Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 2003

Sunday 27th October

As the dive sites were limited off Matemo, we dragged ourselves away from our idyllic island a day earlier than originally planned on the promise that where we’re going next would be even better. For once, Tooni’s promise was fulfilled. We’re now on Quissanga Island, a tiny blob of sand, casuarinas and coconut palms in a brilliantly turquoise sea with coral just off shore. It’s uninhabited - there aren’t even any fishermen - as it’s a marine park and all fishing is banned. We chugged here on Orion after an uncharacteristically leisurely start to the day. Laurie spent the early part of the tending to the various cuts and blisters that have appeared on most people’s feet and hands through kayaking, rubbing sandals and random misadventure.

Some of the team got off at an intermediate island to kayak the last 25 km. My left forearm is still very squishy and the ligament feels like wet rope. I stayed on the boat with Laurie who still has a dodgy tum, Julie who’s also under the weather and Ali who doesn’t want to open up his kayaking blisters to infection. Everybody has now been in need of medical aid of some sort and there’s talk of resorting to gaffer tape to keep all the plasters in place.

We had a choice of islands and did a recce of both before picking Quissanga. Medjumbie has a nice lodge that would have made a great social centre and also a toilet. Practically, it was less attractive as it was a 2-km hike along a hot, exposed sand spit from the anchorage to the camping area. Here we can almost step off Orion onto the beach. There are no ever-staring locals so I’ve borrowed Laurie’s mozzie net to sleep out under the stars. I enjoyed it so much last time I was in East Africa that I have been looking forward to somewhere more secure and gaze-free. Hopefully, we’ll be here for several days as this is supposed to be a great spot for reefs. What’s just off shore certainly looks very promising. We were greeted by a flotilla of squid when we arrived.

Jo’s got a good fire going and we have two more fresh fish which are now being curried by the culinarily inventive Kayak Africa team. I had a chance to chat to Joseph today - one of the Malawians employed by as general camp helpers and kayakers by Morne and Pierre. I told him about my trip in 1994. He’s from Cape McClear on the lake and this is the first time he’s seen the ocean.

Monday 28th October

After dinner round the campfire and the Team Tooni Talk for the day, I went to see Nadine about my arm. I have tenosynovitis or Dequervains of the thumb tendon and she said it needs splinting. I’m banned from kayaking for six weeks so that puts it off the menu for the rest of this trip which is a real bummer. As I was talking to Nadine and Tooni I suddenly started to lose focus. Bright colours swam in front of my eyes and my ears buzzed. I remember telling them I was feeling faint and them putting their hands under my elbows. Next thing I knew I was lying on my back with Tooni, Morne and Nadine bent over me and Laurie pushing my knees up. They reckoned it was dehydration so I had some water and salts before going to bed. At 1.15 am I woke up with a gut cramp and in need of a visit to the coconut grove with the shovel. I had to get up twice more before breakfast. Looks like the camp lurgy has struck again.

I was supposed to be out with the dive team doing an invertebrate survey but as it was the first day of the bug, I felt extremely listless and washed out. Laurie’s still not well and Nicky and Julie are not up to par so the four of us managed a bit of snorkelling on the lovely offshore reef before crashing out in the shade. We went through the computer data and filled in the blank spots when it got to that lovely time of day here when the sun starts to drop and the sharp edge comes off the heat. This morning a whole flotilla of fishing boats went past, one of them in full song to provide rhythm for the rowers. The Singing Dhow - Mary’s invention - would make a good name for a bar, I reckon. It’s so peaceful here during the day with only the lulling sounds of wind and waves to listen to. Turning on the computer and hearing the Windows start-up noise was freaky to say the least. It’s just not right in this timeless environment.

I’ve just used the bush shower for a freshwater hair wash and have put on clean pants and shirt. There are some advantages to being ill - at least you have a chance to get your washing done.

