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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 18

Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 18

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2017-08-17

Absolute chaos. Two buckets, one red, one green. Sweat pours from their near naked bodies, Saidi and Gaston bail for their lives, the bilge pump is buggered. Bucket by bucket they're only just coping to keep the ferry afloat, she's leaking like a sieve, Rovuma water laps around the tyres of the Landies as in low gear we keep inching them forward or backward so as to shift the load. Memories of the Congo crossing and many others come flooding back - no pun. Abdul Kubanjima, the skipper, and his sidekick old Mohammed, ask me if I've got a job for them. I think they've had enough of trying to keep this ferry alive.

Maintenance it appears is not a strong culture in Africa. To meet us on the river is old friend Richard Chapman and a team of malaria warrior volunteers who've driven up from South Africa in two expedition vehicles. Realising the danger of the leaking ferry they've launched their rubberduck to escort us across. "Please take the Scroll of Peace and Goodwill," I shout to Richard over the noise of the stuttering, stammering, oil leaking, diesel blowing, 36 year old, air-cooled Hatz marine diesel ferryboat engine, which the crew had earlier jumpstarted from the battery of a lorry that was stuck on the ferry with a broken clutch.

Richard pulls up alongside, I hand him over the khaki green canvas bag that holds the much-travelled thick wood covered book. "It's a piece of history!" I shout, "if the Landies go down we need to save it." The ferry gets swept downstream, somehow Abdul avoids a sandbank where a few open-mouthed crocs lie sunning themselves, a small pod of hippo snort and submerge, slowly Abdul turns diagonally against the current, 45 minutes to do just a few hundred metres, but we can't make it to the landing site, so the crew using spades and shovels, with some help from ourselves, cut away the steep riverbank into an angle that allows us to get the Landies off.

Difflock, low ratio, overworked engines roaring we get them across into Mozambique. Richard hands over the scroll. We winch through the thick black mud and on to Mozambican customs and immigration. We've made it.

Bailing to keep us afloat

Crossing the Rovuma into Mozambique risking it with the lopsided ferry about to go under.