Malawi 2024

Into Malawi: A Range Of Emotions In The Warm Heart Of Africa

Once we’ve left Mombasa behind en route to Malawi, Kenya springs one last surprise: the sight of the mighty Kilimanjaro which eluded us throughout our time in Amboseli. There, at last, it is, its unmistakable white peak clearly visible from the aeroplane window, perhaps not quite as majestic as seeing it from ground level, but….well, we’ve seen it at last!

A few hours later, and via a flight connection in Nairobi, we are taking our first ever steps in Malawi, the tinder dry landscapes around the airport dotted with crisp shrubs, leafless frangipane and patches of burnt earth. The route to the capital city Lilongwe seems to be 40 minutes of non-stop roadworks until we reach….well, nothing really. Our hotel, listed as being right in the old town, is in a mysteriously nondescript residential area with not a hint of the African metropolis we had been expecting to see. 

We knew in advance that Lilongwe is not a city packed with worthy sights, so our 2-day call here is in reality no more than functional – some time to explore what the capital of Malawi does have to offer but mostly to understand the logistics of onward travel. As it happens, Lilongwe provides us with challenges on both fronts.

Having become the capital of Malawi only as recently as 1975, Lilongwe is a strangely unattractive and inaccessible city – in fact, it isn’t like being in a city at all. Isolated neighbourhoods are separated by large areas of dusty scrubland, each district quite distinct from the next. There is a so called “old town” and “new town”, but they are some distance from the outlying districts and difficult to reach – far too far to walk and what taxis and minibuses there are tend to stick to the ring road and not penetrate the neighbourhoods. This ring road has large shopping malls which do nothing to enhance our first impressions, and each of the isolated districts is numbered rather than named, which is rather horrible – turns out our nondescript neighbourhood is the repulsively named Area 6.

Ah, the ring road. Lilongwe’s lack of appeal is magnified by the fact that the entire road network is being rebuilt in one go and just about every road is currently devoid of tarmac and every journey is a slalom of bollards and uneven red earth. Lilongwe is a mass of piles of aggregate and spoil, heavy machinery and giant dust plumes, hordes of men in hi-viz and belching traffic fumes joining forces with the dust clouds. This regeneration is it seems a presidential ploy – racing against time for the upcoming elections.

With regard to onward transport, our plan was to travel by a combination of long distance buses and connecting shared minibuses, but we soon discover that nearly all of the long routes no longer operate, and those that do only run north-south and operate on a timetable of whim rather than punctuality. The massively overloaded minibuses run relatively short routes and a journey of any length would mean several time consuming and “hope for the best” type of connections. Being stuck in the middle of nowhere would be a distinct possibility. Our choice is basically a hired driver (expensive) or a rental car (cheap). And so it is that we end up driving ourselves around Malawi even though this was never our intention.

The one thing – the ONLY thing – we find appealing in Lilongwe is the Nature Reserve, where we are able to escape the construction works and the traffic for a few hours and stroll through deciduous forest and alongside the ambling Lingadzi River. We don’t see too much wildlife, but a huge crocodile and a troop of the endangered vervet monkey add to the feeling of escaping being trapped at our lodgings. (Although we should say that those lodgings are manned by delightful staff for whom nothing is too much trouble). 

Leonard from the hire car company hands over the keys to the Toyota, doesn’t bother looking at our driving licences or passports, doesn’t take a payment, or even a deposit, and doesn’t ask to see a credit card. All he has is my WhatsApp number. “Oh, pay me when you get back”, he says, and then adds, as an afterthought, “remind me when you’re coming back?“. 

We’re on the road, shaking off Lilongwe and soon out into open country with its brown and ochre shades dotted with green and occasionally a fiery red shrub. Busy villages pass by with market stalls, hordes of people, trailers laden with sugar cane being pulled by oxen. Everywhere ladies are carrying goods balanced on their heads in the customary way of Africa. Children wave and smile as we pass slowly through.

After the larger town of Dedza we cross the mountains and drop down towards our destination on the shores of Lake Malawi, calling in at a food shack at Lizuni where the barbecued meat is superb and the locals immediately engage in conversation. It’s smiles all round and we’re perhaps beginning to see why Malawi is known as “the warm heart of Africa”; conversation is easy and the welcome is indeed very warm, even when we’re just passing through.

The 4-hour drive has been fabulous, packed with interesting scenery and snapshots of an unfamiliar way of life. It’s also been a constant vigil for animals and people in the road, wayward motor cyclists, speed traps, police roadblocks, giant potholes and broken down trucks. It feels somehow liberating to have completed our first drive in this part of the world. 

Eventually we reach Cape Maclear after several miles of potholed road followed by a long stretch of sandy track, the giant Lake Malawi (or Lake Nyassa if you prefer), glinting in the afternoon sun, the guy at our base all smiles as he tells us he’s given our lodge to someone else.

