I'd been really keen on getting the Liemba Ferry up Lake Tanganyika since the very early stages of planning the trip, even before the Kariba ferry was on my radar so it was supposed to be my only nautical treat, and a chance for some free miles and a bit of a rest. I'd also not heard great things about cycling in Tanzania so was looking for a novel way of minimising the distance between Malawi and Rwanda. The Liemba, with its long and chequered history of passenger liner, German warship, scuttled wreck, English rescue project and passenger liner once more. It is now run by the Tanzanian government and is the oldest (over 100 years) commercial passenger and freight service in the world. Quite the accolade, and impressive if not a little off putting! The fly in the ointment of engaging the services of such a quirky vessel was the organisational aspect of things. I'd tried some extensive googling on her, but apart from finding out where she sailed to and from, and some bits and pieces about her history I was none the wiser as to whether she was a) actually working and b) when she left if indeed the old bird was. During my many hours in the saddle, when not musing over the meaning of life or waving at locals, I would sometimes turn my mind to the Liemba. Depending on how rambunctious I was feeling I would oscillate between giving up and playing it safe or just going all in and hoping for the best. The crux of the matter was this: Mpulungu, the Zambian starting point of the Liemba's journey was about 300km off the route, kms that could be out towards northerly progress through Tanzania by land. Seeing as, depending on road condition and terrain, I would quite easily turn my nose up at only a 30km detour, this was quite a serious undertaking. I would often consult African 'fundis' on the ferry but always came up with a blank. And when I had access to a computer and good internet I would often attack the issue with renewed fervour. I emailed port agents in Tanzania and posh lodges on the lake, and to no avail, but eventually I gleaned that she runs on a fortnightly schedule, leaving Kigoma Southbound on a Wednesday and turning round in Mpulungu on a Friday. Further electronic rummaging put the Friday's as 2nd and 4th of the month. Seeing as I had Sam with me 10/24 June that worked quite nicely for the 30th June sailing. In the end I decided that I would really regret it if I didn't at least try and catch her. And so, when Sam and I parted ways on 23rd June it was Mpulungu that I was aiming for, and by the latest 29th June. I had to cover about 550km in a week so nothing to stress about really, but a deadline is still enough to make you a bit nervous when cycle touring. I've covered the cycle to Mpulungu already so I shan't bore you with those details again. I only want to say that even once there and waiting I wasn't terribly optimistic. Hopeful would probably sum up my attitude best as the old African adage 'Believe it when you see it', seemed particularly relevant to an ancient old ferry that gave only the most basic of schedules. I wasn't so much worried about it not running anymore as it's the only service of its kind, and a vital trade link up and down the lake (It used to sail all the way up to Bujumbura, Burundi but now stops at Kigoma due to security situation there), but if it was late or broken down, wasted time would be a disappointment. The Swiss/Germans must have been feeling very Mediterranean when researching as they turned up a week too early, and if that had been me I'd have been pretty bleak about it. Anyway, aside from getting there a bit early, things had gone very well and as Frisia approached I was both quite excited and grimly pessimistic. No one in Mpulungu had any idea when she'd arrive: indeed most people just laughed at you when asked. Not the best sign, but the Liemba plays by her own rules, much like Tina and I, so we respect and understand that. In my mind I'd decided that she would arrive at about 4pm, so when at 2:30 the gate guy at Nkupi came and told me that the Liemba was about to come past I thought it was a good omen. Early?! Impossible! I dashed down to the waterfront bar to ogle and photograph her. She's an elegant looking ship, I must say, with angles and a profile you just don't see anymore. An antique beauty. The other 4 bike wiffers suddenly tuned into their nationalities and had set off for the harbour within 20 minutes of her revival. I decided I knew better, and loitered about camp reading my kindle and talking to Merino. He's a good lad and a really like him. He said he used to have a girlfriend called Tina and I said 'I reckon she was also black' *laughs* then followed it with 'Did she have balls too, like my Tina does?' *mega LOLs bent double*. Merino you dirty old dog! In the end I decided to play it safe and headed down about 4 - no point missing her after all this effort! I also gathered there was a fair bit of admin to take care of in the port. Some American guy had turned up at the bar that afternoon and got my haggling juices flowing - he reckoned if you were smart you could get a 1st class fare for $20 rather than $100. Now, the guy was a bit of an idiot: he picked on some poor chick who'd obviously had a serious make up shocker with a greenish facial hue due to poor foundation application repeatedly shouting at her 'why is your face (expletive) green?!', and even asking others the question too, who were luckily polite enough to stay out of it. If he'd been a bit funnier or subtle about it - maybe leading with are you jealous of someone, or a hulk reference - if would have been OK, but he went in for the classic shouty Yank tactic. I knocked his foul smelling energy drink on the floor in revenge. Anyway, I was now plotting my discount tactics as I pedaled to the port. The other lot had fallen at the first hurdle and were stopped at some police checkpoint right inside the port. I left my bike with them and some guy started chirpsing me about searching my bags. I told him I'd got this far without a bag search and I wasn't going to start emptying my panniers to satisfy his ego. I then promptly stalked off towards the ferry before he started moaning even more. I surveyed the scene first. Organised chaos would probably best describe it. People absolutely everywhere with an endless stream coming on and off the boat, an bit of a market on the side, some fancy bits of equipment parked to the side, and a crappy old tracked crane sitting in a prodigious pool of oil doing all the work. Most of the cargo being unloaded was kapenta in 220kg boxes (the African version of whitebait) and it was interesting to hear that a lot of it was going to Western DRC. I pointed out that the W shore of the lake was DRC, but apparently the roads are so bad it's easier to go all the way across Zambia and then North. There seemed to be no control or protocol in terms of boarding so I just wandered on and headed for the bridge. It became clear quite quickly that the Liemba was built back in a time of a much shorter population as I cracked my head on the first staircase. This would become an extremely painful theme of the trip. On the bridge I found Yusuf, the First Mate and introduced myself. After a lengthy handshake he took my hand and took my to Captain Titus. We shared some chit chat and whatnot but I got stonewalled on the discount front, saying it was government property and couldn't adjust the fares. Booooooring! I was then handed to the ticket officer and this oke was even harder work. I tried the whole 'I'm not fussed about a receipt or ticket', but again I got nowhere. Oh well, worth a try, and Yusuf was a nice guy. So, a full $100 first class fare paid I went back to sort everything else out. The boat was chokker but it turns out a lot of them just want to get on the boat for some kind of kudos, and then disembark before she leaves. On the back deck there were a few locals with very fancy cameras which made me double take. It turns out they'll take a photo of you on the boat and print it out for K10. Quite bizarre but I've seen it in other places too. I even ran into my mate Boniface again who had a picture taken too. Once off the boat I did immigration on my way past, and got stamped out. We were leaving on the Liemba! I then went to get Tina and found a rather unofficial looking chap 'from the Parks & Wildlife board'. I'd bagged up the skull before I left camp, but the carrier bags in this part of the world are somewhat translucent and I was now being interrogated about it. I was asked what it was and then told that it was 'concerning'. I went for him pretty hard and wasn't in much of a mood for his petty bureaucracy. I just told him what it was, that it was from SA, not Zambia, and that I'd cycled all the way here with no issues. I suppose I knew this day was coming and he was still being a wiffer so I played my trump card - my curio and treatment certificate from SA. Boy did he moan about that - no date stamp and some other boring stuff. To be fair I'd not even filled in what type of animal it was from but whatever excuse he came up with I just said 'So what' or 'Don't be ridiculous'. I obviously gave him a good mauling as he ended rather pathetically with a 'Someone yesterday stole some lion's teeth and I'm looking for them'. I spared him the indignity of asking if he actually meant lion's paw rather than teeth as I was quite happy to have sent him packing without too much trouble and kept my juju intact. However, it was then onto the next saga - police bag search. I huffed and puffed a fair bit but dialed down the derisiveness as these were proper officials. We stared the dance with a passport check and whilst he was fannying around I got his name and started worming him a bit. All he really wanted to have a look at was my first aid kit. I handed over the plastic bag full of various bits and pieces and it soon became clear he was looking for drugs. I'd heard they were a bit funny about anti histamine and couldn't remember if I had any or not. He asked me about some pills and I had no idea what they were so I just told him they were for Mzungu tummy and feigned taking a stressful dump. That seemed to do the trick and I was given the all clear. Victor was actually a good guy and we chatted for a bit before I decided it was time to get on the vessel and relax. But as I set off with Tina I was called back again, I ignored it for a bit but they got quite ansy so returned. This time it was to pay port fees of about 80p. What a convoluted process it all was! Anyway, I got on the Liemba and found the bed attendant, who showed me to my room. It wasn't a bad little cabin - double bunk with a fan, wardrobe, desk and sink. I dumped my stuff in there