bar

On the roof of the ship

Engine room

At the first sight from up close it looked like a ship that rather belongs to the bottom of the lake, and I remembered how the headmaster told me he would never travel with Ilala, because it was such an unreliable ship. On board I had to decide what class I want to travel with. There were 4 classes: economy class, second class, upper deck, and standard cabin. Only in the last class (standard cabin) you had a room and a bed to sleep. In the other classes you had to sleep on benches or on the ground. There is space for 600 people on Ilala, but there are only 6 cabins (4 double and 2 single). Finally I decided to go for the standard cabin – a decision I would not regret… The cabin was really nice. I was the only Mzungu on board.

My cabin

The next day when I got up we were still in the middle of the lake. We were headed for Likoma Island, a small island just off the coast of Mozambique, but still belonging to Malawi. By then we had made up for our delay and were now actually about 4 hours before schedule. We arrived on Likoma around 8 am and would leave again at 2 pm, so I had some time to leave the ship. The highlight was the Cathedral of St Peter that was built in 1905. It was very impressive to see this church in such a place.

The glass for the windows was imported from Great Britain.

The pastors clothes

In the back here is where all the bwanas (regional bosses) sit.

And in the middle the big bwana

Where adults get babtised

Where babies get babtised

The choir sits up here

Choir instruments. On Sundays, half of the island (so about 4000 people) visit this church.

The way to the top ...

... between the church bells.

One leg of the ladder was broken (but my guide held it together, so no worries).

The views from the top were absolutely amazing. This is worth a visit to Likoma already. All of the roofs were iron sheets.

My guide

The next impressive thing was the amount of fish that they carried on board Ilala. It must have been far over 100 of those big bags. And now was the time when I was really happy about my decision to get a cabin, because the economy and second class were absolutely full with those bags and the smell was horrible.

The whole economy class was packed with these bags of fish, it was hard to pass.

Lunch in economy class

These pigs were also loaded into Ilala. They screamed horribly. If you want to become a vegetarian you should go to Malawi, animals are generally treated quite badly here.

As a mzungu you will never be alone for long in Malawi

After we had finally left (the loading took about 6 hours and we left with a delay again of about an hour) I met one of the fishers who was in his 20ies at the bar. It was pay day for him and he was in a very good mood. He bought me a beer, and before I could finish it he bought me another one. I managed to buy the next round by ordering when we still had ¼ left. From then on he started buying them when they were still half full. It felt weird to be invited by a Malawian – I thought that there must be a catch. I said “thank you” and he said “don’t thank me, thank God”. Then the bar man asked me if I believed in God and I said no. Everybody around me gasped and looked at me in disbelief. “You don’t belief in God?!?” the fisher asked me again to confirm. This triggered a long and interesting conversation with the captain who was standing next to me.

With the fisherman (left) and the bartender.

That night I felt horrible (and not because of the beer. The fisher had left the following island in Chizumulu and from there on I stopped with the beer). But I assume that it was because of the tap water that I drank, because I started running out of money. Long (with the emphasis on long) story short: I had the worst diarrhea of my life and spent half the night either standing over the toilet or sitting in front of my room staying close to the toilet. A guy coming out of another standard cabin offered me a chair that was standing in his room, but I explained my situation to him. Just one more interesting detail about the toilets on the ship: there was no toilet paper (and yes, comments are disabled from now on. Coincidence?). I want to spear the details, but I had lost so much water that I started getting afraid and tried to call the Swiss emergency number, but after 5 minutes of “please hold” my air time credit ran out.

I left the ferry in Nkhata Bay in the morning around 6 am with 200 K left in my pocket (about 0.50 $). Fortunately it said in my guide that there would be ATMs in Nkhata Bay, “finally I’ll be able to buy water and everything will be ok,” I thought. I dragged myself to the first ATM, only Visa cards were accepted. Ok no problem, let’s try the next bank: only Visa. Ok next one, you guessed it: only Visa. The security guy told me maybe you’ll get money tomorrow then you can go inside the bank. “Thank you,” I said and thought to myself that tomorrow I’ll be dead. I went to a lodge and explained my situation. The guy who ran the lodge took down my info, gave ma a room and 1000 K (2.5 $). Finally I could buy some water and some crackers. Later I also managed to sell the phone that I had bought in Malawi for 5000 K, so from then it was ok. For 1300 K I could also catch a mini-bus to Mzuzu where I could withdraw money. I could pay for the room (2000 K) and the money that I borrowed too. I finally felt relieved. With a stock of water and some crackers I spent the rest of the day in my room and the toilet. The guy must have felt bad for me just eating my crackers all day, because he brought me a plate of food for free in the evening. Unfortunately I could only eat half of it.

The next day the waking up was so much better. I found this:

I felt a lot better. The diarrhea I still have to this day, but at least the stomach ache was gone and I felt so much better. I got ready to catch a bus to Mzuzu, because I wasn’t able to get a hold of Tobias and Doris. Then I called them with the last minute of my other SIM-Card, and they actually picked up and said they’ll pick me up.

At noon, Tobias and Doris came to pick me up in Nkhata Bay. They couldn’t go on the ferry because Doris still had to supervise exams on Friday. So we all rented a car together and now they picked me up. We went to Rumphi, a town before Nyika National Park, which we wanted to visit. We went for a hike there:

This is how bananas grow.

Unfortunately we needed to have a 4-wheel-drive to get to the park, we only had a really low saloon car. We tried to make friends with people who were heading up there, but unfortunately nobody was. Finally we could organize to go with a transport from the lodge of the park. They needed to get sugar from town and we could go back up with them. The guy came with a delay of a couple of hours, one of the reasons was that he had a flat tire along the way. We encountered some problems along our way with him too. First the bond of the fan clutch broke. We could fix it with the bandage band from the first aid kit. We got into the car again and our guide said “alright now we are ready for the next problem, haha”. We all laughed, but the problems came indeed. We had two more flat tires, the second one we finally couldn’t fix anymore, because the spare tire was already flat. So we had to wait and sleep a bit, till another car could come to help us. We were still two hours from the lodge. Finally another car came and there were no more problems.

Our guide called this low air pressure....

The park was absolutely magical. I saw my first Zebras outside of a zoo. It looked a bit like the Scottish highlands, but then you just see antelopes and zebras. And there was absolutely nobody and no house and nothing for as far as the eye could see. Our guide told us that they had 2 visitors per night in the park, which is 9000 km2 big.

We hadn’t arranged for our ride back down yet, but fortunately we could organize something with the lodge again. This time it was a pick-up, we left at 4.30 in the morning. It was a very intense ride. I really enjoyed the first two hours of this bumpy ride, now we could see the part of the park that we couldn’t before because it was already dark on our way in. But at the end it became too long and it certainly wasn’t good for my back.