Tuesday 29th October

Unexpectedly, I didn’t have to take a quick dash into the palm grove during the night. In fact, I had an excellent night’s sleep with a cooling breeze that drove most people into tents. I also felt more energised after yesterday’s total feeling of apathy so was looking forward to the opportunity to dive again.

We motored out on a big swell to an area with the intriguing name of Pantalon. Quite why it’s named ‘trousers’ was never established, but it was a beautiful dive site. It was very flat but festooned with healthy and lush-looking soft corals, occasionally formed into bommies. One bommy was being used as a racing circuit by a huge pair of stunning angel fish and en even bigger grey angel. We all paused to have a good look at their fishy antics. Huge shoals of fish were schooling around at the end of the dive. I had no choice but to ascend as I was down to 50 bar. By the time I surfaced, I only had five left which entailed a lecture from tooni about telling someone that I’m so low on air. She was right - it was silly of me to go that low but it didn’t jeopardise my safety stop.

Our surface interval was spent at anchor on the reef just off Quissanga in much calmer water. When we jumped in to do a shallow transect, we couldn’t see more than a couple of metres. Julie and I followed Sophie and Ali doing the fish transects. We were looking for the invertebrates - giant clams, lobsters, urchins and sea cucumbers. I couldn’t see much of anything as my borrowed mask kept filling up with water. Eventually we lost Sophie and Ali in the murk and had to meet up with them on the surface.

All the activities on the boat were enough o make my tendon problem flare up again to the state it was before yesterday’s rest. This was despite having help to kit up from Julie who was a real star and in getting back onto the boat. I told Nadine how it was and her verdict is no diving if I want it to heal. The more I use it, the more damage I’ll do and the longer it’ll take to heal. I can dive if I keep it splinted and don’t do anything underwater that requires me to grip so that pretty much rules out the survey work. I can poddle along at the back with the SMB and stay on the boat to look after the datasheets and be the dive supervisor, so I won’t be entirely redundant. It’s such a pisser that this has happened now. It makes my situation here pretty much pointless in a lot of ways but I can still be useful to the expedition, if only in a limited capacity. Oh well, I’ll have plenty of time to work on my tan.

Wednesday 30th October

Sleeping under the mozzie net definitely suits me. I think I sleep best there because it’s cool, I have more room to move and it’s more open. I always find tents a little claustrophobic. Again, I didn’t have to get up in the night with diarrhoea but did go three times once I was awake. The main conversation in camp now is about bowel movements.

Today I accompanied the dive team on Orion and acted as Divemaster. I took down air in and air out and marked off the buddy checks. The I sat on the deck making pidgin conversation with my rudimentary Portuguese and the boat crew’s little English, interspersed with plenty of sign language. They’re a good bunch of guys on Orion. They’ve got the returning diver routine down to a fine art now. One’s on the ladder taking things off people, another waits at the top to pass the gear along and another is in position to hang up BCDs. We’d have a much more difficult time if they weren’t so helpful.

The team did two surveys at Baixo Vadiazi, a large area of reef that drops off steeply to about 40 m. They saw plenty of sea life, including a hawksbill turtle. Their survey was supposed to be in a straight line lead by Morne. However, the fish ID people lost site of him and the whole team ended up going round in a circle. It was certainly amusing to watch from the deck of Orion, especially when Morne surfaced, cursing, to see the rest of the crew at 90 degrees to his line.

The evening data entry is in progress. We’ve lost the lovely moonlight we had at the start of the trip as it’s barely half full now. A cool breeze is blowing and Jo and Shawn are starting the night’s campfire. The Bluefin team went over to the mainland with the kayakers and brought back three live chickens, four eggs and a 15-kg mackerel. All will be consumed before we leave, much to the distress of the vegetarians, no doubt.

