by Paul Theroux
It sometimes seems as though Africa is a place you go to wait. Many Africans I met said the same thing, but uncomplainingly, for most lived their lives with a fatalistic patience. Outsiders see Africa as a continent delayed – economies in suspension, societies up in the air, politics and human rights put on hold, communities throttled or stopped. ‘Not yet,’ voices of authority have cautioned Africans throughout the years of colonization and independence. But African time was not the same as American time. One generation in the West was two generations in Africa, where teenagers were parents and thirty-year-olds had one foot in the grave. As African time passed I surmised that the pace of Western countries was insane, that the speed of modern technology accomplished nothing, and that because Africa was going its own way at its own pace for its own reasons, it was a refuge and a resting-place, the last territory to light out for. I surmised this, I did not always feel it; I am impatient by nature.
‘When will this welding be finished?’ I asked, and was told: ‘Not welding, bwana, they are fixing the engine.’
‘How long have they been working on it?’
‘For some days.’
Night had fallen. Glaring overhead lights had come on, making it impossible to see anything. It was now more than five hours since I had arrived, breathless, at the pier, imagining that I was about to board a departing ferry. Mr Joseph said: ‘Don’t worry, sir.’ The customs agent said, ‘We will take care of you.’ These men were also teasing each other, greeting and bantering like big fat boys, as men do in such jobs that involve long delays – on docks and in depots and loading bays. But I believed them. I took comfort in their reassurance.
In the moonless lakeshore night the mud stink rose like part of the darkness and so did the mosquitoes and lake-flies. Two more hours passed.
‘How long does it take to get to the other side of the lake?’ I asked the customs agent.
He said, ‘Me, myself I cannot know, sir. I have never been there in my life.
Mr Joseph was listening. He shook his head, he laughed to express incomprehension, he said, ‘To sleep on water. Eh! Eh! I have never done it. It must be very strange.’
Seven hours after I had arrived at the pier, Captain Opio of the MV Kabalega said to me, ‘It seems we will not leave tonight.’
‘Really?’ My heart sank: terrible news.
‘Really,’ he said solemnly. ‘Therefore, let me introduce you to Captain Mansawawa, of the Umoja.’
‘Are you leaving tonight, captain?’
‘Yes, when the freight cars arrive from Kampala to be loaded.’
That was a detail. The important thing with a ferry or any ship was to get on board, secure a berth, and get your feet under the table in the galley. Then a delay did not matter: you just went to bed and if the vessel was still at the pier the next day you read a book. This was preferable to sitting on a bench at the customs house, or pacing on the pier for seven hours.
‘May I come with you?’
‘Karibu,’ the captain said. Welcome. His saying it in Swahili made the word seem more sincere.
The captain was a serious and hard-working man from Musoma on the lake, who also spoke Chichewa. I had learned this Bantu language in the Peace Corps, in order to teach in Malawi. The captain had learned it as master of the passenger ship Ilala on Lake Nyasa.
‘You are our guest,’ the captain said climbing up the gangway. ‘This is Alex. First Engineer.’
A man in a skullcap stood at the top of the stairs, smiling, one eye fixed on me, his other eye drifting off. His lazy eye made him look lost and lovable. He said ‘Karibu,’ too, and he pulled my bag out of my hands. He shook my hand and said, ‘You take my cabin. It is forward.’
He hurried to the bow and unlocked the cabin door with a brass plate attached that read First Engineer. He did not open the door at once. He looked at me with one eye and gave me instructions.
‘We must first put off all lights. This one and this one.’ He flicked off the lights on the deck. ‘There are sea-flies. They like the lights. But they don’t bite.’
He opened the door quickly, he pushed me in, then he squirmed inside himself and slammed the door. We were in darkness.
‘Don’t be fearing,’ he said, switching the cabin light on.
The room was filled with whirling insects, gnat-sized, clouds of them revolving around the light and smacking the cabin screens. Dead insects littered the bed. Alex swept them from the yellow sheet and the gray pillow.
