by James Best
We zipped and bounced along the bumpy track through large puddles, over protruding rocks and between walls of reeds and scrubby trees, which flicked and whipped the truck and passengers. I was sitting on the rim of the tray at the passenger-side back corner, so there was a lot of ducking of branches, stems and leaves. The Africans laughed and whooped. The chicken slept through the entire trip.
Sam, wedged between a mother and infant and the old man and the radiator, seemed to be enjoying himself. So was I. It was a hoot. Albeit a bit precarious: I copped an insect in the eye, and Sam’s back felt a bit sore afterwards.
I was reluctant to leave Mushroom Farm, but we’d planned to depart the next day. I could understand why a traveller we’d previously met had called it his ‘highlight of Africa’.
On our final morning, I crept out of the room at dawn to watch the sunrise over the distant lake. It was absolutely silent. A front during the night had cleared the mist from the lake and you could see the faint outline of the Tanzanian mountains on the other side of the lake sixty kilometres away. The sunrise was mirrored on the lake’s surface and broke through the clouds like a giant spotlight. Lake flies, which breed in huge spumes rising off the water, resembled mist coming off the lake.
Below us on the precipice an augur buzzard glided in circles searching for prey; she arced into the void and disappeared effortlessly off towards the lake. However, it seemed the journey would not be so effortless for us. Cars heading down the hill were few and far between, and most of them were already full by the time they passed the farm. Our chance of catching a lift was slim.
We planned to take two minibus journeys that day—one to Mzuzu, and another on to our next destination, Nkhata Bay—and we needed to get to the bottom of the hill, ten kilometres of winding road, as early as we could. It seemed our best option would be to walk, but Sam had never walked that far in his life, let alone with a full backpack.
The American owner of Mushroom Farm told me that we could pay a porter to carry a pack for us. Even though I felt like a nineteenth-century colonial master, I agreed.
We waved goodbye to the other guests of Mushroom Farm and I drank in the view one last time as we turned and headed down the hill. Harri, who was also leaving that day, tooted and gave a wave as she vroomed past on her bike.
Oscar, our porter, was an amiable dad of a two-year-old daughter and had been trekking all his life. This was a gentle stroll for him. He carried Sam’s pack and the camera bag and Sam carried the daypack. I struggled the most. By the end of the ten kilometres my left knee cartilage, legacy of an old football injury, was playing up badly. I realised some of the mountains in southern Malawi I’d intended to climb, particularly the famed four-thousand-metre Mount Mulanje, were now off the table, which was very disappointing.
As soon as we reached the main road, a minibus appeared and we collapsed inside, sweating and tired. As we approached Mzuzu, it occurred to me that this was probably the last place I’d be able to access an ATM for a while, which meant we had to detour from the minibus station into town and then back again. But at the minibus station we found the usual hawkers but no taxi drivers. Maybe because it was the weekend? I had all the gear, but no idea. We walked up the hill to the road. No luck—only some guys with motorbikes offering lifts. I waved them away, but after ten minutes, and Sam’s complaints, I relented. With our packs strapped onto the back of two bikes, we donned helmets and doubled behind the drivers. Sam anxiously hugged his driver around his neck rather than his waist. He had doubled with a mate on a small trail bike before, but this was Africa and a whole other level.
The next minibus was run by two muscular young men who appeared to be attempting the Guinness World Record for how many people you could fit into a single vehicle. They had crammed in twenty-two people and were still refusing to leave when some of the passengers started showing rare signs of frustration. A few tense exchanges ensued between the bus guys and a businessman sitting under a big box in the back seat.
When we finally departed the driving was particularly reckless. As we hurtled into villages at one hundred kilometres per hour, pedestrians scattering, I feared if the driver made a mistake there would be a fatality, perhaps even twenty-two of them. The side panel I was jammed against bowed disconcertingly under my weight as we flew around the curves of the mountain road like the out-of-control mining cart in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
With a communal sigh of relief we hurtled into Nkhata Bay. While getting off the bus I cut my thigh on a sharp edge of a broken seat bracket and swore.
