Mzungu in Malawi

by Rosie Jefferson

Arrival: Boil it, cook it, peel it or - forget it! Armed with this mantra to avoid sickness, I feel equipped to survive my visit to the country described by the Foreign Office as the 6th poorest in the world - but this is not a good start. The heat, I am later to learn, is the cause of the small plane being tossed around while I sit gripping the arms of my seat, trying to breathe slowly. I travel willingly but not well. 

The plane banks hard and I get my first view of Lilongwe International Airport - one runway and a couple of low buildings, and an annual passenger throughput of fewer than 200,000, roughly equivalent to one day's throughput at Heathrow. On a Sunday, the busiest day of the week when there are 5 flights, people dress in their Sunday best to come here and watch the planes take-off and land.

The plane lands and the heat hits me as I descend the steps to the tarmac and walk towards one of the low buildings. I see my daughter, Sarah, smiling and waving cheerfully from the roof of the building and I smile and wave back, pleased to see her again and relieved to have arrived safely just 12km from the capital city of Malawi.

I fill out forms, I queue to hand them in, I queue for Customs, the young female official going through my bags momentarily troubled by my travel companions of crystallised ginger and mint imperials but, after a long stare at them, allows me to put everything back in my bags and waves me through. At last I can give Sarah a big hug and admire the twinkling diamond ring on her third finger, left hand. This is being worn especially for my benefit and will soon return to its box. It is not appropriate to wear such things in public in Malawi.

 We put ourselves and my luggage into Sarah's beaten-up blue Toyota Corolla. I look at it and hear it start and wonder whether it will make it through the three weeks of my stay but I'm to discover that driving any vehicle in Malawi means one is rich and to drive a smart vehicle, probably a member of the government or an international organisation.

Sarah is in the country for 12 months, on loan from the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) to work with UNICEF on a malaria project, and accompanied by her boyfriend, now fiancé, who took a career break to be with her.

I have not visited Africa before and this first, 12-mile drive is an eye-opener. The single-carriageway main road between the airport and the country's capital city is tarmaced but the edges are wavy and merge into the red dust of the local soil. The buildings along the route are mainly single-storey and basic; there is little traffic on the road. Reaching Lilongwe we pull up to the gates of a high-walled, guarded compound where Sarah and Mike are living. As the guard recognises the car and opens the gates I wonder why a guarded compound is necessary.

Sarah is keen that I see different parts of the country so she has arranged trips for us to Lake Malawi, Zomba Plateau, and Blantyre (the commercial capital) during my visit. But for the first couple of days we stay locally.

We walk the dusty road into Lilongwe Old Town. It is August and the sun is very hot, the air very dry. We pass open wooden huts at the side of the road selling wooden furniture, fresh fruit, phone-time. This is a capital city as I have never before seen a capital city.

 Outside a supermarket (basic commodities sold, little choice) fruit and vegetable sellers have set up their stalls. Here one buys fruit and vegetables by the pile. Small, neat pyramids of 4 tomatoes are arranged next to similar piles of oranges or peppers. Rice, corn and maize are sold by the small basket. Sarah wants vegetables and I am impressed by her bargaining skills and calmness as she deals with the 5 or 6 stallholders who have immediately surrounded her and tower over her petite frame, offering her various fruits and vegetables. She wants aubergines, which none of them have, so immediately one of these enthusiastic salesmen dashes off as he knows someone who has aubergines on a stall around the corner. 

That afternoon we drive to Lilongwe New Town to see the commercial centre, the DFID and UNICEF buildings, and Embassy Row, a compact area with the highest (8-storey) buildings in Malawi. We go to a bank to withdraw cash, $400 to complete payment of a weekend safari in Zambia, and I see the expression on the security guard's face as he sees the cash. This represents a year's salary to him. I wonder how he manages on $1 per day. 

