Reading this week:

• Daybreak in Livingstonia by James W. Jack, M.A.

One of the most exciting parts of our day bopping around Kigoma was that we got to visit the MV Liemba!!! You all will know this of course, but she was originally constructed in Papenburg, Germany in 1913 before being deconstructed and shipped to Lake Tanganyika in pieces. Our tour guide Peter told us that when this happened the rail had only reached Tabora so between Tabora and Kigoma she was carried by porters, but I don’t think this is true. The internet consensus seems to be that the railway reached Kigoma in February 1914 though the exact source for that is unclear to me, it is potentially from here (the source for my boat-specific claims is The Lake Steamers of East Africa). Anyways that distracts from my point that it was then launched onto Lake Tanganyika as the Goetzen in February 1915 and was the major feature of the Battle of Lake Tanganyika. The Germans though pre-emptively scuttled her in July 1916. After the war the Belgians tried to raise her in 1918 and then the Brits first tried raising her in 1922 but weren’t successful until October 1924. By May 1927 she was back in service as the Liemba (the non-Swahili word for Lake Tanganyika) and for the past century has been plying a fortnightly route up and down Tanganyika except for shipyard periods.

Which we were in now! This is why it was so exciting to see the Liemba in Kigoma. Ever since learning about her I had wanted to see her but I was very confused as to why she never made, as far as I could tell, any of her famous visits to Mpulungu. My dream was (and remains) to take the train from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma and then ride the Liemba on her whole two-week voyage, or maybe just down to Mpulungu (I would also be very happy with the reverse of this trip), but I could never figure out her schedule. As was confirmed here, this is because her most recent voyage was in 2018 and she had been awaiting a refit. Which is underway! Before I discovered Elizabeth and Kigoma Eco-Cultural Tourism, my big plan was just to beg the shipyard to let me poke around. But since Elizabeth offered a tour of the Liemba I just signed up with her.

And so we arrived at the shipyard and got ready to check out the Liemba. For the record I found the following all very charming, but it was an interesting experience. I had thought Elizabeth had some arrangement with the shipyard but upon arrival it seemed sliiiiightly more like the actual plan was just to show up and sweet-talk our way in. She did this very effectively. There was some hesitation at first. We never actually wound up being able to go inside the ship as they were in the midst of some major I think electrical work, but it was decided we could get close to the ship on the dock. Here you could see the impact of the rising lake level because a chunk of the dock was underwater and we had to skirt around the edge of a fence to keep our shoes from getting wet; between the ship and the limited above-water portions of the dock a walkway had been placed somewhat haphazardly. As we were standing there it was then decided that we could at least go up to the foredeck of the ship of the ship. Not the most exciting tour but I thought it was super fun just to be on the ship! So much history, so very boat, much cool.

With the actual tour portion over we then spent some time talking to a former port employee that Elizabeth knew and had arranged to meet us to give us the lowdown on the Liemba refit. Since he had worked for the port he also knew a lot about the port operations and I tried to think of all the intelligent questions I could to ask him. Some things he told us:

• The new engines they are putting in her will be rated to 1000 horsepower. The previous ones were 750 horsepower. They hope this will get her cruising speed up to 12 knots from 10.
• The refit was scheduled to take another six months but our man here was predicting it would take another year (so mid-2026). Though the last journey was in 2018 the refit had started August 2024.
• The ship is rated to carry 600 passengers, split among first, second, and third-class. There are three saloons where passengers can get meals at varying price levels. He told us how many first and second-class cabins but I forget how many it was exactly; I think there were ten first-class cabins sleeping two each but only two second-class cabins sleeping four each.
• I had asked if refurbishing the Liemba was cheaper than building a new boat and apparently it is not. But since the Liemba is so famous and the ships are government-owned, it is “political.” No complaints from me on this use of Tanzanian taxpayer money.

• For port operations, I had noticed a crane for shipping containers. Given my Mpulungu experience of seeing breakbulk shipping, I asked about container ships. Our guide reported that there are only two ships on Lake Tanganyika designed to carry shipping containers, one rated for something like 36 containers and the other 48. Sometimes though containers are put on ships anyway.
• Kigoma is reportedly mostly an export port, again like Mpulungu, because Congo imports so much. From Kigoma he said it is a lot of building materials. From Congo he reports they import logs but the guide’s understanding is that they are mostly re-exported out of Tanzania without further processing. I won’t think too deeply about that.

And so yeah! That was our experience and at this point we said goodbye to our guide and loaded back up into the car. The only awkward part of the whole thing was that Peter had pointedly told us that we could “say goodbye” to our port guide there, so I said goodbye. Later we figured out that this was code for giving a tip; Elizabeth later passed him some cash on our behalf. But still I am over the moon that I got to see the Liemba in the flesh and learn about port operations and so now all I have to do is the same long overland and overlake journey I have wanted to do for years and I can’t wait until I get back to do it on a newly refurbished MV Liemba!