Uncle Chuck Norris Goes to Sea (actually to the lake, but whatever) - PART I

In Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”, the Old Man reminisces constantly, looking back on his life as a young man. At one point he thinks back to a time when he was working on a ship that sailed off the coast of Africa. He remembers the warm breeze blowing and seeing lions walking on the shore.

Well, technically I wasn’t sailing off the coast of Africa, I was on Lake Kariba, the large lake separating Zambia from Zimbabwe. And I didn’t actually see any lions. Still, when I set out for our island camp with the Namumu fishing crew this past weekend, I probably came as close to being in an Ernest Hemingway novel as I’ll ever be. Oh, what an adventure it was.

We set out early on Friday, packing all of our gear onto the “Lucy” boat and pulling out of the nearby harbor. Joining me were Mubita, our rig foreman (or supervisor), Jere, our fish weigher/drier, and Namumu’s eight fishermen.

Our camp is set up on a large island to the south west called Chirundundike. I’m not sure of the distance. In a smaller, faster boat the trip might take around one or two hours. Ol’ Lucy made it in about seven, puttering away, slow and steady. Still, it was an enjoyable trip. Even the deafening roar of our 20 horsepower diesel engine could only take away from the beauty of the lake but so much. Anyone that has seen an African sunrise can feel me on that one. More than once I stood over the front railing and, with arms spread, shouted, “I’m the King of the World!”. Sadly, nobody laughed. No Leo fans onboard, I suppose.

So, we made it to the camp in the early afternoon and set up shop, just off the lake shore where our guys had cleared away an area within the bush. The camp? There ain’t much to it. All it consists of are six long racks of plastic mesh for drying the night’s catches and two small grass huts, one where Jere sleeps and one where Mubita sleeps when he isn’t out on the boats monitoring the guys at night. Our camp is just one of a number of camps on Chirundudike. Similar camps for other companies surrounded us, though they were a ways off. We were pretty isolated. Like the area surrounding Namumu, this is very much bush-land. Luckily I’d proven to myself that I could survive out in the bush before. Plus, I have a beard, so, you know, it was no big deal…

After unloading the gear, it wasn’t long before it was time to head out and fish for the first night of the month. Around 4 pm, Mubita hopped on the “Lucy” boat and I hopped on the “Namumu” boat to head out. With the threat of kapenta theft ever-looming over the fishing companies in Siavonga, Mubita and I needed wanted to monitor the activities.

Theft is a big problem in the kapenta fishing industries and, as you may recall, used to be a particularly big problem for Namumu, leading to the termination of the contracts of nearly everyone in the fishing department last year.

What usually happens is that small boats will sneak around the lake at night and approach any number of the kapenta rigs out on the water. Certain fishermen will sell these guys kapenta at a discounted price and pocket the money without reporting to their supervisors that they’d caught the fish in the first place.

Short of putting a supervisor on the rig every night there’s not a whole lot that can be done, and even that becomes tricky as some supervisors get in on the action. Police boats patrol the lake at times, but, as you might have assumed, police in Africa aren’t always the most reliable fellows. It wouldn’t surprise me if they do some of the stealing themselves. Most other companies hire a supervisor to cruise around in a small boat from rig to rig to check on their fishermen. Even here, if you have a small boat to do this, which Namumu doesn’t at the moment, whenever the supervisor leaves it’s still possible to steal.

So, as of now Mubita is randomly spending the night on one of the boats from time to time, and I’ve made it explicitly clear to our guys that if we have any indication that any amount of theft is involved, no matter how minor, every one of their contracts will be terminated and we will find a completely new crew.

However, after getting to know our crew over the last four months and after REALLY getting to know after eating, sleeping and fishing with them this past weekend, I can say that I think they are operating honestly and that they are working hard. And I have total trust in Mubita as well. I hope this doesn’t change, but we’ll see.

We parked our rig a few kilometers off shore and the guys prepared all of the equipment (to get an idea of what the rig looks like you might want to look back to a picture I posted very early on in the blog). Around 6 pm the guys lowered the large, round net into the water, kicked on the large generator onboard, and switched on the lights, two up out of the water and one that was lowered deep in the water. Then we waited for the kapenta to come…