The Ilala Incident

Wednesday 9th March 2016 – We were woken at 7am by someone banging loudly on our cabin door and trying the door handle – so much for a lay in! A few minutes later the process was repeated. As we resignedly dressed for breakfast I discovered my wallet was missing from my jeans. After thoroughly searching the cabin it became clear the wallet had gone along, amusingly with my socks which I had discarded onto my jeans as I undressed for bed the night before. We reported the theft at the restaurant area and shortly two crew members appeared, one balding with a close shaved head and pot-belly, calling himself James, the other dark haired and villainous looking. They proceeded to make themselves comfortable at one of the tables and immediately launched into a little double act, lecturing us loudly on how we couldn’t have had anything stolen as our cabin had been locked on the inside with the key in the lock (they said they knew this as they had tried the door several times this morning!) and that therefore we must be liars and thieves; pay before Monkey Bay or we would be taken to the police. It quickly became clear that no-one was listening to a word we were saying and with the rhetoric from Potbelly taking on a more threatening tone we said we wanted to go to the police at Monkey Bay and returned to our cabin, locking the door behind us. The charade we had just experienced just served to convince us that the disappearance of our money was a scam the crew were in on. A few minutes later there was banging and fumbling at the cabin door which we ignored. After an hour or so Alysa tried to leave the cabin to go to the toilet and found the door has been dead-locked from the other side! The only remaining point of egress was the cabin window so we fully opened it and Alysa climbed out. On her return a group of sailors had gathered outside the cabin preventing her from climbing back in. Potbelly was at the cabin window and said if the door wasn’t opened they would arrest Alysa as she climbed through the window and must be a robber. He pointed to a pair of handcuffs one of the crew was holding. I reached for Alysa to come to the window but each time she tried the crew prevented her. The situation became increasingly heated as the ringleader, Potbelly whipped the crew into an ugly mood, saying that we were robbers, that we hated black people and we hated Malawian people. By now there were about forty angry sailors outside the cabin. One of them, a big muscular oaf with bulging eyes and Prince Charles ears forced his way feet first through the cabin window and I quickly unlocked the cabin door. At the same time, Alysa rushed into the cabin. Popeye grabbed her wrist and forced her arm up behind her back making her scream in pain. There was a struggle as I was forced into handcuffs and unceremoniously transported below deck. Potbelly who was still running at full steam threatened that “If you don’t pay before Monkey Bay something very unique will happen, very unique indeed.” Not particularly wishing to find out what the “very unique” thing a group of angry Malawian sailors might have in mind and resisting the urge to point out his use of the word “very” was redundant I sat quietly in what I hoped was a subdued but dignified manner. Meanwhile, above deck Alysa had been left in the cabin, shaking, crying and pleading to know if I was ok. Fortunately two of the softer-hearted crew members, seeing her distress looked after her and promised to check on me. Within a few minutes the mood downstairs became calmer but I was worried about Alysa. We keep a supply of emergency dollars in our bag; this definitely qualified as an emergency and I told Potbelly I had some emergency dollars in my bag to pay for our ticket. I was led back to the cabin, relieved to find Alysa shaken but otherwise ok. Once we had handed over the dollars (which covered the price of the ticket, a 10% excess for having got ourselves arrested and a nice little profit to boot) a degree of sanity seemed to return. In order to receive our ticket however we also had to write a sort of signed confession about how we had been arrested without which the ticket would be withheld from us, the handcuffs remain on and the police summoned at Monkey Bay. Alysa provided a brief and generous account of our arrest which didn’t meet with approval and so we calmly asserted we would like to be taken to the police at Monkey Bay. We were then allowed to return to our cabin. It was now about 10am. All we could do now was wait and see how events would play out. The next 7 hours were spent in or just outside the cabin until we finally arrived at Monkey Bay just before dusk. On disembarking we were escorted by two policemen (we hoped) to the back of a pickup truck and driven to the police station. Potbelly was in the back with us, waving to all his mates as we drove through town. At the station we were all taken into a small office with three chairs, a bench and a table. Alysa, Potbelly and I were seated on the bench while the two police officers sat on the chairs behind the table. We went first briefly saying how our wallet had been stolen from the cabin, we had been arrested and finally paid with emergency dollars. There was no point saying how we were treated as everything was deniable by a 40-odd crew. Potbelly then gave his version stating how we couldn’t have had our wallet stolen from a cabin locked from the inside. When asked if it was true that we had already paid for our ticket Potbelly admitted it was and produced the ticket. This surprised us as we rather expected the ticket to have gone missing and us to have to pay all over again. In retrospect this wasn’t an option as each ticket is numbered sequentially and has a carbon copy – once a ticket has been written out it can’t just disappear. As far as the police were concerned, they couldn’t really understand why I was in cuffs if we had paid for our ticket and so the handcuffs were removed, something I was grateful for as they were tight and rather uncomfortable. Potbelly was sent on his way. A representative of the boat company was summoned. He couldn’t see what the problem was either if we had paid and so after our bags had been searched for drugs we were free to go. Over the course of our time at the station one of the officers who we think was the Police Superintendent began to see we were telling the truth. As we were about to leave we said it was a shame to have spent the day in handcuffs when we would have liked to enjoy the trip more. He looked surprised and said Potbelly had told him we had refused to pay just before the boat docked at Monkey Bay. We were asked to make a statement about the stolen wallet and socks, which we did. It was now pitch black outside, 2km to the nearest hostel and we had no money. The kind policeman offered to pay out of his own pocket for a bicycle taxi for us but we couldn’t accept as officers are so poorly paid here in Malawi. Instead he phoned the hostel for us, explained what had happened and asked if they would send someone to pick us up. About 10 minutes later a couple of lads on bicycles appeared in the darkness. They had no lights and so with Alysa on one bike with her rucksack and me on the other with my rucksack we were ferried down a sandy path in complete darkness to the hostel, hoping we wouldn’t crash while gazing at up at the clearly visible Milky Way. At the hostel we were greeted by Ricky the hostel owner, shown to a room, fed and given a tab. We ate, had a couple of stiff drinks and after making a couple of Skype calls to cancel our stolen cards settled down to a lovely comfortable night.

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Thursday 10th March 2016 – We woke refreshed and looking forward to the day. Mufasa Eco Backpackers is situated within a nature reserve and before breakfast we had already seen a good amount of wildlife including a lovely black and white kingfisher. At breakfast Ricky asked us about our trip on the Ilala. She thought we had just had our money stolen so became rather interested when we recounted our story, as did a couple of other long term residents at the hostel. We still needed money and none of the atm machines in Monkey Bay were working; pretty much the status quo from what we could gather. This meant the nearest functioning cash machines were in Mangochi, about an hour and a half away. Ricky kindly lent us the minibus fare and we departed, along with an Israeli couple who had also run out of cash. The trip went without incident and by mid-afternoon we were back at the hostel with a couple of fat wads of Malawian Kwachas in our pockets. We paid all our debts and then went to the police station to pick up our finished police report. Everyone was very jolly and the Police Superintendent was even following our blog! That evening, while we were having dinner a Portuguese man called Oliviera came to the hostel. Ricky introduced him as the Chief Engineer at MLS (the company that operates the Ilala) and asked us to tell him what had happened, which we did. As we retold events a young Swiss couple at the table grew increasingly pale; they were about to take a 3 day trip on the Ilala the following morning. Oliviera was horrified at what had happened and said if we could be at the hostel until late morning tomorrow we would be able to talk to the Chief Captain. We agreed, hoping it might help prevent a similar unpleasant incident