The Ilala Ferry

Before I write my "Goodbye Malawi" post I wanted to catch up on blogging about some crazy experiences that we had that I didn't get a chance to share with you. So now that I have some time (relaxing on the beach in Zanzibar!), I wanted to post them.

So as previous blog posts have mentioned, traveling in Malawi hasn't always been the easiest (or the safest) but it's always an experience- and taking the Ilala Ferry down Lake Malawi was definitely one of the most interesting ones we had. To start, the Ilala Ferry is the only long distance transport that goes up and down Lake Malawi. It connects northern Malawi (bordering Tanzania), the eastern part of Mozambique, ending up in southern Malawi at Monkey Bay with about 11 stops in between.

The Ilala Ferry- Photo by Sosten Chiotha (my boss at LEAD)

The route of the Ilala- we boarded at Metangula

This ferry has been in operation since 1951 (no real upgrades or renovations since!), is 172 ft long and can accommodate 365 passengers (although i'm sure it's been over that...) The ferry has 3 classes, 1st class (which is the upper deck), cabin class (about 6 sleeper cabins), 2nd class and 3rd. Although 1st class is more expensive we were told that this is the only way to travel since 2nd and 3rd is very crowded, dirty and filled with people transporting goods (ie. chickens, maize etc.)

Waiting for the ferry with Malawians and their cargo.
This man had a duck under the net which he was
feeding termites. Josh was helping..

Bananas!

It is not easy to book tickets beforehand (type in 'Ilala Ferry' into google and it's littered with people wondering where do you book tickets??), so the cabins are usually all full (which we found in our case as well) but again we were told that you could just sleep on the top deck under the stars and this would be just as good.  But what we forgot was that we were taking this during rainy season.. open top deck is not so good in the pouring rain...

Safety boats that hang off the side.. hmmm

 So this was the last leg of our Christmas in Mozambique trip, and if you recall previous posts, josh and i had a heck of a time with the transport options- so we thought ok, take a boat back into Malawi and that would beat the back of a pick up truck for 20 hours!  Well this wasn't as easy as we thought. The ferry is wellknown to be late, but wow, they weren't kidding.  We were meant to catch the ferry at 12 noon from Metangula (in Mozambique) and arrive in Monkey Bay at 10am the next day.   Our ferry was 10 hours late so we ended up getting on the ferry at 10pm.


Now what we didn't know is that at this stop there was no dock.  I don't know why I found this surprising... but at this point in our travels I was exhausted and just craving some 'normalcy' which for me meant a dock on which to board the ferry on.  But, c'est la vie, when you're in africa you just gotta go with it.  So here we were, 10pm, in the dark, standing on the sand with about 100 or so others waiting to board- it was chaotic with people hauling jerrycans of gasoline and luggage to the shore while waiting to get into these small boats, which would then take you out to the bigger ferry, which then you had to climb up the side of the ferry to get in. No joke. We knew it wasn't going to be good when josh was warned by another local to take his pants off or hike them up, because we would be wading into the water to get into these small boats while carrying our luggage overhead.  I almost had a fit! Two rickety motarboats were shuttling people/goods back and forth and our strategy was to just watch the first one to see how it's done.. the local Malawian that we made friends with while waiting for the ferry told us to get on the 3rd one, because apparently everyone rushes to the first one and the last ones are just for goods (unfortunately I did not take any photos at this time.. but we got some the next day of other boats coming in, but still doesn't do it justice!)

Coming to the ferry from the shore

 

People being shuttled to the ferry from the nearby shore

Getting ready to climb up the side of the ferry

 So we actually ended up getting on the 4th one.. with all the jerrycans of gasoline.. why? well all the others were waaay too over-crowded and we thought we might sink in that little boat- plus i had to muster up the courage to walk waist deep in the murky water trying not get my shirt or laptop wet!  So here we were sitting in this tiny motarboat surrounded by 20 or so cans of gasoline (sound safe?) making our way through the waves to the ferry. Somehow we made it without capsizing and we crawled up the side of the ferry and were immediately whisked up to the top deck.
Phew! we had made it..  just barely.

Top deck of the ferry

One deck down where the Sleeper cabins were located

The bar in the back

On this top deck was a bar, surrounded by all the other expats (who had been on this boat for already 24 hours or so-- drinking away their pain).. but in the rainy season there was only a handful of us. Our next task was to figure out where we were going to sleep. Since the sleeper cabins were full we were just planning to sleep on the top deck under the stars, but bam, the rain started just then, and as we tried to take refuge under this tiny bar (the only covered place) we both got pretty soaked.... So that option was out. Luckily, or unluckily, they offered us the chance to sleep in the 'restaurant' for the night. Now this was the point that almost set josh off, this room was muggy and the cockroaches were everywhere.. literally everywhere.. but at least it was dry! So our strategy was so pull some chairs together and try to sleep.. blocking out the thought of cockroaches climbing up our legs..