Another afternoon we visit the Nature Sanctuary in Lilongwe, an area of around 400 acres created originally as an environmental education area. It is very peaceful as we wander through woodland and filtered sunshine alongside the river, passing bamboo trees and weaver birds' nests hanging over the water. I see my first crocodile, a huge beast on the far bank, basking in the sun. Suddenly a large family of vervet monkeys swing noisily past in the trees and across the trail immediately in front of us. Several stop to eat and stare at us before bounding on.

Our first trip away from the capital is a 2-hour (100km) drive West to beautiful Senga Bay, near Salima, on the banks of Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi (named Lake Nyasa by David Livingstone when he reached there in 1859) occupies one fifth of the country's total area and is the third largest lake in Africa. Because of its potentially rich harvest of fish, the Lake plays an important part in the country's economy and fishing villages are scattered along the length of its shoreline. Only on a clear day can one see across the 50 miles to the other side (in Mozambique).

 Sarah has borrowed from DFID a battered old 4-wheel drive Land Rover Defender 110, complete with severely distressed, white paint and CD plates. She tells me this will be safer and help us through police road blocks. I am not cheered to learn that Malawi has the highest rate in the world of vehicle accidents per number of vehicles.

The CD plates soon show their worth as we slow for the first road block. The policeman on duty, seeing our car slow to join the queue of vehicles waiting to be checked, beckons us through and moves cones so we may drive through without stopping. He stands at the side of the road saluting smartly as we pass by. I acknowledge the salute with a smile and a nod and wonder - is his salute serious, is it mocking? But of the many road blocks we encounter during my visit there is only one occasion when we are not waved through and then, when the policeman comes to check our car and ask us questions, I see him register sight of our CD plates and his manner changes, he apologises for stopping us, says he hopes we didn't mind.

Out of the capital and driving into the countryside, the main road to Senga Bay is tarmaced, the roads off are dusty tracks. The landscape is wide and open with low hills, dry with brown grass and green trees. We pass small villages, some houses round, some rectangular, but all single-storey with holes for windows; walls of brick, plastered brick, wood or wattle and daub; some roofs of corrugated iron but most of dry grass, overlapping the side walls to give some shade to the side of the house. Close to many of the houses are laid sheets with drying grain and the grain stores, made of raffia screens and upright branches, are raised above the ground to deter rats. We see where the villagers are growing crops that I don't recognise, and many banana trees that I do - also rows of bricks made from the red earth and drying rapidly in the hot sun.

There are few vehicles on the road, we see most of them at the road blocks, but there are occasionally animals alongside the roads - pigs, thin cows, goats, chickens - and people walking, all children and some adults barefoot. Many carry goods on their heads as they walk to market - baskets of oranges, clay pots; bundles of wood, straw; sacks of maize, rice; sports bags and rucksacks. There are mothers and children carrying buckets of water on their heads, collected from the water pump many miles away, the mother with a large bucket, her child alongside in water-carrier training with a smaller bucket on his head. Many women have a baby strapped to their back, covered by a shawl that ties in front. Some travel by bicycle, often with a passenger astride the shelf behind the seat; sometimes this passenger is a woman with a child strapped to her back - family transport!

Occasionally we pass through a Trading Post, larger collections of stalls, often at crossroads, where people meet to sell their goods; we see fruit, vegetables, baskets, mats, carved tables, chairs, bamboo furniture, brushes, wood, charcoal, strips of rubber, hard-boiled eggs.

We reach our destination, Le Meridien Livingstonia Beach Hotel at Senga Bay, and it is delightful. Set on the beach with single-storey rooms, each fronted by a porch with soft chairs and a beach and lake view. We walk the length of the beach, a kilometre of fine golden sand, ending with rocks, palms and a Baobab tree. Very peaceful, very relaxing. That evening we eat dinner in the restaurant set under the trees, watching the lights of the fishing boats far out on Lake Malawi. The boats are hollowed out tree trunks that the fishermen sit astride. Our meal is local fish, Chambo, served with lots of rice and vegetables, and followed by Mzuzu Torte, a chocolate and coffee confection. Life is good.

