Cruising Lake Tanganyika

A fabulous journey. An African journey.

On Friday morning, the port at Mpulungu was pure chaos. Hordes of locals stormed the gates, trying to gain entry to the harbour area to buy dried fish from the newly arrived ferry. Armed guards came out and shook guns at the crowd, which held them back for a while. Eventually I followed the lead of two other mzungus and together we pushed to the front and talked our way in, explaining that we wanted to buy tickets for the ferry.

You can't actually buy a ticket until you are on board, so after a very thorough customs check (I'd read on another traveller's blog that they liked to look for 'illegal' drugs such as antihistimines and antibiotics, so had already hidden these in the depths of my sleeping bag), I headed to immigration, where I had to pay for a sixty-five dollar Zambian visa just to leave the country - apparently my free one is only valid if I leave the way I entered, and I can see little point in arguing with these people. All that remained was to fight my way through the dried fish sellers and hurl myself over the railing onto the boat. Securing my first class (!) cabin wasn't a problem, so dumped my luggage and explored the ferry. This didn't take long - it's pretty small.

The MV Liemba is an old German troop ship which was dismantled and brought to the lake by land. Here it was rebuilt and has apparently been in use for nearly a hundred years. The none-too-swanky first class cabins were up on the open deck, as was a small restaurant and outdoor seating area which was very full - people set up permanent camp here. Below this were cargo decks and noisy airless seating and other cabins - it would definitely be better to sleep on deck than down below. On the top deck there was a little more room to sit, if you didn't mind engine noise and fumes.

The boat seemed very full, but it turned out that many of those on board were just there for fun, treating the ferry as a mobile restaurant, bar and general amusement centre. Photographers charged a couple of thousand kwacha for those who wanted their photo taken on board, and soon quite a number of people had paid him to take a photo of them standing with me - something I always find strange, but stranger still when you have to pay for the picture. After a good few hours, at about 2pm, non-passengers fled and we were off.

Lake Tanganyika is beautiful, it's water is clear and blue, stretching sea-like into the distance. It's also huge and deep - over 1.4km deep in places, which explains how it can hold 6% of the earth's fresh water. It was very pleasant to lean on the rails and watch both lake and shore go by.

A couple of hours into the journey we reached our first stop, Kasanga, in Tanzania. I watched as sacks of beans and maize were cargo-netted and craned aboard. Huge bags of onions, each carried by six heaving men, were loaded by hand. Local boys swarmed aboard too, some selling pineapples or cigarettes, others just running around.

It was dark when we made our next stop, at a place with no dock. Seemingly from nowhere, a flotilla of small boats crowded round the ferry, packed with people, luggage, cargo. Against the black night-water of the lake, the ferry's lights picked out vibrant colours, urgent faces, white eyes, glistening skin. There was a cacophany of shouting - directions and counter-directions, reprimands and requests - as the boats jostled for position and their occupants tried to get themselves or their cargo aboard. People were hauled up by those on board, scrambling up the side of the ferry as if being rescued from a shipwreck. Women climbed with babies tied onto their backs, toddlers were swung upwards by their chubby limbs, one frail old lady was somehow raised onto the boat in a plastic chair. A few pieces of luggage landed in the water, though they were obviously a lot lighter than my pack as they floated and were fished out.

This scene was repeated many times throughout the two day journey, and it was always a pleasure to watch - quite fascinating. Gradually the ship filled with passengers, the hold with cargo. On the top deck, I sat for a while watching the world go by, Congo on my left, Tanzania on my right, chickens at my feet.

It was a sociable place to be for two days, getting to know my fellow passengers, but I was ready to leave when we finally reached Kigoma at midday on Sunday. Kigoma had a proper dock, but even so, the method of disembarking was to climb over the side of the ship, hanging by your hands until your feet reached the rail on the side of the dock, then jumping down.

Apart from a stunning lake, I haven't seen any 'sights' since before Lusaka, but I feel that I have seen more of Africa in these few days than in all the months I've been here.