Friday 1st November

Well, this is certainly a new experience - we’re spending the night on the boat. We left Quissanga this morning, having got up at dawn, and began the long hop to the next island. En route we stopped at a town on the mainland [Mocimba de Praia] in order to load up with water. We took the one hundred five-litre wine sacks onto the land and were greeted at the well by a group of women waiting expectantly with buckets. A quick look int the well confirmed why - no water. A couple of minutes later, the water had obviously come into the well as the women leapt up and started dunking in their improvised buckets on the ends of lengths of rope. We’d already been set upon by the town fixer, a wily dude by the name of Disco. He promptly took charge and frog-marched us off to the next well to see if the supply was any better there. He barged through the cluster of women waiting there, produced two buckets and started filling our water bags. The top of one of our mineral water bottles doubled as a funnel.

While part of the group attended to the water, four of us went to see if we could find the main market area. The boys were after cigarettes and we all fancied cold drinks. The temperature by this time was up in the high 30s and we had a long, sweaty march through dilapidated avenues of once-fine buildings and gardens to reach the market. Along the way we met the local physiotherapist. The market turned out to be something of a disappointment. There were no fresh fruits or vegetables, only rather plastic-looking biscuits and the usual selection of garish polyester clothes. We were directed to a rather sorry-looking tin shed that sold a strange selection of dusty electrical goods, hair products and children’s toys. It was also a bar of sorts and the presence of a fridge gave us a burst of optimism. However, the fridge wasn’t actually plugged in and the bottles of Coke that came out of it were warm. We finally purchased the cigarettes and a few packets of biscuits from a street stall and found a slab of 24 cans of Coke to take back to Orion. On the slog back to the harbour we met up with Julie and the Kayak Africa crew. They’d managed to find some fresh tomatoes and potatoes, beans and pasta at another market.

The water collection had turned into a typical drama. The local women had been aggravated by Disco’s barging and we all felt a pang of guilt for taking away what is evidently a precious and scant water supply. Some food from the Orion’s stores helped placate the women. We were more than happy to reboard the Orion and get the Hell out of there.

Our night on the boat has resulted from arriving at Vamezi Island half an hour before sunset at low water. Orion’s hull scraped on rocks and threatened to beach itself. The island only has a very small beach area near the anchorage and too many inhabitants already on it to make it suitable for camping. We’ll look again for somewhere to park ourselves in the morning.

As for yesterday, there was some welcome relaxation. I went out as part of the dive team to survey a bit of the local reef. We found a promising patch and I was up front with Jo doing the fish ID. We went for a bit of a jolly when the transect was done and found a couple of bommies with some marvellously surreal whip corals fingering up from them into the current. I have to say I’m dubious about the scientific validity of the data we’re collecting. The transects are guestimates at best but I suppose any data is better than no data at all. The kayaking also seems to be achieving very little in the way of dugong and turtle research. We just seem to be doing it for the sake of it. Maybe I’m being unnecessarily cynical, but there seems to be a lot more exploration than science going on here.

Anyway, I had the afternoon off, having been rationed to one dive a day by my thumb. I kept the splint on when I dived and managed to successfully manhandle my slate but using the buoyancy controls was difficult without full use of my left hand. It’s so easy to take completely for granted how much a thumb does. Virtually everything we do with our hands requires the gripping motion and not to have the use of it is quite disabling.

As it was Halloween last night, we’d agreed on a fancy dress party and when the divers came back everyone was soon ferreting around the island and amongst their belongings for some suitable costume. Having less resources than everyone else, I made use of my existing accessory - the splint - to expand on the theme of injury. I added another two bandages, fashioned a saline drip from a bamboo pole and Ali’s Platypus water bag and made a crutch from a forked piece of wood. My shirt turned backwards with the collar tucked in made a improvised hospital gown and the traditional cross of Elastoplast completed my outfit. I was amazed by the ingenuity of the costumes on show. Laurie won the best costume award for her bondage gear made from a bin bag and home-woven whip. She called herself Madame Quissanga. Morne, Nadine, Sandra, Julie, Shawn and Gizmo were various Flintstones. Tooni had gone for Triton, god of the ocean, and Mary was a shaman. Sophie used sweet wrappers and shells to decorate a wizard‘s hat and Ali borrowed my new sarong as part of his Aladdin-style sheikh‘s outfit. Nicky immortalised the island’s rats and Jo was Gizmo. It was a fantastic effort all round, although everyone still crashed out in bed at eight o’clock. The KA team had made an excellent cake and huge pizzas for dinner.

