Adventures of the Ilala Ferry

The Ilala is the ferry that takes you to and from Chizumulu and Likoma Islands along with various other places along Lake Malawi. Unless you have a lot of money to fly to Likoma, this is your only transport option to get there.

At a couple of the stops, one being Nkhata Bay, the ferry can get right up to the Jetty and so you can just walk on. Well, saying just walk on doesn't really give an accurate description. You more have to battle your way on (or off). Everyone wants to get on immediately, even before all the people getting off have got off. There is one tiny entrance gate and with hundreds of people all trying to fit through it at the same time with all their luggage and goods for transporting it does get quite squashed.

All the other stops require even more of a battle to get on or off at, and they involve an added adventure - the need to use tiny over packed boats to take you from the Ilala to the shore or vica versa. To get through the crowds either to get off the boat or to actually manage to get on to the boat in the first place you had to be pushed from behind so as you could force a gap between all the people and get through.

Whilst you have no choice of boat or as to your method of embarking or disembarking, you do have a choice of class. Normally with this sort of choice I'm very much up for using the lowest class, often much to the surprise and amusement of the local people I join. However, on both my journeys to and from the islands I chose to pay the higher price and go first class. There were four reasons for this... comfort, personal safety, luggage security and the journey time.

Both second and third class on the Ilala were completely packed with people. So many people in fact, that between the busiest stops (most of them) if you wanted to get around those parts of the ship you literally had to climb over people. There were seats - hard in third class and padded in second - but these were all full as was all the floor space, and bags were just piled up where ever they could fit including on and under people. It was clear that if the Ilala happened to sink and you were in second or third class it would be very unlikely that you would be able to get out, especially if you wanted to get out alive. And whilst the fact that the Ilala has been happily crossing Lake Malawi since 1951 without any sinking taking place could indicate there may only be a very small chance of any sinking events happening, it could also mean that one may be due.

In first class there were very few people at all. It wasn't perhaps what you might consider a first class to be like, but then you could pay a huge amount more and get a cabin if you wanted to. As regular first class passengers though, our place on the ship was the top deck. There was nothing special there, just the top deck, but if you were lucky (and on one of the journeys I was) then you could get a foam mattress to sleep on. There was also a shaded area which was greatly needed in the midday heat. During the night it was so lovely lying under the beautiful star filled sky, something that for me added class to first class.

The last reason to mention for not going in second or third class was journey time. The journey to Chizumula was supposed to only take about four hours and although the Ilala was scheduled to leave at 8pm and didn't set off until gone midnight, it really did only take around four hours once we'd got going.

The journey from Likoma to the south of the lake was a much longer journey though and turned out to be not at all so timely. The entire journey was supposed to take about 28 hours, but one day passed into the next and we eventually arrived at our destination 44 hours after boarding at Likoma. Apart from being covered in black smeared ash from the funnel, I was really fortunate on the journey as had wonderful company, beautiful clear night skies and lots of food.