That night I crawl under the blue conical mosquito net hung from the ceiling, tuck it in tight under the mattress all the way around and fall asleep watching a lizard moving across the ceiling.

We rise at 5.00am the following morning to see the sun rise over the Lake. Sitting on the garden wall, gazing across the lake, we can just make out the Mozambique coast as the sun rises into a pink sky, first with rainbow colours then a full glowing orange ball over the skyline. As it shines its light across the water and directly to us, a man appears on the beach and begins raking the sand ready for a new day of visitors. 

 Our breakfast table under the trees is decorated with fresh, bright red, exotic flowers. We know they are fresh as we saw a man picking them from the hotel gardens. The gardens are beautiful, many trees and shrubs unknown to me and many brightly coloured birds. There is a large seed-pod tree and an umbrella tree with hardly any leaves but very pretty creamy-yellow flowers at the end of every branch. We take a final walk along the beach, hearing the surf, watching a blue-tailed lizard, until it's time to end our brief visit to this magical place and return to Lilongwe.

As we approach Lilongwe again, this time travelling from the countryside, I realise that perceptions are relative and that this is indeed a capital city.

We go to DFID and the British High Commission to locate a spare wheel for the Land Rover. As Sarah is an employee we are allowed to drive onto the site, but only after the underside of the car has been checked for bombs.

Our next trip is 185km South via Zomba to Zomba Plateau. The route is fairly hilly, with the usual roadside stalls, Trading Posts, and people walking and biking their goods to market. On this journey we also see women washing clothes in the river and leaving them to dry on the rocks; we see where the grass has been burnt at the side of the road - this has the benefit of adding nutrients to the soil but also to scare out the rats so they may be caught and killed, then sold as a delicacy. Boys at the side of the road offer us sticks of rats as we drive past.

Approaching Zomba, the landscape changes and becomes more green and lush. We stop briefly in the town to pick up food supplies before heading up the 8km steep and windy road to Zomba Plateau, where we are to stay in the High Commissioner's cottage that we have borrowed for the weekend - one of the benefits of Sarah working for a government department. When I say 'cottage', think single-storey colonial style with large bedrooms, dining and sitting rooms and giant tiled verandas along two sides, overlooking the large, steep landscaped gardens and Zomba way below in the valley. A man comes out to meet us from a small building next to the cottage and calls his small children in from the garden where they are playing, though we say we don't mind them playing there. John and his family live next to the cottage and it is his job to look after it and its visitors. He wants to do all our cooking and washing-up but we explain that we like to cook, so he allows us to do that but insists on clearing away our dirty dishes and washing them after each meal.

The following morning, after a leisurely breakfast on the veranda in the sunshine, we go for a drive around the plateau. The 'roads' up here are unbelievable; no vehicle but a 4-wheel-drive could even contemplate them. They are rocky and uneven, very steep in places, with great holes and chasms in the cracked red clay predominant in the area. We climb up and up and stop at Chingwe's Hole, a seemingly bottomless pit into which, the story goes, lepers were thrown. More impressive was the view from the cliff edge of the plateau, the land below stretching from far below to far away, the River Shire in the distance.

As we sit eating our lunch and admiring the view, we are approached by a local guide, Felix, who, with 2 American Peace Corps volunteers, has walked up from Zomba. Nancy and Mary are in their last week of touring part of Africa after working for 2½ years is Lesotho. Were we going to Emperor's View and Queen's View (we were) as they wouldn't have time to get there by walking? We all pile into the Land Rover and Felix directs us via more incredibly pot-holed and uneven, stony tracks to first Emperor's View (named after a visit by Haile Selassi in 1964) and then Queen's View (named after a visit by the Queen Mother in 1957). From there we continue along forest tracks to Williams Falls, a lovely place where the water tumbles noisily over large, wide rocks, through the trees and steeply downwards.