‘Don’t say that word, Dad,’ Sam said. An old woman smiled approvingly at Sam’s disapproval. To my embarrassment I then noticed a can of lemonade had burst and leaked through my daypack on my lap, wetting my jeans. ‘Have you wet your pants?’ he asked, as he spied the wet patch. He pointed at my crutch. ‘You wee’d!’
It would have been understandable given the hair-raising journey we’d just endured. I was not a happy camper.
Looking like it belongs in the Caribbean, the village of Nkhata Bay is nestled around small bays punctuated with rocky outcrops and islets where figs and frangipanis spring out of the sand. The rhythm of the small surf, blown in across the vast lake, evokes a calm ambience familiar to coastal villages. Only the absence of salt in the air reminds you that this is freshwater, not the ocean.
The shopping strip was busy, bustling and bursting with colour, claptrap and customers. Women sat behind pyramids of tomatoes, trays filled with maize or peanuts, and mats containing lines of cut sweet potato, sugar cane or bananas. Trestle tables held a wide array of fish, from the large pale butterfish, a favoured delicacy from the lake, to piles of tiny silver mbuna, salted and dried. The locals chatted on corners, dodged the traffic and pushed their way through shops, sidewalks and alleys.
Sam and I did nothing. With my aching leg muscles, sore knee and cut thigh I could barely walk up the stairs to the room. My tennis elbow was still a problem too. If I’d been home in Australia, I would have seen a sports physician and had an MRI scan by now.
Lazing on the verandah, looking out across the anchored boats on the bay, lit orange by the sunset, Sam played on his DS and I read my book. We were in a pretty nice little corner of the world.
The next morning at breakfast, we gazed across the hazy lake to Tanzania. Or was it Mozambique? I was unsure at this latitude. Our objectives for the day were to book a boat trip to an island on the lake, complete some schoolwork and neuroplasticity exercises and try to find some wi-fi. The latter would prove to be impossible, which was immensely frustrating. But we played chess and worked on some math exercises under a frangipani near the beach in front of our hostel. This spot would be Sam’s classroom during our stay.
I was feeling overwhelmed, and over it. My sister Mary-Anne had presciently warned me before we left that the greatest burden of travelling was, well, travelling. My physical ailments weren’t helping. I yearned for Benison. I’d snapped unfairly at Sam, who’d actually been going well the last few days, and coping with the heavy travel schedule admirably, considering. Better than me, I thought.
I needed to remind myself of the positives. Overall, Sam was coping marvellously. I was convinced he was making progress he wouldn’t have made at home. Certainly his resilience was improving; here he was doing ten-kilometre mountain hikes, riding on motorbikes and eating all kinds of stuff. This was the main game.
He was still saying he wanted to go back to Sydney, but not nearly as frequently or as passionately. Negotiation about the number of eight-out-of-tens in a row required to get home had stopped. His daily score now seemed more a matter of pride, or perhaps obsession, than the means to a premature return.
We had also been lucky. Apart from my twenty-four-hour gastro and scrapes and strains, we’d avoided serious illness and injury. I’d lost a lot of stuff but we hadn’t been robbed. The weather had been brilliant and we’d met some amazing people, visited some amazing places and had many amazing experiences. Yes, t
hink positive.
However, upon returning to our room we found an unpleasant surprise waiting for us. Ants. All over the room: in our backpacks, over our toiletries, on the computer, the phone, everywhere. Sam had spilt a Sprite on the floor the night before, which I presumed had attracted them.
My skin crawled as I discovered more and more. They crawled over our shoes and socks and up our legs. Sam shrieked and I groaned as we flicked and stomped and slapped, whopped and whacked. Eventually I screamed in exasperation and Sam laughed hysterically at me. It was the icebreaker we needed. After finishing the massacre we both flopped onto the bed and smiled at each other.
Then I found a mosquito inside the mosquito net over my bed and added it to the casualty list. It had blood inside it; probably mine. I remembered with some anxiety the man we’d met in Mzuzu who’d looked so ill with malaria.
That afternoon, while drawing and playing cards in our room—now littered with several thousand dead ants and one dead mosquito—Sam complained about his legs. ‘They feel bendy.’
