The Shameless MV Liemba

The MV Liemba cannot be trusted. Kinglsey Holgate told me, and who am I to argue? A 99 year old ship with a history as chequered as hers needs to be watched very carefully. She has many faces. Not all of them pretty. Her true colours were belatedly shown to us - but by that stage it was too late.

She came from inauspicious beginnings. A humble upbringing in the blue-collar factories of Munich, she sailed in pieces to Dar es Salaam, took a third class carriage across to Lake Tanganyika where she found employment for her efficient and timeous German employers gayfully ferrying sauerkraut and brockhorst from port to port. With the advent of World War One she signed up for military service, her ride was pimped with some serious heavy artillery and she became the thorn in the side of the Allies dreams of arbitrarily controlling the lake at Africas heart. No one was more bleak than the Congolese, who were forcefully made to lug tons of dismantled ship through their sweaty jungles to reassemble into the vessels to rival the mighty Liemba. They did rival her, and she was scuppered to the bottom of the lake where she tried her hand at being an aquarium for eight rusty years. She then flipped allegiance - resurrected by the British after they were given German East Africa as their spoils of war - she shamelessly did their bidding. Two-faced. And smug.

Her flag was changed at Independence; she relocated entire villages as part of Nyereres disaterous socialist experiments; she embraced capitalism - ferrying tons of Tanganyikas dried and smelly gold (Kapenta fish), distributing it to the hoards of tiny vessels that swarm around her like bees too 99 year old honey. She even tried her hand at humanitarian work - skuttling around the refugees of the areas interminable conflicts.

The side we saw of her, however, was a very different one. It began with a rendezvous with Kingsley Holgate - an explorer as famous for blazing trails through Africas hinterland as for felling a litre of Captain Morgans in under 30 minutes. It was the last of these two attributes that the Liemba introduced us to. To the point where, arm on shoulder, I was begging him for the secret as just how his beard has so much body. Tough Guy, meanwhile, was brainstorming with him about starting a Royal Geographic Society of South Africa. He recommended himself as President. Kingsley could be his MD. My sister Claire forms the backdrop to all this - sprawled out bizarrely over three different backpacks. A empty bottle of rum clinking around at her feet.

So it was the next day that we saw the Liembas true colours. Keeling from side to nauseating side she is, first and foremost, an emetic. Shamelessly. I knew from the start she couldnt be trusted.