Stowaways

During the few days between Christmas and New year, my only obligation was to get home early enough to help plan the party that I’d decided Max and Ruth would host. Having spent Christmas next to Lake Kivu there had to be a better way of getting back down South than returning on twisty windy roads back to the capital city and then back down South. I grew up on an island – so of course I was missing water transport!

Unfortunately, all the rich kids in Rwanda hang out in Gisenyi. And the rich kids think nothing of hiring a private speedboat to get around. On £130 a month I couldn’t see the attraction of spending the vast majority of my monthly pay packet on a 2 hour boat trip –the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth is meant to be the most expensive stretch of water in the world – not a paddle in a Rwandan/Congolese lake!

Fortunately, for several reasons, the national brewery is also stationed in Gisenyi. And fortunately Rose, Max and I are blessed with patience. We had heard that much of the national brewery’s booze is shipped from the northern port to the two others, one stationed midway down the lake and the other in the south – not too far from where I live. Perfect – we would just wait and catch a lift on the brewery boat! Seeing as New Year was fast approaching, they would surely have many cargo boats leaving. We met the captain and he said it was fine. It would cost us the grand total of 1000 francs – just under a pound sterling. All we had to do was turn up at 9am the next day. And so we did.

At midday we tried to find the captain. Rose and Max were sulking because they’d gone to ask for some free t-shirts at the brewery to pass the time and had no luck. They then sent me to ask and I was treated (after a little bit of Kinyarwanda ‘shikamooing’, ie flattery and flirting) to a tour of the brewery (well, the mountains of crates and cranes at least), a visit to the head of promotions and a free t-shirt too! Things got a little sour when I mentioned “my friends” wh also wanted them. It would probably have been fine for Rose but the darn French language gives away the sex of your friends, and they weren’t so impressed with the idea of hunter gatherer Max!

Midday no boat.

4pm no boat.

6pm dark. Find captain. He tells us to come at 10am the next day. Go home

9.45. Boat!

11am. Boat. No captain. No beer.

2pm. Boat. No captain. Beer in crates being loaded on. Crate by crate.

3pm. Captain tells us to go to another port. What we are doing is not 100% legal so he will pick us up at the port 100 metres away.

Go to other port. A boat which is struggling to keep its sides above the lapping water is in the dock currently having a thousand or so cabbages thrown on board to be shipped down south with industrious looking bare backed men. We halt progress as people stop to stare at us, we who are staring at the precarious situation of the boat.

Lots of staring.

We can see the beer boat 100 metres away. It doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. And why would it leave that dock and come to our dock just to pick us up? Isn’t that too much bother?

Yes. Basically we worked out that the captain was trying to shake us off in that Rwandan way of not really telling the truth for fear of it being too blunt and not to our liking. But we were a difficult trio to shake off. So we went back to the first dock. Rose and I used our best flirting techniques to get past the guards. I think we are now promised in marriage to about 5 men each. And we sat next to the boat and waited for the crates to be loaded. Several hours later, the captain having returned and realized the thorns in his side were still there, we were allowed to jump on board and sit amongst the crates full of beer and fanta. And slowly, after about three days of patient waiting and being told the boat was leaving ‘very soon’, we realized we had succeeded – the Rwandan flag was hoisted at the front of the boat, the mother and father and the baby and a teenager who were to be our stowaway friends for our journey settled down and Rose, Max and I couldn’t stop the huge grins on our faces from spreading. Dusk was almost falling as we left the little dock and we could see dry lightening very far on the horizon. We waved to our new friends – waiters at the local guesthouse where we had spent Christmas day a couple of days beforehand – and many a breakfast since then, waiting for the boat to leave.

The sun set as we skimmed along the sides of the lake – it was incredibly beautiful – and well worth it. Worth it because of the wait – we might not have appreciated it so much if it had consisted of buying a ticket from a grumpy man behind a desk, having a cup of stale coffee in a plastic cup from an overpriced cafe and sitting on plush seats complete with sick bags, emergency instructions and teenagers bawling on their mobile phones (take heed Wightlink!). We decided that the only thing you could really do on a beer boat is crack open a couple to sip as you stare at the mountains and hills towering above you.

Night is never as dark as you think it should be. As we sailed along, night fell but we could still see perfectly. We had time to adjust I guess, but from we could see other boats far away in the distance. When we came closer we realized they were fishing boats out for the evening, singing together to keep time for each stroke of the oar. Every so often there would be a stationary one in the middle with a fire burning to give a little more light – and this is the one where they seposited their catch. We had seen these boats come in to shoar that very morning from the previous night’s work, but hadn’t realized perhaps just how long they spent out on the water. I had been eating fish every day since I got to Gisenyi because it was so good! AN dnow I see just how fresh it was – being pulled ashore in the morning and being eaten a couple of hours later.


We arrived at the next port after about 3 hours. Time to pay our pound for the trip and a little more for the bottles and make our way up the hill to find some accommodation for the night. Well worth three days waiting! And I got a free t-shirt...