To the heart of Africa

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

In these dank days of January, the mind struggles to escape the claustrophobia of an English winter, weighed down by heavy grey skies or hemmed in by suffocating mists (pungent with the smell of jet fuel). A couple of atmospheric programmes on Radio Four this week came to the rescue, creating soundscapes so rich in aural texture that it was possible for a while to escape into an alternative life. On Tuesday morning A Voyage on Livingstone’s Lake (produced by Ruth Evans) took us into the heart of Africa, to the lake discovered by the explorer in 1859. Stretching halfway down the length of what was once Nyasaland (but is now Malawi) it’s the third largest lake in Africa after Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika; a glittering ribbon of water 365 miles long and 52 miles wide, straddling the faultline of the Great Rift Valley and edged on one side by mountains. With the Tanzanian journalist Adam Lusekelo as our guide, we were taken on a leisurely four-day voyage round the lake on the MV Ilala, picking up passengers and cargoes of nuts and roasted maize along the way in exchange for bicycles and boxloads of electrical goods. As the boat lumbered across the glassy waters, we were caught up in the journey, stargazing at midnight from the top deck and feeling queasy as she rocked and rolled unsteadily through a sudden overnight squall.

The story of the Ilala, named after the place in Zambia where Livingstone died, is an extraordinary example of shipbuilding ingenuity. She was built in Glasgow in 1949 but, because Lake Malawi (as it’s now called) is land-bound with no navigable river inlet, the boat had to be shipped in bits from Scotland to the shores of Mozambique. From there she was transported in 750 extremely heavy cases across the mountains to Monkey Bay, in a feat to rival that portrayed in Fitzcarraldo, where she was riveted together with rather more success than an Ikea bookcase. After 60 years of active service, she’s feeling her age, creaking and clanking as she makes her way around the lake.

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Dominic

January 22nd, 2009 3:02pm Report this comment

Livingston never discovered any lake. He was the fisrt caucasian to see the lake that he later baptise it his name. Try to delete this information from your mind if at all you aware that africans are human beings too.

Sally Field

February 12th, 2009 11:32pm Report this comment

I travelled round Lake Nyasa, as is was then, in the late 1950s on the Ilala. It was a great adventure for a child in the heady days of African Nationalism when the calls of "Kwacha" as we visited lakeside ports in today's Malawi gave way to "Uhuru" as we landed in Tanganika. Highlights included a stop at the cathedral on Likomo Island, where we deposited a load of sea-sick clerics and the loss of our so-called cook before we even started our voyage - normally a crocodile hunter he failed to board after a drunken night out. Our doughty captain always had a large brown bottle at his elbow during meal time - to cure "Ilala Tummy". We also met the largest cockraoches we had ever seen ...

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