Jonathan’s Blog

Maisome Part I

The Trip: Wednesday morning began with us carrying all of our things through the jungle to the area where the missionary boats are docked. We loaded our luggage onto a wooden fishing boat and said our goodbyes to Flora and some of the others who had helped us carry our things. Joining us on the boat were James, another woman who needed a ride to the mainland, and the driver, Boni who just so happened to be wearing a belt buckle with an Obama hologram. Our first stop would be the missionary base in Kahunda where we could drop off many of our things before continuing on to Maisome. We set off at 8:40 in good spirits. The sky was clear and the water was calm. We were only 500 feet from the dock when Bob spotted a hippo sticking its head out of the water near the shoreline.  We all turned too look (including the driver), when we suddenly noticed that off the port side of the boat was a man struggling to stay afloat. Man overboard? No, he wasn’t on our boat. Then it occurred to us that our boat had run over this fisherman. In front of our boat was the fisherman’s raft—the size of a twin bed mattress in every dimension and constructed from styrofoam covered with bamboo. We pulled the man into our boat and then grabbed a hold of his raft and his other various belongings that were floating around us. We were fortunate that he was not hurt, and also fortunate that he didn’t seem to mind all that much. In the United States such an incident would be mulled over in the courts for the some months. Despite the inauspicious beginning the next 3 hours of the ride were very smooth, but would have been more pleasant had James not decided not to act out stories from Genesis in Swahili.         Around hour 4 the wind started to pick up and so did the waves. Whitecaps formed on the surface of the Lake and as we hit the crests water would fly up and over the side of the boat and into the hull. Boni covered our bags with a tarp and began to pour out water that collected in the bottom of the boat with a bucket. I was getting soaked, and James offered me his puffy winter jacket—which until this time I had privately made fun of for being completely unnecessary in Africa. Well, it did the job. Then conditions got worse. Coming up on hour 5, no more than a couple miles away dark clouds began to collect and beneath them emit a solid sheet of rain. We were still a good hour and half from Kahunda and slowly but surely the storm approached us until, still dry, I could see the ripples created by the raindrops on the water only 10 feet or so away. At this point we all covered ourselves with a second tarp, sitting on the edges so that water could not leak in (think giant parachute from grade school gym class). As soon as we did the sky emptied a deluge upon us. The boat began to rock to the point that the water was less than a foot from entering the hull. There we were, huddled under a tarp beaten by wind and rain, rocking violently from side to side, when suddenly the motor turned off. Then we began to rock even more. We were under the tarp, so we had no idea why Boni had turned off the motor. Was he even still in the boat? It would have been nearly impossible to get out from under the tarp at this point. If there were ever a time to panic this was it. Here we were in a wooden boat, in the middle of a storm, in Lake Victoria. I’m sure I would have been sea sick if I had not been so focused on staying inside of the boat. Then only a couple minutes later (but for what seemed like an eternity) the rain lightened, the motor started back up, and we continued on. I emerged from beneath the tarp, and the boat continued on with relative ease for another hour or so. I had arrived in Kahunda intact. We unloaded our things, and after a quick lunch got back on the boat for the 1 hour ride to Maisome where we would spend the next 3 days.