and promptly hit my head on the light fitting. That would happen many more times, mostly when I first got up. We hung around quite a while waiting for customs clearance but got underway at about 7:15. I have no idea if that was on schedule or not, because they don't tell you, but I think it was a bit on the late side. Once underway I went to the canteen for fish and rice, and then bought a beer and took it out to the foc'scle to enjoy. It was a well stocked bar with all the traditional Tanzanian beers such as Safari, Serengeti and Kilimanjaro that I remembered from our last Hazell holiday to that part of the world, plus a new one called Balimi. I selected Safari as it seemed appropriate (means journey in Swahili) and it was good, if not a little too warm. I'd increasingly not really hung out with the Germans as I came to the conclusion that they're a bit of a strange and boring bunch. Nice enough, but they just seem to sit around (and talk in German) so most of the time I just decide not to bother with them. I noticed Tanzanian immigration officials on board so I asked them if I could get my visa squared away before arriving in Kigoma to save some time and hassle. No problem said Aden the official, so that was all relatively painless (but painfully slow). I helped out the other lot by giving them the forms to fill in and advising them to do it here. The first stop out of 17 (yes, 17!) was in a couple of hours. I stayed up until we arrived at about 9:30 and then went to bed. Apparently we were in port for 5 hours as the shoreside crane broke down and it had to be done by the old on board derrick. It can only handle 2,5 tons so slow going. All this passed me by as I was sleeping quite soundly, but when I got up in the morning I did think that the hold was looking rather full. She is a 1 hold/1 hatch lady that can take about 250mt of cargo. Having said that, I'm pretty sure they'd exceeded that even after the first few stops. I'd be interested in getting hold of a tally clerk and seeing what his totals are! It turns out the Germans stayed up until 5 watching the loading (what did I say about them being boring). I asked if they'd also been boozing. Negative. They certainly didn't have bang tidy cycling bodies like yours truly so it's not like it was a health decision. Not sure I could sit there watching a crane for 8 hours or whatever, especially with no liquid sustenance. After a spell finishing off Dorian Gray on the bow (good book) I went for a general poke around the vessel. At this point it wasn't that busy so I checked out the cheap seats in 3rd class and then headed up to the bridge to greet all my new mates up there. I spoke to John the Chief Engineer for quite a while. She's twin engine and twin prop, powered by BMW engines, with Caterpillar generators. The boat struck me as pretty up together for her age, but I'm sure she keeps John pretty busy! The Liemba is classed (like an MOT or roadworthy for a car) by Lloyds but one wonders if she'd pass a proper inspection rather than an African Lakes Official one. After a brief tour I met the two Mzungus in the next door cabin who embarked during the night. More Germans, called Leo and Katja, but a very interesting couple: Katja was working here for an NGO in Kagera region, Tanzania, trying to teach the smallholders sustainable agriculture, and they'd both cycled from Asia to Germany twice! It was great to find some more interesting and gregarious travelers to talk to and we chatted for quite a few hours and took lunch together in the canteen. After lunch we stopped in Kipili, which actually had a proper pier and everything. It looked like a longish stop so I got off and had a wonder around, talking to some locals there and taking some land based snaps of the Liemba. There was a lorry there with bags of rice on and some bikes so I chatted to them a bit. They wanted me to do some work (obviously) so I obliged. Apparently these bags were rice, and 100kg a go. It didn't look large enough to be 100 so I was reckoning on about 50kg or so. Mother of God it was heavy. Luckily I didn't have far to go, just getting it from the truck to the cargo net. I staggered over there, cursing like a sailor, to much laughter from onlookers. Conclusion: comfortably 100kg! To console myself I decided to do something I was good at rode one of their bikes around for a bit. I then got back on the Liemba and was invited into the hold for a bit of stevedoring. 'Why not', I thought; it'll be more interesting than just watching and waiting for them to finish. I think the oke was a bit shocked when I actually jumped down in there shook off my slops and started helping out. Seeing as they're 100kgs you mostly work in pairs, moving the bags from where the derrick dumps them, 20 at a time, in the central hatch, out to the edges. My lack of Swahili meant a few coordination issues initially, but it's definitely not rocket science so we got the hang of it. An upbringing of child labour lumping around bags of cattle feed and shoveling grain bins means I'm quite the worker and they ended up pretty impressed with me I think. After that cargo was done I scurried back to my first class cabin to pick up my kindle and crack on with Fitzgerald's 'Tender is the Night'. The white, erudite stevedore working rice cargo in deepest, darkest Africa. There's a Hollywood script there somewhere, I'm