Neither Too Early Nor Too Late

We were on our way back to Luwingu from the remote village of Fube (pronounced "foobey") after an operation in connection with the National Census in Zambia. There were five of us in the boat, including the district secretary(D.S) of Luwingu and me, the senior census officer for the district. The Moonraker, a 30 ft. cabin cruiser which could do upto 35 knots in the open sea was now making about 6 to 8 knots in the treacherous Bangwelu swamps.

It was Thursday afternoon. In fact, we should have been back home by Tuesday evening. The reason for the delay was due to the fact that our skipper who boasted at the commencement of our journey that he knew the waterways of the swamps as good as the lines on the palm of his hands, lost his way miserably and got us all stranded, but for the help of some local fishermen. It goes without saying that we lost a lot of precious time, effort and fuel as a result. However, we accomplished our mission and were on our way back. Our going was very slow because of the many sand bars in the canal and also due to the presence of under-water weeds that kept on getting entangled on the propellers. Even though we were very anxious to reach home, we knew that we would have to spend the night at the island port of Santa Maria and resume our journey early next morning.

We were sitting on deck chairs and chatting. The D.S casually asked the skipper how long it would take to reach Santa Maria. He hesitated before answering and then said "may be two hours unless our tanks run dry".

We were startled. We never knew we were on the brink of running short of fuel. "What about the reserve tank?" the D.S asked. "We are almost at its bottom. May be another ten km" was the reply.

The D.S and I looked at each other. We were given to understand at the start of the trip that we had more than enough diesel. The boat had an extra fuel tank for surplus fuel and the skipper had been instructed to ensure that both tanks were filled up before commencing our journey.

Apart from losing our way in the swamps, we had another misfortune. The skipper's assistant who was new, fiddled with the boat's wireless set and made it inoperative soon after we started on our voyage. As a result we had no means of communication at present. There were no passenger boats operating through the swamps. Our food supply also was running very short and each one of us was longing to reach home and have a decent meal and proper sleep.

We travelled for another thirty minutes or so, and found ourselves at the mouth of the canal leading from the river. It was good that we were at last out of the swamps, but still we had to go far. Even though we were nowhere near the passenger-boat service lane, if someone came along in a canoe, the skipper's mate could go to Santa Maria and send a wireless message to Bwangwelu Water transport company in Samfya which owned the boat to arrange for some fuel. Even then it would take several hours before we could get out of this jam.

Now that we were in river Chambeshi, the skipper could have opened up the throttle and sent the boat at full speed. But as the tank would run dry at any moment, he kept the boat moving under minimum acceleration. As we cleared the turn-off, a lone bottle store from where we bought soft drinks two days ago came into sight. We decided to stop there and explore the possibilities of communicating with the outside world.

The bottle-store appeared empty and forlorn. It was nearly 2 PM. As there were no people around at this time of the day, our arrival did not create any excitement. While the skipper's mate made the boat fast to the railing of the rickety jetty, we noticed a 200 litre drum like the ones they use to transport petroleum products lying on the river bank, a little distance away from the jetty. It was rusty and appeared as if abandoned by someone a long time back. However, the skipper went and examined it. It was either stuck fast in the mud or filled with something, as it would not move easily. He went and made enquiries at the bottle-store. The man at the store told him that the drum contained some diesel that was dropped there at lunch time by a passenger boat from Santa Maria. The boat crew had instructed to give the diesel to one of their charter boats by name “Moonraker” which had gone to the swamps a few days ago as it would have exhausted its stock of fuel by this time. He showed us a written message scrawled on a piece of paper. It simply read "Diesel for Moonraker".

We did not know whether to laugh or cry for joy. There was no difficulty in convincing the store-keeper that we were from the Moonraker as the name was written clearly on the side of our boat. The man at the store came out to assist us in siphoning the diesel into the boat’s tanks and we proceeded on our way after thanking him profusely. We also felt so grateful to someone at Bwangwelu Corporation in Samfya who was thoughtful enough to visualize our predicament and ordered one of their passenger boats to deviate from its normal route and make a side trip of more than thirty kilometres to assist us even before receiving any message for help from us. Above all, we thanked God for sending this timely help that came neither too early nor too late.