Lake Malawi Days

It went on for a bit longer. The very friendly guy who smiled as he told us he’d given our room to someone else, WhatsApps after a couple of days to say that the usurping guests have extended their stay for a night and we still can’t take our original booking. 

When we do eventually move to Tranquilo after three nights away, it’s immediately obvious that our temporary billet was far superior to the one we’re now at – and given that we had, of course, refused to pay the difference, we’d inadvertently got ourselves a real bargain. Tranquilo has clearly seen better days, and what’s more, the dusty outdoor tables, the empty unstocked bar, the non-existent wifi and the fact that we are the only two guests in the whole place, combine to make it hard to believe it was full here just yesterday. He tells us the wifi will be fixed, surprise surprise, the day after we’ve left. Hmmm. This guy, so friendly, amiable and full of smiles as he casually does these things, is named, it turns out…..Innocent. Make of that what you will.

None of this has detracted in the slightest from what has been five absolutely brilliant, more than wonderful, Lake Malawi days…..

Mornings on the shores of Lake Malawi are the definition of serenity, the absence of even a hint of breeze leaving the waters flat calm and crystal clear. As the sun rises above the mountains behind the village, so the colour of the water changes from glistening silver through pale pastel shades to eventually become a deep Atlantic blue. Thumbi Island, a few hundred yards offshore, slowly evolves from dark mystery to a gold tinted spectacle. A feeling of total relaxation seeps through our veins as we watch each day begin.

Pied kingfishers, normally the stars of the waterside show, are outdone by the African fish eagles with their loud calls and dramatic swoops to grasp prey in their talons at lightning speed. Ungainly birds called hamerkop, cumbersome on land but graceful in flight, feed at the water’s edge along with wagtails, colourful skinks and of course the ubiquitous monkeys seizing anything from coconut shells to packets of crisps.

Afternoons bring the first breeze, rippled waves now breaking the shining surface of the lake as a rustling sound filters through the palms and the tropical almond trees which drop their giant rigid leaves to the ground with a clatter. Fishermen from the village leave in a flotilla of dugout canoes, singing and chattering noisily, their animated voices carrying loudly across the water. Later, as the magnificent sunset mellows, on come the lights on the little boats, the leading canoe dropping powerful lamps beneath the surface to attract the shoals towards the trawl net pulled by the pursuing fleet. Another shift has begun for Cape Maclear’s fishermen.

Descriptions of Lake Malawi wouldn’t be complete without further mention of the incredible sunsets: each evening slightly different, the shades of orange finding new hues from nature’s palette and sketching inspired patterns across the ripples of the lake. The entire transition takes maybe half an hour from first hint to complete darkness, but for that time it is beautiful, mesmerising and, like the peace of morning, hugely relaxing. 

The village of Cape Maclear is substantially linear, stretching two miles along the undulating sandy track which is its main thoroughfare. We are several miles beyond the end of the good roads here. Lake side of the track an occasional lodge hides behind locked gates but, given that this village is reportedly one of Malawi’s more visited locations, the greater part of life here is without doubt the definitive African village, home to around 1100 permanent inhabitants. Walking through the village, being heralded and high fived (and sometimes hugged) by beaming young children, exchanging cordialities and more with village folk, sampling what’s cooking on the outdoor grills and just absorbing this different world, is fantastically stimulating.

This is in a nutshell one thing we were so hoping for from this journey through Africa – a chance to feel the vibe of village life, learning the truths around culture, history and lifestyle, experiencing this world oh so different from our lives back home. People go out of their way to help, take time to talk, and respond with real enthusiasm when we show interest in their lives. Despite the presence of the lodges, tourism plays second fiddle to fishing in the local economy, huge catches being brought ashore daily, dried in the sun and then in some instances smoked. Activity levels are high when the canoes return, women sorting and filleting, children and mothers arranging the fish on the drying tables and men unravelling the nets, the whole process accompanied by the cacophonous chatter which never seems to abate. Odours of fresh fish and wood smoke drift along the sandy tracks.

Children giggle as they play chase between the houses after dark – this close to the equator the hours of darkness barely shift and night falls quickly just after 6pm. The curtain of darkness brings no drop in verve: the toils of work go on, games of bowa continue, the children play, mothers braid girls’ hair. Everyone’s eyes are more used to this pitch darkness than ours.

The combination of this wonderful busy village and the amazingly peaceful lake is nothing short of fantastic – in fact, as we chug back across the water from a trip to Thumbi Island with Ben the boatman on Tuesday afternoon, we even ponder whether these few days have been amongst our best ever days of travel. As reactions go, that’s obviously an extreme one, but the very fact we have the discussion is a measure of just how special we have found Cape Maclear and Lake Malawi to be.

That Tuesday trip to Thumbi Island is very special too. Ben and his three colleagues – that’s four of them to look after just the two of us – cook a delicious fresh fish lunch over an open fire on the island rocks, take us to a place where the fish eagles swoop and feed, but top it all with a stop at a snorkelling point on the island’s shores. It’s impossible to imagine the amount of marine life, or the number of different fish species, filling the waters with colour and movement – we’ve never even seen an aquarium with this much life, let alone a piece of the natural world. It’s incredible. Here’s a quick sample clip….

Lake Malawi aka Lake Nyasa is by volume the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world and the second deepest on the African continent. It comes as little surprise to learn that there are more species of fish here than in any other lake in the world, due in part to the fact that it is a meromictic lake – no, we didn’t know that word either, but apparently it means that the water layers don’t mix and there is a stratified character to the different depths. Hence different species thrive in the different strata.

Cape Maclear’s unusual and non-African sounding name is thanks to Dr David Livingstone, who renamed the village for his friend and astronomer Sir David Maclear, after a mission from the Free Church of Scotland was established here in the name Livingstonia on the site of the tribal village of Chembe. The mission was soon forced to move inland by disease, poor quality soil and rampant tsetse fly. 

The next town along the peninsula is Monkey Bay, which is a little more established than Cape Maclear, or at least it has an asphalt road, probably because the President’s holiday villa sits here behind huge metal gates and a gaggle of armed guards. It’s at Monkey Bay that we meet a guy called Snoop – surely a nickname – who talks us through the fishing techniques, the ways of village life, and leads us to a corner of the village where the dugout canoes are made, backbreaking manual labour for what is undoubtedly meagre reward. He speaks too of how the misuse of Governmental power is making life harder and harder for the poorest in society: a tale we hear far too often on our travels, sadly.

Snoop is an interesting and informative guy, and one who captures my imagination with his involvement in education through sport for youth and the empowerment of young women. I fleetingly dream of staying here a while and joining his team, coaching football, improving their English and helping them achieve (for reference, my extra curricular activity during my working life was 12 years as a soccer coach), but of course it’s only a dream. Maybe if we were younger, hey? But I do fleetingly dream, and we admire Snoop’s mission. A sign in the village says it more powerfully than we ever could….

This has been a stimulating stay in the extreme, one which has given us so much. Lake Malawi is an amazing place, the wildlife and birdlife terrific, but it all came with the huge bonus of just being in the village itself, with the opportunity to at least begin to understand what life is like for the families making their way here. It has been a marvellously rewarding few days of our journey through Africa, one of those short phases of adventure which we will remember for ever.

LAST WORDS: We are a little behind with our posts by our standards, a combination of wifi which is weak or non-existent and a 4G signal which appears to have days off, has meant that by the time we have been able to publish this article, we are two moves on from Lake Malawi. Catching up is our next challenge!