We give Felix and the girls a lift down into Zomba before driving back up to the cottage. Zomba Plateau is an area of tree-cutting and wood-chopping. Men chop the wood into large bundles of foot-long sticks, which they stack high on bicycles and wheel the 8km down the steep road into Zomba. They then wheel their bicycles back up the mountain for the next load. We didn't see any women with bicycles, but they walk the same route down into Zomba with very long bundles of branches balanced on their heads.

We give four women and a baby a lift back up to the Plateau and, after dinner that evening, interrupted by the inevitable power-cut, we improvise a game of Bao (a traditional African game) using 2 large, checked tea-cloths and 32 uncooked pasta shells.

 Sarah and I both enjoy walking so the following morning we pack lunch, cameras and sunhats into rucksacks and head to Mandala Falls. These shallow, wide falls feed into the Mulunguzi Dam Lake. From the Falls we follow a track further upstream amongst the trees where the water runs gently over rocks, along a short nature trail that brings us out to the Ku Chawe Inn, a luxury hotel set high on Zomba Plateau. The grounds are magnificently landscaped and, as we sit in the gardens sipping cooling drinks, we watch a large family of baboons running and sitting, running and sitting, on the hotel's roof and parapets.

Returning to the cottage, there is another power-cut so we prepare and eat supper by candle-light. Fortunately cooking is by gas from a cylinder and, as these power-cuts are expected in Malawi - wherever one lives - there are always candles and matches in all the main rooms.

 The next morning we wake to steady rain, but still manage to have breakfast on the veranda in the dry, but without the usual view as the valley and the bottom of the garden are shrouded in mist. It is the morning we are to leave the cottage and continue our exploration of Malawi. About to leave, we meet two water-proofed walkers coming down our drive, looking for Mandala Falls. One is Spanish, the other Dutch. We give them a lift back to the T-junction where they had taken their wrong turning and we continue driving down the hill and onwards to Blantyre. En route we see large coffee plantations, pot stalls, 'express' minibuses over-loaded with people, more people carrying their goods to market, protecting them from the rain with pieces of cloth, brightly coloured umbrellas or sometimes anoraks.

Blantyre, named after the town near Glasgow where Dr. Livingstone was born, is the commercial capital of Malawi and looks more like a city than the capital, Lilongwe. Here there are buildings of several storeys, there are pavements, and parking bays, and many cars. As always though, there are the street sellers that have set-up their stalls in front of the shops and along the sides of the roads. I see for sale on these stalls mobile phone chargers, sharp knives, accountancy books, shoe polish, wooden carvings, jewellery, batik, combs, radios, fruit, vegetables, toothbrushes, margarine, tennis balls, watches, shoes and clothes.

I want a piece of batik to take home and Sarah helps me barter for the piece I like. We agree a price with the stallholder who rolls it up but apologises that he has no bag to put it in. Sarah sees an old woman selling plastic bags and says, in Chichewa (Malawi's official language, along with English), "Hello, Mother, how are you?" The woman immediately responds with a big smile, saying something that Sarah doesn't understand but she smiles and points to the bags, "How much?" "5 Kwacha." At around 250 Kwacha to the British Pound, that's about 2 pence. Both are happy with the deal and my batik picture - a black silhouette of a Baobab tree, a hut, a grain store, a woman carrying water and two women grinding maize, all against a red sky - is safely protected from the elements.

 Lonely Planet recommends the coffee shop in the luxury Ryall's Hotel so we enjoy coffee and cake there before visiting St Michael's and All Angels Church. This distinctive building was built by missionaries in 1888, none of whom were architects or engineers. Consequently it looks as if 20 different missionaries each designed a different part and somehow fitted them together. Near the church and around Blantyre we see many beautiful, bright lilac jacaranda trees.