‘Do you mean they’re sore from the walk?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yes, mine are too.’
Sam looked at me. ‘I am not weak.’
‘No, Sam, you’re not weak.’
CHAPTER 20
The lake of stars
The waters of Lake Malawi are plied by a single fifty-year-old ferry, the Ilala. Every week she travels north for three days and then south for three days, with a rest day in between. Assuming that she doesn’t break down. I wanted us to take the Ilala to Likomo Island and the ferry left the next evening, supposedly.
On the day she was due to stop in Nkhata Bay we waited with our packs in the hostel’s lounge area after checking out of our room. Since the boat was leaving in the evening, I had all day for activities with Sam. We churned through maths, science, cards, drawing, chess and boxing. A full complement of neuroplasticity exercises; our first in a while. It was nice to be relatively still.
Around lunchtime I suddenly realised, to my surprise, that Sam had managed to connect the computer to the internet, which had been down in the whole town for days. We scrambled a short Skype with Benison and caught up on emails. It wasn’t until later that I realised Sam had piggybacked onto someone’s nearby mobile phone hotspot. Oops.
At sunset, Sam and I waddled down to the ferry on our bendy legs, backpacks hefted on one shoulder. On the wharf there was a swarm of shirtless men, shouting. Mothers carried grain sacks on their heads and babies swaddled on their backs. There were piles of wood, giant canvas-wrapped bales, hawkers, traders, fishermen, and a few wazungu wandering aimlessly about. It was noisy and energetic and there was a rare sense of bustle and haste in the evening shadows away from the ferry’s lights.
Sam and I walked up the gangway into the second-class deck, where most of the locals travelled and filled the corridors, then up some stairs to the first-class deck occupied by businessmen, wealthier families and crew filing around the engine room, dining room and cabins. We climbed a last steep flight of steps to the upper level: an exposed deck with worn grey timber boards the colour and texture of driftwood, lifejacket bins and lifeboats.
The boat was meant to get to Likomo Island at one a.m., stopping at the smaller island of Chizumulu an hour or so prior. Under the circumstances I thought it wasn’t worth paying for a cabin. We would just stay up, passing the time on the deck, and then sleep when we got to Likomo.
I got talking to three fellow travellers: Andy, a retired pig farmer from Australia, his wife, Malee, and his sister Margaret, who had joined the couple from Scotland. Andy appeared as tough as tanned pigskin, but I was to learn he had a heart of gold. He was en route to the Congo to visit a school that he’d helped build decades earlier. He was meeting up with his fellow builders to see if the school was still standing, or indeed if they were.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a guy hovering close to Sam, watching his DS game over his shoulder. Andy had already encountered him. ‘He’s fairly odd. Maybe you should go check things out,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth. I sat next to Sam and started to read my Kindle. This guy was certainly strange. He was having a one-way conversation, half in English and half in Swahili. The bits I could understand were vague religious allegories and riddles.
Sam was playing a game in which a giant white hand bounced up and down as Super Mario dodged it. The man leant even closer. ‘Is that the hand of God? Is God a mzungu?’ he said, pointing at the console.
Sam noticed him for the first time and leant away. ‘Go away, you.’
‘You are wholesome,’ he said, with an oily smile.
I decided to step in. ‘We want to be alone. We don’t want your company.’
He didn’t budge.
‘Do I have to call the crew?’ I said.
He ignored me until I stood up and leant over him, saying, ‘Go away, now!’ At that he smiled inscrutably, but eventually wandered away, glancing back occasionally and muttering to himself.
A crew member came around to check tickets and asked Sam for his before I stepped in to explain the situation. ‘He’s with me. He’s my son. Here is our ticket.’
‘Why is he ignoring me?’ the crewman asked, nodding at Sam.
‘He, ah, has special problems. He has trouble talking to people, but he’s okay.’
The crewman looked at me dubiously. ‘Can you just wait here a minute? I want to check with my boss.’
‘Sure,’ I said, smiling to mask my anxiety.
The crewman returned shortly with a white-uniformed officer and introduced him as the captain.