Sleeping on my yoga mat.. thankful I brought that!

By the time 6am came (not sure if either of us slept at all) they shooed us out so they could set up the restaurant.. gross.. this is where we would be eating too??  But luckily they managed to get most of the cockroaches out and when we returned for breakfast it didn't look as bad.. But the bathroom, don't even get me started on that cesspool. So this was 1st class eh? I couldn't even imagine 2nd or 3rd and the conditions people were in..  just blew my mind. Welcome to Africa.  

We spent the next 16 hours up on the top deck.. trying to sleep more or just read/play suduko and willing the boat to go a little faster. Every stop took about an hour or 2 to load and unload people/goods via these small motorboats.

Soot.. mmm. it got everywhere..

Attempting to sleep but then the soot came..

Life jacket anyone? I think they were 'airing' them out..

Josh and Suduko.. poor guy, looking a bit rough..

We arrived in Monkey Bay 24 hours later at 10pm.. slightly unfortunate for us because we needed to spend the night before heading back to Zomba, and the place we were going to stay at ended up being closed.  Just our luck right?

Ilala at night getting into Monkey Bay. But look a dock!

We were a bit stranded, but after some negotiation we hired a "taxi" (a pickup truck, with a cracked windshield, and of course it was pissing rain!) for a ridiculous amount of money which took us to a nearby town to a nicer hotel (it had to make multiple stops along the way though to try and find petrol!!). By this time it was 1130pm and when we finally arrived were pretty delirious (thankful that we were alive) and i don't think i've even been so happy to see a hotel in my life.

So I could see that in the dry season, if you were to sleep on the top deck, board the ferry in the day or with a dock, the experience might not be that traumatizing, but it was for us and this was one of those experiences for me where in your head you are just screaming "are you serious????".  But thank God we never broke done, and the sunset was truly amazing. 

Amazing sky..

Am I glad we did this? Yes, but I would never need to do it again.  But it was a true experience. And there is so much potential here.. the potential to have another boat, for a safer/efficient ferry, not only as something for tourists but for the locals to be able to move their goods back and forth more frequently.  I do hope the government wakes up and realizes this soon..

Goodbye Garden

Well, we're leaving tomorrow and I (Josh) have to say goodbye to my garden. It started from a piece of weedy, overgrown, insect infested land and after a lot of sweat, bites and a few curses, it turned into more than just a past time hobby, but into a really soulful experience that placed me into the everyday life of many Malawians from the pieceworkers, growers, market sellers and traders.

The final stats are at the end of this post for those interested (I'm thinking about you Damien and Remi).

The garden has been a real success but I could not have done it without Joseph, who I hired as my full time gardener. Joseph had been out of work for some time and is what people call here a "pieceworker". He does or has done in the past digging, gardening, shoe repair, cell phone repair, barber, and market seller or any other piecework he could find. In March after watering twice a day, weeding and planting and transplanting (and pulling my back from all the bending, lifting etc) I realized that it was too much work for me. Thanks to Joseph!

Thanks to Joseph for all his help!

 So, since the last update I've been going to the market regularly to trade my veggies for the ones I need.

A biweekly load for the market

The guys at the market always appreciate the vegetables which are either in short supply or they have to transport by minibus 2 hours away.

Trading veggies at Suleman's and Gift's stand at Zomba Market

Market stall where I sell my veggies, my stuff  shown are the lettuce, radish, broccoli, parsley, coriander and cucumbers.  

The garden is still growing well, we've harvested all of the fresh corn so it's looking a little less green but now the peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, pumpkin and lettuce are all coming in nicely.

Current status, a little less green now that the corn in done, but lots of other stuff is coming up.

 We really enjoyed several weeks of plucking fresh corn on the stalks and popping them into the boiling pot of water. So very nice to eat it fresh. Here was the last load of corn we harvested :(

Sweet fresh corn, yum

A sample of a fresh meal: corn, cilantro  from the garden, corn bread made from the maize flour our neighbour ground up with her harvested dried maize, avocado off our tree. If only we milked the cow and made the cheese on top, now that would be impressive...

The corn that we didn't harvest on time is left drying in the sun on the stalks
for Joseph to harvest later to make corn flour.

Stir-frys have been nice lately with the fresh broccoli, cauli and carrots.

Fast growing broccoli

Slow growing cauliflower, took since mid December, but finally harvested one last week with dozens ready in the next couple of weeks (doh...just missed it).

I was excited to finally harvest some green peppers as well. There are also dozens of small ones which someone else will have to enjoy.

Coming in nicely but not in time for me to eat.

A couple of ones were ready for harvest. I let this one get really big before slicing it up for some pizza.

A nice pair.

