7.28.2007

06Aug07

As we got ready to leave the village, I prepared myself to have another relaxing ride on the Liemba. I envisioned sitting on the top deck with Mel, just hanging out and talking  and enjoying the stars and fishing boats out on the lake. However, the ride was a completely different story. First of all, we had no idea as to when the ship was going to come back to pick us up. Well we knew that it was supposed to be there Saturday evening sometime but that was about it. So not wanting to miss the boat and spend an extra week wondering the shore of Kushagru, passing time aimlessly until the ship makes it’s weekly trip back up the lake, we packed up camp after lunch and, with the help of half of the village, carried our things down to the beach. Again we were to take a water taxi back out to the middle of the lake to meet up with the Liemba, which was making it’s way back from Zambia. At about 5:30 PM a nice size fishing boat, called “The Butterfly”, with a motor showed up with a crew of young Rastafarians. We loaded up the boat and headed out to the village of Kalya, the village parallel to the Liemba rendezvous point. It was here that the trip began to take an interesting turn, not for the worst but just interesting. As we waited along the shore we mobbed by hordes of children out collecting water for the next day. They swarmed around us shouting various phrases, most of which started “Wazungu, wazungu!” Which, when directly translated, means “white man.” As the sun set around 7:30, the children began to warm up a bit and become content with sitting and staring at us, from about 3 feet away. Needless to say it was quite annoying after 3 hours. Time and time again we pleaded from some space and just for them to go about their daily business, but they seemed to find in amusement in us. I now can identify with any sort of caged zoo animal. Finally somewhere around 11:30 someone spotted the Liemba off in the distance. Wanting to escape the ever present eyes of the children we began to pick up our things and head towards our boat. Upon arriving at the boat we were surprised to see that the crew had decided to let some other passengers board with us, about 50 other passengers to be exact. There was hardly any room left on the boat for us, and the captain actually had to ask some others to leave the boat to make room. Now that we were all on the ship, it was time to make our way out to the middle of the lake and wait for the Liemba to signal us to board. Thinking it was a breeze getting off the boat, this next leg of our voyage seemed an easy task. However, as we approached the ship we could see that this endeavor would be slightly more difficult then we first imagined.

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