Thrills and anxiety of maiden crossing on a ferry

The swell of humanity stretches nearly half a kilometre. Men and women, some carrying luggage and others clutching children, squeeze, push and shove as they amble along. Their destination is the ferry boarding ramp on the island side of the Likoni Channel in Mombasa.

After a hard day’s job and a long walk to the crossing, a good number of commuters are tired and are content with letting the sea of humanity carry them along. On another approach, a line of motor vehicles, big and small, also snakes its way down to the boarding ramp.

This is the situation at the Likoni ferry crossing on a typical working day evening. The crossing and the one at Mtongwe, several kilometres up the channel serve commuters who live in the South Coast and work on the island and vice versa.

Human traffic

I join the throng and head down to the ferry landing. Like everyone else in the crowd, my eyes are on the three “monsters” floating on the Likoni crossing. But unlike most of them, this will be my first experience and I can hardly wait.

The three “monsters” are mv Kilindini, mv Nyayo and mv Harambee, which between them, shuttle thousands of commuters across the 45-metre-deep channel daily. Some 200 metres from the ramp, the human traffic flows into a structure that serves as a holding pen. Kenya Ferry Service personnel use this pen to regulate the number of commuters allowed to board a ferry at any given time.

I enter the pen, joining the crowd patiently waiting for its turn to cross. Having been duly forewarned, I check my pocket to ensure my mobile phone is safe as I work out my personal space. I conveniently left the wallet in the car.

Surge forward

Mv Nyayo makes its slow approach to the landing ramp and after aligning itself, the crew lets down the gangplank – the portable bridge for dockside boarding. A clanging reverberates as the gangplank hits the concrete. Apparently, this is the sign the crowd has been waiting for. People instinctively surge forward as the guards struggle to keep the gates locked.

Procedures require motorists to board the ferry and park their vehicles before the passengers come on board. With the last vehicle aboard the ferry, the guards fling the pen doors open and for the next few minutes, it is pure pandemonium as the initially docile crowd charges down the ramp, onto the gangway and into the waiting belly of mv Nyayo.

Caught in the melee, I let go of my docility and charge ahead too. “If you walk slowly, you will find yourself the last to board,” a colleague who agreed to accompany me on the trip offers helpfully. No one pays any attention to the announcement over the speakers, calling for calm during boarding. I am reliably informed that the ferry can only carry 1,500 people at a go.

I anxiously jog over the gangplank and into the yawning mouth of the ferry. Once safely inside, I pause to get my bearings. Passengers are everywhere. Like ants crawling over a fallen giant tree trunk, they move through the ferry’s innards, some climbing up the ladders to the upper deck as others remain on the lower deck. I climb the small flight of stairs to the upper deck. The view is breathtaking.

Enthralling

To my right, the channel goes up to the Kenya Ports Authority docks where huge ships are loading and offloading cargo. To the left, the channel stretches for a few kilometres before opening into the Indian Ocean. A few minutes after we board, the gangplank is pulled up and into the ferry. The throb of the powerful diesel engines increases, thick dark smoke billows from the chimneys and the vessel sets off on the half-a-nautical mile journey across the channel.

For a first-timer, the experience is enthralling. Not so for the regular commuters. From my perch, I watch them chatting or just watching the sea slowly sweep by. Soon the apparent boredom is broken by the voice of a preacher, a middle-aged man, keen on reaching the group with his religious messages. It takes the man only a few minutes to draw the crowd’s rapt attention.

Judging from the interest he generates, the preacher is a welcome interlude. Every now and then, peals of laughter ring out from the other passengers as he regales them with his tales of the life-hereafter and the rigours of day-to-day living.

As it moves, its engines chugging, the vessel makes a wide berth, giving room to mv Harambee, which is heading to the island we left a few minutes ago. Keen to make my trip memorable, my colleague, who is a frequent “crosser”, asks the coxswain to allow me in his control room briefly.

The request is granted and soon I am standing in the small room with the three men charged with handling the huge vessel. The view of the channel and coast is even more breathtaking from the control room at the top. But I am more interested in the work being done by the coxswain as he deftly handles the small wheels that steer the ferry while his assistants maintain radio contact with the other ferries and the main control office.