Parsley is a regular market product, usually filling up one or 2 bags a week for the vendors.

Tons of parsley to sell

Dill is a new one for the guys at the market but they say that expats are buying it.

Pickles made from the fresh dill and small cucumbers in the garden

Pumpkins are starting to sprout up everywhere, too bad I didn't have a chance to try pumpkin pie with these guys.

Dozens of lettuce are ready for eating, we've been eating lots of salad and
selling the rest to the market, but there are way too many.

The tomatoes have been coming in here and there which I'm supplementing with the ones I buy at the market.

With my Grandma in mind, I used the fresh parsley and tomatoes to make a tomato sauce and made a pizza on which I added Swiss Chard from the garden as well. Very yummy!

Tomato sauce inspired by my Italian Grandma Silvestri

Yummy pizza!

FINAL STATS

Still lots left for the next person to enjoy

It's been a great experience. Hope you enjoyed reading about it!

Hard times in Malawi

I started writing this post after only 3 weeks of being in Malawi, but I think I have better perspective now that I've been here for 6 months....

"Having lived in Malawi for only 3 weeks, I've already come to realize that the word "shortage" did not really have any real meaning for me when I previously lived in Canada or in Europe. Sure, chocolate chips and pumpkin puree seemed to be in short supply while living in Stockholm, peanut butter didn't exist in Spain and French's yellow mustard and Hellman's mayonnaise could not be found in France. Even back in Canada, one could argue that there are a short supply of taxis on those rainy Vancouver nights after emerging from a bar and buses don't run nearly as often as they should. Although at some point your cellphone battery is dying, money is tight, and time is running out, I don't think that the majority of "westerners" can truly appreciate the word "shortage". Here are only three of the shortages plaguing Malawi today to the point of crises and they are all related to eachother: fuel shortage, forex shortage, and electricity shortage."

Having lived in Malawi for 6 months, I agree with my thoughts those first weeks, although the "shortages" run deeper and are more prevalent than I first noticed on the surface. Added to the list of fuel, forex, and electricity are sugar, soft drinks, and more seriously drugs, medical supplies, water and even food. 

The root of many problems...NO FOREX

The almighty US dollar is scarce to be found in Malawi.

As someone who has lived in Canada most of my life, it is crazy to think that I don't have access to US dollars. At home, it is so easy to go to any bank and buy USD at the bank rate and go about my business. Here that is impossible due to the ongoing forex crisis which has spiraled into several other shortages.

If I am allowed to simplify the cause of all these issues, I would blame the policies and practices of the former Malawian President (he died a bout a month ago from a heart attack) which first and foremost, tampered with the real market rate of the Malawian kwacha and froze its value. This in turn created an artificially strong kwacha, meaning no one would give their precious forex to the banks for a bad exchange rate, but instead would seeks better rates on the black market.

When I first stepped off the plane last October, I did my usual thing at the airport to buy the local currency. Exchanging at the formal forex bureau in the airport, I was quite pleased that I received 170 MWK for every USD I gave, well above the bank rate of 164 MWK at the time. After some weeks here however, I soon realized the real value of a USD is more like 250-300 MWK from the informal forex dealers on the street. Doh!

I was laughed at trying to exchange kwacha on the Mozambique border, "Nobody wants kwacha" I was told.

The lack of forex in the formal banking system means that businesses can't do business (import goods) and that the country can't import goods such as fuel. The commodity shortages and fact that businesses are buying forex on the black market to survive, mean that they import goods at the high rate, and export goods at the low formal rate, cutting 30% or so into their margins. As a result, contrary to what President Mutharika was trying to do by not devaluing the kwacha (one can only assume), commodities and prices have skyrocketed with inflation in double digits.

The second main reason for the shortages, I will venture to assume, was caused by all the major donors pulling their funding support last year (donors funding make up 40% of the federal budget!!!!) citing the corruption and lack of good governance of the President Mutharika government, which in turn means that there is 40% less money for hospitals, education, and government employees. 

No Coke or Sprite

In the first months of living here, there was no soft drinks due to the high cost of importing bottles (high cost of forex while exporting the drinks at regular rate) for the local bottling plant. Newspapers ran comics of employees drinking beer at work instead of pop.

Read more about Malawi's soft drink shortage here.

No Sugar

Luckily before this crisis, I bought 4 kg of sugar which lasted us up until we went to Zambia, so then we bought some more there. People without so much luck, had to buy sugar on the black market for double or triple the price. When a shipment of sugar finally came in, people queued for hours to buy a limit of 2 kg. Although I wasn't buying sugar the other day, I had to wait an hour in a grocery line because of the crowds wanting to buy sugar from the last shipment. 

