Sam's Best Shot by James Best

Author:James Best
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

The lake of stars

The waters of Lake Malawi are plied by a single fifty-year-old ferry, the Ilala. Every week she travels north for three days and then south for three days, with a rest day in between. Assuming that she doesn’t break down. I wanted us to take the Ilala to Likomo Island and the ferry left the next evening, supposedly.

On the day she was due to stop in Nkhata Bay we waited with our packs in the hostel’s lounge area after checking out of our room. Since the boat was leaving in the evening, I had all day for activities with Sam. We churned through maths, science, cards, drawing, chess and boxing. A full complement of neuroplasticity exercises; our first in a while. It was nice to be relatively still.

Around lunchtime I suddenly realised, to my surprise, that Sam had managed to connect the computer to the internet, which had been down in the whole town for days. We scrambled a short Skype with Benison and caught up on emails. It wasn’t until later that I realised Sam had piggybacked onto someone’s nearby mobile phone hotspot. Oops.

At sunset, Sam and I waddled down to the ferry on our bendy legs, backpacks hefted on one shoulder. On the wharf there was a swarm of shirtless men, shouting. Mothers carried grain sacks on their heads and babies swaddled on their backs. There were piles of wood, giant canvas-wrapped bales, hawkers, traders, fishermen, and a few wazungu wandering aimlessly about. It was noisy and energetic and there was a rare sense of bustle and haste in the evening shadows away from the ferry’s lights.

Sam and I walked up the gangway into the second-class deck, where most of the locals travelled and filled the corridors, then up some stairs to the first-class deck occupied by businessmen, wealthier families and crew filing around the engine room, dining room and cabins. We climbed a last steep flight of steps to the upper level: an exposed deck with worn grey timber boards the colour and texture of driftwood, lifejacket bins and lifeboats.

The boat was meant to get to Likomo Island at one a.m., stopping at the smaller island of Chizumulu an hour or so prior. Under the circumstances I thought it wasn’t worth paying for a cabin. We would just stay up, passing the time on the deck, and then sleep when we got to Likomo.

I got talking to three fellow travellers: Andy, a retired pig farmer from Australia, his wife, Malee, and his sister Margaret, who had joined the couple from Scotland. Andy appeared as tough as tanned pigskin, but I was to learn he had a heart of gold. He was en route to the Congo to visit a school that he’d helped build decades earlier. He was meeting up with his fellow builders to see if the school was still standing, or indeed if they were.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a guy hovering close to Sam, watching his DS game over his shoulder.

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