sure! In the evening I went back for another stint with my boys, headlamp and all, and then after braving the loos for a shower, had dinner with the Germans. When they started ordering coffee (or in fact hot water so that they could make their own) I mumbled my excuses, grabbed a beer from the bar and headed up to the roof to type up some blog. It was slightly chillsome so after an hour I headed to my cabin and bed, hitting my head again in the process. Getting up Sunday morning the ship was noticeably busier. There had been a couple of stops in the night and now where there was space to relax or walk, there was now sleeping bodies, goats and other miscellaneous cargo. I sought refuge on the bridge with my mate Titus, and I stayed there for a few hours surveying the pandemonium below. I'd heard a lot of banging in the morning (and I think not much moving) and it turns out we're an engine down. Naughty Man B&W! I later caught Chief Engineer John in the bar when we were still running at 7-8 knots instead of 10. I went down to the engine room to see if I could lend a hand or impart some expertise but it turns out they're quite a lot larger, noisier and more complicated than a Land Rover. As I said earlier, the Liemba makes 17 stops along the way, with 4 official ports, only one of which is in Zambia. The total trip distance is about 572km, and that's not even to the top of the Lake! It's largely a coastal voyage due to the amount of stops she makes, so being able to see the shore most of the time is quite reassuring seeing as she's bloody old, June and July are supposedly the roughest months, and I highly doubt there is an evacuation drill or indeed enough life jackets on board to go around. That said, the waters still run deep - up to 500m in places. In the scheme of maximum depth of 1600m for the lake, it's not much, but certainly enough to drown in. After my engine tour I caught up with my travel journal in the VIP cabin as I'd made friends with the sales rep the day before. As the boat filled with every stop even the gangways became clogged with slumbering bodies. I came to feel pretty guilty moving people out of the way to get into my first class cabin but there we go. The hatch cover was put on and this created a new surface for sleeping, drying fish and rice, and general cargo storage. It was quite a jolly affair, with Yusuf playing music through the PA system to the guys on the main deck. Against the background of Tanzanian hip hop (I'm guessing here) and chatter, you could hear the occasional wail of the goats and crow of a cockerel. For the afternoon stop at around 4 I'd decided that it was finally time to fully immerse myself in the lake by leaping off the bow. So I got the GoPro out and fought my way to the front. I then made the mistake of peering over and getting put off. There was also a large audience which did and didn't help matters. Anyway, after explaining what I was doing I then leapt off. Very fun indeed. I then swam about a bit and waved at the all before clambering back in via a trailing fender. I was going to have another go dressed as Napoleon but I'd had enough of the gawking! After that it was back up to the bridge for more chit chat and kindle reading. Then soon enough it was time for a Serengeti sundowner. I finally managed to get the Germans involved: well 2 of them had beers, one a Fanta, whilst the last didn't have anything and sat facing the opposite way. Classic!
The Liemba was absolutely packed to the rafters now, quite possibly beyond the Plimsoll line, so dinner took about an hour to come, compared to 5 minutes on the first night. I then retired to the top roof deck for a bit of stargazing and caught Yusuf on his ciggy break. Boy does that man like to talk but a very nice man. I had to set him straight on his perceived virtues of one Colonel Gadaffi, but otherwise we mostly agreed on African politics and it's history. The penultimate stop was at about 10:30 and we got to Kigoma at about 2am Monday morning. But because they're a thrifty bunch and don't want to pay the stevedores over time or extra port fees, we waited outside the port and didn't dock until 8:30am. I snuck up to the bridge again to say thanks and goodbye and even blagged the honour of the last foghorn blast of the journey - letting all of Kigoma know that we are coming to berth now. I'm not sure it would have come as surprise as we'd been sitting there for hours, but boy did I enjoy giving them all a good deafening. It's a hell of a mess with people pouring off and dragging bits of cargo (and probably ship) with them, so I waited for about another hour until it had all died down. All in all it was an absolutely fantastic experience, and I really really enjoyed the ride. Even if it hadn't been an awesome, and not to mention a quintenessential African experience, it was 570km of easy mileage so also worth it in that respect. I wholeheartedly recommend jumping on her for a slow chug up or down the Lake (up you'll see mostly rice and maize, and south it'll be mostly palm oil and construction material). She's a charming old thing and it definitely gets chalked up as a trip highlight.
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AuthorSam Brook - A mildly Africanised Pom about to cycle from Joburg to Nairobi. Archives
August 2017
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