 We book into a hostel, Kabula Lodge, and Sarah's fiancé, Mike, is going to join us for a few days. He texts to say he is on the waiting list for the Lilongwe-Blantyre bus. An hour later he texts again. He hasn't managed to get a seat on the bus but is getting a lift with three others; when one of them, the leader of the Malawi TUC, failed to get a seat on the bus, he sent for a car to take him instead. He is one of the fortunate few who can do this. This is Malawi.

We plan to spend the next couple of days exploring the countryside so set off the following morning to Mount Mulanje, a huge granite outcrop and the highest mountain in the southern and central Africa region. We approach it via simple roads through large tea plantations. At one point we pass a large group of happy people, singing and dancing along the road. Mike and Sarah believe it to be an engagement party. We have to register at Mount Mulanje Forest Office and pick up a local guide before we are allowed to hike on the mountain. We agree with our smiling guide, Wanson, that he will take us to Likabula Falls and we head up a steeply rising dirt track and forest path. I am wearing walking boots, for which I am grateful because of the uneven surface of the ground, but as we climb up the mountain we meet two women, balancing 10-12 foot long bundles of branches on their heads, walking barefoot down the same mountain track.

On the way to the Falls, Wanson points out many things of interest including a mwanga tree where the bark had been sliced off in places. He explains that the mwanga bark is boiled and the ensuing liquid is drunk as a medicine for coughs and stomach upsets. We continue our 90-minute trek to the Falls and have lunch sitting on a high flat rock on level with the top of the Falls, watching the water cascade into a large pool below.

 The walk back down from the Falls takes little more than half the time of going up and we are soon heading back to Blantyre, grinning as we pass the same engagement group, who are still dancing and smiling. Many of them wave at us as we pass.

Our second walk is in Michiru Conservation Area, about 7km from Blantyre. Our route passes through a small township of single-room, single-storey brick buildings with washing-lines and children playing outside; one boy has an old bicycle tyre and a stick, making the tyre roll along the road; another couple of children are playing draughts, the board made from crayoned squares on a piece of cardboard, the counters from bottle tops. I feel it is an intrusion for us to drive through this area.

We follow the dirt track to Michiru where we are met at the Park Office by Forest Ranger Justin, dressed in a smart green uniform, who explains our route options. We choose a combination of routes that are good for both recreational walking and for bird watching. Justin collects his rifle ("for our safety") and we set off through the dry grass and the thin forest. Our first stop is a viewing point where Justin describes the extent of the conservation area, the second stop is a raised hide overlooking a large area of rocks where hyenas are asleep within. Fortunately hyenas are nocturnal animals so none come out to greet their visitors. I learn that hyenas have the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom and eat all of their prey except the fur, which they vomit out; I also learn to spot hyena dung - it is white because of all the calcium in the bones the animals devour.

 The Park managers have problems with locals taking wood for cooking fuel and so destroying areas that are under conservation; to combat this they have developed programmes of education and help. Local people are allowed to collect dry, dead wood at certain times and are given bamboo for weaving and walls, dry grass for roofs; the programme also helps them to provide for themselves by giving them beehives and guinea fowl so they may sell honey and eggs. 

We return to Blantyre for one last night at Kabula Lodge before visiting a small factory to see how paper is made. Here I resist the temptation to buy a photograph album of paper made from elephant dung, opting instead for one made from Baobab bark.

The long drive back to Lilongwe marks the end of my travels within Malawi, though not the end of my holiday as a few days later I visit the wonderful Kafunta River Lodge in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, for an extraordinary safari experience - but that's a separate adventure.

 This mzungu (white person) is humbled by what she saw in Malawi. The 80% of the population who live in the country by subsistence farming have to walk miles to get clean water; average life expectancy is less than 40 years; it's estimated that 1 in 7 people are living with HIV Aids; a woman's chance of dying from pregnancy-related problems is 1 in 7 (it's 1 in 3,800 in the UK) and 1 in 8 children die before their 5th birthday, often from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria and nutritional deficiencies. How can I ever feel that I have problems when there are so many people living like those in Malawi?

First published in VISA issues 72A-73 (Apr-Jun 2007)