I wasn’t alone in being sorry to leave Quissanga this morning. I walked around our little home with Gizmo when the sun began to sink and shone more kindly on us. It’s a beautiful place, haunted by the ghosts of fisherman who made their temporary rests there as they passed through in their gently creaking dhows. Gizmo stuffed her nose down numerous crab holes and chased a flock of small waders that skittered about in the shallows. It’s been such a break from the constant stares and feelings of insecurity. It’s great to meet the locals but I can’t help being aware that we have so much more than they do. They’re always friendly but surely they must be more than a little jealous?

Saturday 2nd November

I had a surprisingly good night’s sleep on the floor of the back deck of Orion. Laurie was on the bench and Nicky on the back platform with the dive gear. Everyone else ranged themselves in rows on the roof. Apparently, the boat rocked wuite a bit in the night but I was dead to the world. Joe ad Ed did a fine job last night of whipping up a vegetable curry with rice and barbecuing the fish on the front desk of the boat while all 20 of us squatted around them. Captain Dali wasn’t overawed about having us on his boat for the night so we threatened to offer him Tooni in exchange - he seems to have taken quite a shine to her. I’ve finally found out the names of all the boat crew. The tall, smiley ’uncle’ is Nazwi [actually Nacir, I found out later], the young dude with the sunnies is Amadi and the occasionally loquacious one is Latifu. They’ve picked up a fair bit of English since we’ve been aboard and out Portuguese has improved. We all understand eash other pretty well now with the addition of some fairly elaborate sign language.

Once we’d downed our tea and muesli, a kayak team set off to circumnavigate the island with the aim of finding us a good camping spot for a few days. We only actually have five days of expedition time left. Ali, Jo, Shawn, and I stayed on the Orion with a variety of medical complaints that precluded us from the boat trip. We toasted ourselves on the roof of the Orion while the KA crew took Gizmo the shore to relieve herself. They came back in the company of a couple of guys who are involved with a research project on dugongs being set up by the Zoological Society of London. Morne then took Nadine, Ali and me for a dive. We paddled around for a shade over an hour only reaching an average depth of 2.7 m. We found some lovely coral bommies after a long swim over sand. Four lionfish were cruising about on them and Ali spotted some weird bottom skater with wing-like fins that Morne thought might be a dragonfish. There were loads of clown fish, sergeant majors, blue-green chromies, humbugs, butterfly fish and some cleaner wrasse plus other stuff that I didn’t recognise.

Back on the boat, we started to get a little concerned about the kayakers as Tooni had confidently stated that they’d be back for lunch. Eventually we got a crackly call from Pierre on the radio and went o investigate. We moored at the anchorage which we couldn’t get into last night and they soon appeared. It’d been a long paddle which had just taken more time that they’d thought. They’d met the rest of the research team and found an excellent camping spot so we motored down there to unload. However, it transpired that a government official was on the island and we needed to have permission to camp there. A couple have bought a concession on the island and will be running safaris to fund the research work. They’re very ecologically-minded and have done everything very much by the book. On Quilaluia and Matemo it was a different story and we’d gathered as much from the people we spoke to there. The fisherman were forced off the Quissanga Marine Reserve and the island by having their boats sunk! The two guys here are apparently very knowledgeable about the wildlife and will show us a couple of turtle nests and maybe give us a guided bushwalk. They also know the good sites for dugongs and reef. It looks like this might be a great place to stay.

Sunday 3rd November

[My second expedition diary entry.]
The chickens survive another day, even the stroppy white cockerel who still insists on waking us up at 4 am. Ed’s chicken farm in Malawi is becoming an ever more likely reality.