‘Doodoos,’ I said, the generic term for insects.
‘These doodoos will not bother you,’ Alex said, sweeping more of them aside with his hand and stuffing my bag on a shelf. His squiffy eyes made him seem more efficient, able to scrutinize two sides of the cabin at the same time.
‘So they don’t bite?’
‘No. We eat them,’ he said, and smacked his lips. ‘They are very sweet.’
‘The doodoos don’t bite you, but you bite the doodoos?’
He laughed and said, ‘Yes! Yes!’ and then, ‘This is your cabin.’
‘Where will you sleep?’
‘Somewhere!’ He bowed and left.
This was perfect for an aptly named ferry – umoja was the Swahili word for unity or oneness. Never mind that the cabin was rusted and bad smelling, the bed unwashed, and the sea-flies a bother. This was harmony, privacy, and the sort of seedy comfort I craved. The cabin was large, with an armchair and a lamp. There was a stopped clock on the wall, and last year’s calendar – a picture of rhinos. A table was set against the hull. In the drawer was a rubber stamp that said, 1st Engineer, M. V. Umoja. I shared a cold-water shower with the adjoining cabin. I could read, I could write, I could listen to my radio. I did not care if this crossing of the lake took two days or twenty days.
A half-hour later, I was writing my notes – To sleep on water. Eh! Eh! It must be very strange – when there was a knock at the door, Alex calling me to the galley. The deckhands and the second engineer joined us, with the captain, for the freight cars still had not arrived from Kampala.
‘You like nyama ya kuku?’ the captain said, placing a chicken leg on my plate. Alex heaped some rice beside it, with a lump of mashed avocado.
‘You have pili-pili sauce?’
‘Too much,’ Alex said, knowing that he was making a joke.
‘You have beer?’
‘For you, yes.’
‘I’m in heaven,’ and toasted them. They were on duty and couldn’t drink alcohol.
‘You are welcome Mr Paul.’
Alex was of the Sukuma tribe. The WaSukuma lived at the southern end of the lakeshore, in what was known as Greater Unyamwezi. These people were on my mind. In Nairobi I had seen a giant wooden marionette in a shop. A doll about five feet high, with a plump torso and conical breasts and a spooky staring face, it was old and beautifully made, with articulated arms and legs. It weighed about forty pounds. ‘From the Sukuma people,’ the Indian shop owner said. He had bought it from a bush trader in Tanzania. I bought it from him on condition that when I returned home I would notify him and he would send it to me.
‘They use them in the villages,’ Alex said.
He called it a vinyago vibubwa (a large doll), a benevolent figure that was paraded around the village at harvest time. He was pleased to talk about it but had the urbanized East African’s self-conscious tendency to dissociate himself from any sort of superstitious ritual.
‘Just in the bush,’ he said. ‘The far bush.’
It occurred to me, sitting there, that no one at the dock or on the ferry had asked to see my passport. No one had looked at my letter, authorizing my trip. There was no mention of money, no one had asked for references, or a ticket. I had merely been introduced. It was just: Climb aboard, as the driver of the cattle truck had said to me north of Marsabit on the shifta road, before we were ambushed.
The crew were all Tanzanians – friendly and solicitous. They had been in Port Bell for several days, loading the ferry. They were sensationally grea
se-stained as a result, which made the hand-washing ceremony at mealtime something to behold: everyone at the table leaned aside and took turns with the basin and the soap while someone else poured water from the pitcher. Lots of scrubbing, for ferry loading was filthy work. No matter how grubby an eater might be, he had to have clean hands.
‘I like coming here,’ the captain said in Swahili. ‘Uganda is our friend. Kenyans are also our friends, but the Kenyan police are always looking for rushwa.’
That was a new word to me.
‘Baksheesh,’ the captain explained. ‘Extra money. Kenya is a bad place.’