Queues made the paper, this is in Zomba

Even though Malawi produces their own sugar and is "sugar country" with lots of sugar cane, there was no sugar because of the artificially strong kwacha. Why would the local companies sell locally for weak kwacha when they could sell to surrounding countries to buy the desperately needed forex. If we were staying here longer I might have experimented with making my own sugar from sugar cane you can buy at the market.

Sugar story here.

In high demand

No Drugs

I'm talking about the good kind. With the lack of donor support and forex to import goods, drugs are really hard to come by. This is a scary one for us in case we run into health issues, although generally the private clinics should have stock. Often I read that some person died from rabies or malaria because the hospital didn't have proper drugs to treat the disease. ARV's are in short supply which doesn't bode well for the 15% of the population with AIDS.

Ironically, the same President whose policies and practices are responsible for the drug shortage, is said to have died because the hospital lacked of epinephrine. Here is an excerpt from a news story about this...

"Bingu collapsed on Thursday night and was rushed immediately to Kamuzu Central Hospital, a public facility. Upon presentation at the Kamuzu, workers realized that they were lacking epinephrine and had to run to a facility run by University of North Carolina to procure it. Bingu likely died because of problems of drug stocking in Malawian facilities and substandard levels of health delivery. Bingu died due to a problem endemic to all of Malawi. Ironically, the opulent President of Malawi died needlessly like that of even the poorest of Malawians."

Hunger is a reality for many

Although widespread famine has not been seen in Malawi since 2005 (as far as I know) mostly due to a fertilizer and seed subsidy program, hunger is still a reality for around 200,000 people this year in Malawi. When Danielle surveyed several people in rural villages, Shortage of Food, was the third highest challenge they faced. Even our security guard was telling us that they are buying their maize now (seasonally lower prices) to last the year so they don't go hungry later on. 

Fuel Shortages (Since the end of 2009, Malawi has a fuel crisis)

A long line for diesel

Imagine your life with no fuel. You go to your favorite gas station and the pump is dry... hmmm ok, I will try the dozens of other stations in town. All dry. How about in the next town, dry. It turns out you have to skip work to spend the rest of the day looking for fuel when finally your friend calls you and says there is a fuel truck (the only one this week) coming to a town some 50 km away, so you rush to that spot where you fine hundreds of vehicles lined up waiting for the precious commodity. In this line are buses, ambulances, firetrucks, army trucks, and police cars....no priority is given to local emergency services, a sobering thought if you even fine yourself in a car accident. After the gas station has set aside their cut of fuel for their friends, family and, dare I say, black market buddies, they start to address the queue. And so you wait, 4, 6, 8 hours, inching slowly. By now it is 1am, you only have ten cars left, and you are told that they are sold out. @#$% *#$&!@&!!!  

Even Emergency Services aren't spared the waits

Your only choice is to buy black market fuel. If you have the right contacts you might get a deal of 700 kwacha a liter (about 4 USD a liter!!!) compared to the pump price of 380 kwacha (~2 USD). If you don't have the right contacts, you risk water downed fuel which has busted many an engine here, and have to pay upwards of 1500 kwacha a liter (9 USD a liter!!!! that is 36 USD a gallon??). Count the day of work you missed and the lower purchasing power in Malawi, it is an expensive tank of fuel. Most of your life now revolves around working your contacts for a jerry can here or there, or knowing when the next tanker is coming in.  

As a result, mini-bus fares have doubled in recent years, price of goods have increased drastically, and it can be assumed that productivity in the country is way down. 

The Power is out again...

Danny already mentioned this in one of our dislikes here in a blog a couple of months ago, http://www.dannyandjoshinafrica.blogspot.com/2012/02/4-months.html.

It is a race against the clock everynight to finish dinner before the power goes out. It was around 630pm in December, but nowadays with shorter days it's around 530pm, meaning a very early dinner. As well the power goes out in the morning for a couple of hours, the peak times when everyone is flipping their switches. Main issue is ESCOM (monopolized government owned electricity generator and distributor) has a lack of generation capacity to meet the demand. It's something we've just gotten used to but it's furthering the fuel crisis with so many people buying diesel to run their generators. 

Power went out before dinner was ready so cereal it was for dinner

On a funny note that sums up the issues, one night when the power was out, we were walking by a fuel station with a huge line of cars. Our friend was waiting in line and complained that although the station had fuel, there was no power to pump the fuel into the cars, and that the brigthly lite gas station next door had their generator running, but did not have any fuel to serve their customers. Ah Malawi!

Although this post is somewhat depressing, it is the reality of the situation that Malawians have faced over the last couple of years. Yet you always hear them complaining with a bright smile and laugther. "Oh, ha ha ha, no fuel today, maybe tomorrow."  Despite the hardships, people are very hopeful with the new President Joyce Banda, who came into power last month after the sudden death of President Mutharika. We all hope she can improve the situation but has a tough road ahead.