So, Sunday. The Lord’s day of rest and so it nearly was for us. Those who were keen for an early morning beach walk accompanied our next-door neighbour, Nick, for his regular patrol of turtle nesting sites. Three locals also came who do the 6-km walk every day looking for new nests and the turtle tracks in the sand. We soon came across a square of sticks with pink tassels that marked a nest. It’s mostly green turtles that nest here and each new laying is marked and dated using a cunning system of rock piled to denote the week and day. Nick then goes along and records a GPS reading. There were no new tracks to be seen during our walk, but we saw several existing dug-out piles of sand beneath which up to 140 mini turtles are happily developing. It’ll be around two months before they break free of their sandy birthplaces and run the gauntlet of waiting birds and sharks to reach the ocean beyond the reef. Only 30% of them make it.

It was a stunning morning for a walk and the beaches are fabulous. It was nice for me to chat with a fellow ecologist and swap stories of final-year projects (Nick - reed beds in Scotland, me - magpies in Sheffield) and find out more about his work here. I’d happily swap jobs with him!

We left the three nest-hunters to continue their walk around to the far side of the island and returned to camp for breakfast. Nadine had made her first loaf and looks to be a rival to Joe in the bread-making stakes. Along with good old jungle oats and muesli, those of us in the dive team were fuelled up for the day. When we met up again with Nick, we were greeted with some unfortunate news - he’d spoken to his head office in Pemba but the radio connection wasn’t very good. Some how the message got scrambled and it’s likely that the woman at the office thought we were just a bunch of tourists. She threw a wobbly and said we shouldn’t be here. Nick didn’t have a chance to explain the real reason we’re here, so we weren’t able to do our surveys. Nick and Tooni were keen to speak to the owner of the concession but he’s in London where it was still only 6 am. We didn’t think he’d take kindly to being woken up at that hour, especially not on a Sunday.

Plans for a kayak were aborted and Bluefin set off to scout out other islands where we can stay. The rest of us spent the breezy morning catching up on diaries and reading books, doing washing, topping up tans and, in poor Jo’s case, nursing a nasty virus.

Tooni disappeared with the satellite phone and came back after lunch to tell us that Nick had had a rather fraught phone conversation with the man in London. Basically, he doesn’t want us either staying or diving here, despite the fact that the data we could collect would be invaluable to Nick and his research work. He doesn’t have the means to dive himself and we would be able to give him important information on the health of the reefs on both side of the island. Sadly, the businessman doesn’t see it that way and everyone will lose out. He’s let us have one day’s diving, which will be tomorrow, so at least we’ll be able to collect some data but, frankly, his attitude sucks! They’ve wasted a golden opportunity - so much for his eco-friendly stance. Obviously, business comes first.I find it extremely saddening that these beautiful islands and reefs and being bought up by people with more money than sense and will be turned into just another tourist destination. There’s even a website where you can find you perfect island paradise - and then go and ruin it! It’s crazy!! OK, rant over.

We decided to go for a sneaky afternoon dive anyway and it was well worth the trip, particularly for Nick who came along too. We saw a wonderful array of coral on a steep drop-off populated by a staggering assortment of reef fish. It was hard to know where to look. From the five grand-daddy lobsters lurking under a ledge to the school of curious snapper who came to check us out, to the giant black puffer fish being groomed by cleaner wrasse. It was truly an awesome dive. We all came up with chattering teeth into a hefty swell, but proved that there’s something here worth protecting.

Pete, Nick and the government bloke, Major Dad, were invited for dinner. The Kayak Africa team surpassed themselves with a veritable fishfest of barracuda, kingfish and pompano all cooked in wonderful sauces and marinades. There was also Joe’s special bean dish, chapattis and wicked chocolate custard with fruit. And a very jolly evening was had by all. We even stayed up until AFTER HALF PAST NINE!!

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