When the meal was over, the hour was late. Still we had not left the port, but so what? I went to my cabin, I finished my notes, brushing sea-flies off the bright page with one hand, writing with the other. Then I lay in my bunk and listened to my short-wave radio. Sea-flies settled on my face. I clawed them off. I heard the lurch and rumble of freight cars shunted on board – there were rails set in the deck. With the shouting of deckhands, the ferry responded to the weight of the new cargo and steadied itself.
I was already dozing, tasting sea-flies each time I yawned. The ferry shuddered when its engines revved, but I was asleep by the time we set sail. About an hour and a half out of Port Bell we crossed the Equator.
I woke several times in the night, though from odd dreams – the dreams you have in a strange bed – not from the movement of the ship. The Umoja stayed on an even keel, plowing through the calm lake, with only a slight chop from the southeast wind. The temperature was pleasant – cool fresh air drifting through the porthole, the droning engine deep in the body of the vessel, the hull vibrating in a massaging motion that soothed me.
When I woke I could not see land anywhere: we were at sea. Lake Victoria is the largest body of water in Africa – 70,000 square kms (27,000 square miles). A whole intact people, the Sesse Islanders, occupied a distinct archipelago in the north of the lake. The lake water was full of fish, but also full of crocs, bilharzia, pirates, islands and primitive craft. The lake had not been properly surveyed since colonial times, and only old charts were in use. So there were many uncharted rocks and hazards.
Clouds of sea-flies were blowing across the deck as I went outside. They smacked me in the face and got into my eyes. To the west was a smudge and when we came closer I could see that it was an island, flat and forested.
‘Goziba Island,’ Alex said.
‘Who lives there?’
‘Everyone. Ugandans, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Congolese, Rwandans, and more. They come in dugouts, or motorboats, or dhows. It is nice! No police, no government people. No taxes. Just in the middle of nowhere.’
The detailed chart in the wheelhouse showed the lake to be dotted with many such islands, around the edge, in the middle, some regulated and named, others nameless, open to whatever squatters could paddle to them. The dugouts were frequently overturned by crocodiles and the paddlers devoured. Sigulu Island in the northeast of the lake recorded forty-three deaths from crocs in a recent six-month period. The intense crocodile activity seemed to emphasize the free-for-all that was the general rule on Lake Vic.
Breakfast was ugali – African porridge that was a sort of thin gruel - served with sweet tea. I was reminded that the Africa I knew had never been a gourmet experience, but most of the food was palatable. Places might be famous for particular produce, like southern Ethiopia and its pineapples, Kenyan oranges, Ugandan bananas. The Tanzanian side of this lake was renowned for its mangos, said to be the best in the world. The lakeside avocados were also plump and tasty. Avocados were in season, so we feasted on those.
The chief engineer was at breakfast, reading the latest issue of Shipping News and Ship Repair. It was a British publication, from the Royal Institute of Naval Architects.
I said, ‘Maybe you should have let the engineers on the Kabalega read that.’
The chief engineer looked up and said, ‘There is nothing practical in here that will help them. They have a problem of water contaminating their fuel line. They haven’t located the source of it.’
I thought again of the captain’s act of kindness. And that if these men had not helped me and taken me aboard I would still be on that pier at Port Bell, kicking my heels. And who was I? Just another scruffy airplane-hating mzungu who wanted to go by boat to Mwanza. Here as elsewhere I was the only mzungu traveler. The others didn’t take buses, they feared the Sudan and Ethiopia, they stuck to selected routes and traveled in groups, to look at animals. As a rule they stayed a great distance from the general population. And yet, though I was solitary, all I heard was karibu, karibu, welcome, welcome, and ‘Take more ugali?’
The chief engineer was John Kataraihya, a man in his early forties. Like most of the other crew members he had grown up on the lakeshore. He had studied naval engineering and engine repair in Belgium. He was a bright, friendly man, with a steady gaze, intelligent and quietly confident in his opinions. He had seen a great deal of the world. He preferred Lake Victoria.
‘The Belgians have many problems,’ he said, and I laughed to hear him generalize about these people the way Belgians themselves generalized about Africans.