‘Your son will be okay?’ the captain asked. ‘This is an open area. We must make sure everyone is safe.’
He looked unconvinced by my assurances that I’d keep a close eye on Sam, but eventually he nodded, smiled and walked away.
Then Andy told me he’d heard the arrival time at Likomo was meant to be four a.m. not one a.m. Oh no! It was going to be cold on the open deck at night, and we didn’t have sleeping bags.
This boat trip was proving to be full of unpleasant surprises: weirdos, wary crew and wayward timetables. Still, surprise was what our trip was all about. We were after Proudhon’s ‘fecundity of the unexpected’.
Sure enough, after dinner the temperature dropped and the wind from the lake whipped up. I realised there and then that I’d lost Sam’s padded vest somewhere along the way. It had been his only warm piece of clothing. He refused my jacket; no long sleeves. All he had for warmth was a sleeping bag liner. He lay on a bench on the deck, squirming uncomfortably, using a daypack as his pillow. I considered moving us down to the second deck out of the wind, but the corridors were now full of blanket-covered bodies, the air a thick fug of diesel and body odour.
As the Ilala chugged on, the lights from the distant shore disappeared entirely. The wake of the engines abaft was lit up by the soft deck lights. The lake was huge and ran a swell deserving of open ocean.
I couldn’t sleep, paranoid about our bags getting fleeced, the odd guy returning from below, and Sam’s discomfort. Around midnight we reached Chizumulu Island. The engines cut out as we lingered in port. I drifted asleep.
I suddenly awoke, aching from the biting cold, to a blaring fog horn. It was dawn, and we still hadn’t moved! I spooned Sam to give him extra body warmth while the boat finally prepared to leave.
Finally, as the day dawned, we approached Likomo. Sam emerged from his sleeping bag liner, hair mussed into a bird’s nest. I looked across to the scrappy village lining the beach. Why was there no wharf?
‘We land on long boats on the beach,’ a sleepy Andy explained as we gathered our bags. Another bloody unpleasant bloody surprise.
We bustled down the galleys to the lower deck where longboats were tethered alongside the ferry, and gingerly climbed a rope ladder into the crowded open boat as packs were thrown down on us from above. I handed my daypack, which contained valuables and the computer, down to a crewman. �
�This is very fragile. Please be careful.’
He smiled. ‘No problem.’ A few minutes later, as I sat at the bow a few metres away, he yelled, ‘Hey, mzungu!’ and made to throw the daypack to me. The boat burst into laughter at my look of horror. I squeezed out a tepid smile as the bag was handed to me.
The overloaded boat had a mere ten centimetres of freeboard as we were rowed to shore. From the boat, we jumped into the shallows, holding our backpacks above our heads, jeans wet to mid thigh. As we flopped our packs onto the beach, Sam punched the air. ‘Yes, we’re here!’
A ute from the backpacker hostel Mango Drift, our destination, was there to meet us. Andy, Sam and I stood holding the rail behind the cabin as Margaret and Malee sat and bounced with the packs in the tray for the five kilometres of bumpy track to the far side of the island.
The back of my eyes ached from lack of sleep and the glare of the bleaching sunlight. We were deposited on the granular sand next to the bar-cum-reception area, which had been built around a very large old mango tree sprouting from the beach. The coarse sand of the lake, similar to river sand, invited tactile exploration; it didn’t stick like beach sand but fell effortlessly off skin and clothing.
Lining the beach were huts and chalets made from thatch and wood, with mosquito nets and hammocks. Behind them willows, eucalypts, palms, mango and bougainvillea nestled under the ancient baobabs. These were a special indigenous species, dwarf baobabs, which only grew on this island.
As we settled in, I realised I was missing my computer charger, and instantly remembered where it was—sitting in the office of the hostel in Nkhata Bay. A phone call confirmed it was there. At least I hadn’t lost it, and we were headed back there anyway.
It was a problem, however. The computer had no battery power left and it would be four long days until we’d be back on the mainland. Most of Sam’s school material was on the computer, and I wouldn’t be able to Skype. Our only hope was that I could get emails on my phone if I could buy some mobile phone data vouchers in the village.