The Ilala Ferry

Friends and Followers,
I have arrived in the commercial capital of Malawi, Blantyre, but not without first experiencing the long and tedious Ilala Ferry: Malawi's #1 travel option! I began this journey on Monday evening, preparing for the ferry to arrive around noon and depart at eight in the evening. I was assured I would even have time to do a night dive as the sun set at 6 and still board the boat in time for its departure. Lo and behold, by 6, the ferry had still not arrived and the shouting and dancing queue ready to board it had grown tiresome after hours of pre-ferry dancing and shouting.

The night dive was incredible. We wound through massive underground rock sculptures with a posse of dolfinfish (three to six feet long blind barracuda-like fish) following our every move, eager that we might lead them to prey. Which we did, playing Poseidon, I would shine my flashlight on a sleeping fish and watch the dolfinfish snap it up, feeling it out with the electric current around their buddies and making an electric snap when they caught it. It was unreal.

But as we finished the dive, I began to grow concerned for the boat as it still hadn't arrived and it was already past 8. Timeliness is not always the priority here. When the ferry finally arrived at 9, it didn't take off til 2:30. It is a hefty, thick bottomed boat and when traveling it makes 12 stops and has three distinct classes: Cabin, First Class and Economy. The experience is like an early 20th century cross-Atlantic voyage, combined with a truly African atmosphere that is the only reminder that you are in the modern age. Each stop took minimum four hours as rafts came out to swap passengers and sacks of produce from the shore with those on the boat. I slept on the top deck (First class) under the stars on hard, ancient wooden planks. But there was a fine bar, and a dismal "saloon" with a leering, hostile waitress who I had the displeasure of having to eat in front of while she stared at me like the bane of her existence.

The trip took 51 hours, was 21 hours late to its final destination, and I hopped on midway through. I ventured down to the economy class twice during my sejour: Once when boarding the boast, shoving back at the men women and children carrying vast sacks of grain or stalks of bananas and pushing, scratching and biting to claim their spot in the rat infested bottom level (I got bit by a little kid, not a rat). The whole place was an advertisement for overwhelming body odor and the finer things in life, like drunk men throwing up on their pregnant wives or rastafarians lighting up and blowing into the face of goats.

I saw a lifeboat with 25 people sink (they all survived), a man do a triple backflip off the top deck (impressive) and a plump, inebriated irish grandmother sat on my face while I was sleeping,

Next, a few days in Blantyre working before a 26 hour bus trip to Jo-berg because Air Malawi "withholds the right to cancel flights up to three days before."

Time to change my shirt,
Steven