In an ironic turnabout, John had spent quite a lot of time in the city Marlow specifically disparages in Heart of Darkness. Brussels, he says, ‘the city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre,’ for it is in the company office of that city that he gets his orders to go up the Congo River. The seemingly civilized company in the orderly city sends out King Leopold’s brutal directives. Marlow also notices German East Africa on a wall map, ‘a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.’ German East Africa had become Tanganyika and then Tanzania.
‘But the Belgians have one big thing that makes them unhappy.’
He folded his copy of Shipping News and Ship Repair and said, ‘The main problem with Belgians is they can’t get along with each other. The Flemish-speaking ones hate the French-speaking ones. It’s a kind of racism, you can say. Or similar.’ As though referring to a benighted settlement in the bush, he added, ‘Antwerp is bad in that respect.’
Most of the time he had been studying naval engineering, but he had also traveled – tentatively at first, and then as his French improved, farther and farther afield. He had seen most of Belgium and its neighboring countries. ‘Even some small villages, I can say, very tiny ones,’ putting me in mind of Bombo and Bundibugyo in Uganda and the huddled community on Goziba Island.
‘Any problems traveling?’
‘For myself, I had a few problems,’ John said of his peregrinations in Belgium. ‘If they think you are a Congolese – one of their former people – they can treat you very badly and they insult you.’
‘That’s not friendly. No karibu.’
He laughed. ‘I said, “I am from Tanzania!” and that was okay with them. They said, “So you’re from Nairobi?” Ha!’
The idea that after almost 100 years of colonial rule in Africa these ignoramuses still had no idea of the difference between Kenya and Tanzania made him erupt in mocking laughter.
This was a good subject for chitchat in the Umoja galley, with John and some of the crew. I had recently read and greatly liked the book King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschid’s history of this bizarre period of colonialism in Africa. It was a book detailing the savageries of imperialism, the pathology of megalomania and rule through intimidation, as well as the idealistic reaction to it, the origins of the modern human rights movement. The Belgians had inspired Vachel Lindsay’s poem ‘The Congo,’ part of which went,
Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost
Burning in hell for hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off down in hell.
I said it was odd that Belgians were rude to the Congolese, since it was the Belgians who had plundered their country, first in the search for ivory, and then for rubber, and at last for diamonds and chrome and gold. Mostly
slave labor had been used, whole villages were turned out to find ivory, or to collect rubber, and the punishment for slacking was murder or the lopping off of hands. Decades of this, an enormous colony bled of its wealth. As the indignant Irishman in the pub in Joyce’s Ulysses puts it, ‘Raping the women and girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them.’
I said, ‘The whole of the Congo belonged to the Belgian king. It was his private property. The Congo was the king’s own shamba.’
This interested the men at the table, and it was an amazing fact. The Congo was not a Belgian colony but for twenty-three years starting in 1885, King Leopold’s private domain. The horror of it had outraged Joseph Conrad on his trip upriver to Stanleyville and had inspired Heart of Darkness.
‘The whole Congo, his shamba?’ one of the crewmen said.
Sneering, John said, ‘In Belgium, they name big streets after Leopold!’
The crew of the Umoja were attentive listeners, they understood the contradictions in the period Hochschild had called ‘one of the silences of history.’ They responded with shrewd questions, and at last when duty called them to their stations on the ferry they said they wanted to read the book.
‘Come, I’ll show you the engine room,’ John said.
Heat and noise rose from the narrow stairwell as we climbed down slippery treads. The last levels were just iron ladders, and the noise from the pounding engines was so loud I could barely hear what John was saying. He was explaining that the ferry was British-built, first launched in 1962. Neither its diesel engines nor its Caterpillar generators, nor its boilers, had been changed in forty years. The company that had built the ferry was no longer in business, the diesel engines were obsolete.
Over the deafening noise in the engine room, John shouted, ‘Very hard to get spare parts! Two engines – so we can always make it! Sometimes we have a steering problem!’
