we knew we had left the sweet babying of our family and friends in burundi when our bus broke down 1.5 hours of leaving them. 4 vehicles and 8 hours later we finally arrived in kigoma where we were to board the ‘m.v. liemba’, a 90+ year old german ferry.
the ‘liemba’ is a persistent old vessel. the germans sank her when they were forced to leave after world war I, but the tanzanians resurrected her. now she putters along lake tanganyika towards zambia like she owns the joint! she stops about a kilometer from the shore at various towns along the way and blows a big horn to sound the locals. the locals come out in droves aboard small boats to load and unload cargo and passengers. this happens every few hours, night or day, and is amazing to watch (it always involves a lot of panic and yelling…). we boarded the liemba on wednesday and left her on friday.
due to a negative ferry experience (or lack of experience) in the sudan, we tried to book 1st class tickets in advance, but a mission group had already bought them all up (dirty missionaries... kidding)…so, we had to go with 2nd class (which were suspiciously similar in price to 3rd class…). as it turned out, our cabin was LOADED with cockroaches – even after a can of bug spray and about 100 dead cockroaches they were still pouring out of the holes in the wall. we opted to sleep out on the deck for 2 nights which ended up being a blessing in disguise. we found a great breezy spot, which was a double bonus since it seemed to be too cold for the africans and we got some solitude. all in all, an unforgettable 2 days!
4 comments:
Don't worry, the cockroaches get into first class too!
Cockroach...wasn't that Theo's friend???
apparently they had an Atari game entitled Theo & Cockroach cram for a history test: http://www.atari7800.com/joe/raiders/cosby.png
Lars and Matt, That Picture is awesome. So far you've done a good job capturing each post with a nice picture. Keep it up!
Tom that Atari game is Hilarious. I'm still laughing.
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