What??

“Well”, he says, still beaming, “a large party arrived on spec with nothing booked and needed rooms. So now we are full”.

“But we reserved the lodge”.

“I know. But they got here first”.

“……………….”

A few hours later we are at the other end of the village in a rustic yet terrific lodge right on the lake shore, where we sit at the bar sipping Windhoek beer and watching the most amazing sunset turn the entire lake a fabulous shade of orange. It’s unbelievably stunning, terrifically romantic, and we get that wonderful feeling that comes with knowing there’s nowhere else on Earth that we’d rather be than right here, right now. All’s well that ends well huh.

FOOTNOTE: Our first four days in Malawi have encapsulated so many of the emotions of our type of travel. In Lilongwe we felt frustrated and a bit stuck, even starting to wonder if freewheel travel and Malawi were not going to mix. Then the slight trepidation of driving in such a different environment, quickly followed by the attitude of the lovely hotel staff and the amiable compliance of Leonard with his hire car. The freedom and liberation of the car journey, the great little lunch stop, the first glimpse of the mighty lake, lifted our spirits way above those bad thoughts of yesterday. Even then, there was more. The heart sinking moment of being told our lodge was no longer available, to being relocated to somewhere entirely acceptable right by the wonderful lake. And then….and then….that first amazing sunset. Ah, the ups and downs of travel….

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!

Beneath The Great Plateau: Exploring The City Of Zomba 

It’s noticeably more chilly here, both after sundown and in the morning. We are now in Zomba, former capital of Malawi, where the town sits at around 1100m above sea level, some 600m higher than Cape Maclear on the shores of Lake Malawi. Days are hot but darkness calls for an extra layer and long trousers and at breakfast time there is a pleasant freshness to the air.

Our paths cross once again with the history of Dr Livingstone, and will continue to do so as, more by coincidence than by design, we trace sections of the great man’s journey through Central and Southern Africa. Here in Zomba his presence is tangible not only through colonial architecture and the names of places and buildings, but also the affection and reverence afforded to Livingstone to this day, credited with bringing Christianity, education and employment to the community as well as playing a significant role in calls for the abolition of slavery.

Zomba is in fact a place filled with both absorbing political and colonial history and an enchanting natural setting, dominated by the soaring mountain of Zomba Plateau whose steep green slopes look down on the slow paced town nearly 1000m below. (In truth Zomba is a city, but such is its green appearance and languid character that it’s hard to be comfortable with that title. It feels like a small town).

Echoes of British presence are everywhere, from the grand colonial houses once occupied by the likes of Sir Harry Johnston, responsible for bringing large tracts of Africa into the British Empire and cohort of Livingstone, Stanley and Rhodes, and now home to heads of the university, to the beautifully crafted botanical gardens and the Anglican and Presbyterian churches. It’s not uncommon to hear praise for the role played by Britain in Malawi’s history, and more than once we have heard the opinion that perhaps independence was won a little too early for the good of Malawi’s future.

Zomba’s recent history has an air of misfortune about it. President Banda, the first post-independence President, en route to dictatorship, stripped Zomba of capital city status in order to make Lilongwe, his home town, the new capital in 1975. Parliament was to make the same move twenty odd years later, the University of Malawi being established in Zomba by way of compensation. Loss of its capital status signalled the end of a proud history, for Zomba had been capital first of British Central Africa, then of the Nyasaland Protectorate, before becoming the original capital of the newly independent Malawi.

Shortly after checking in to our hostel, we are introduced to local guide and quasi celebrity Isaac, initially to enlist his services for a hike to the plateau. It doesn’t take long to realise that he is an absolute doyen, full of knowledge of the history of his town and his nation, eager to share that knowledge, well known locally and with an articulate grasp of English that makes conversation flow easily. We quickly snaffle his expertise and end up spending a large chunk of our two days here in his excellent company.

From our base at Blend Hostel we drive part way up the mountain to the start of the trails at 1800m, hiking next to successive waterfalls where ice cold high quality spring water cascades over the rocks towards the fertile land which surrounds Zomba. From the second of these, known as William’s Falls, the trail takes us further up and out on to the plateau with sweeping views across to sister mountains and towards Mozambique, with the whole of Zomba laid out below. 
Here we gaze out first from The Emperor’s View, so named due to Haile Selassie’s period of meditation at this point in 1965, and then from The Queen’s View. The latter name stems from a visit to this spectacular viewpoint by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother on a much cherished tour in 1957, a route emulated by her daughter the Queen some 22 years later. We are treading in some serious footsteps here it seems. Incidentally, the Emperor’s visit causes some discussion here as the site is now a destination of pilgrimage for Rastafarians seeking to meditate on the same spot, in a country where recreational use of marijuana is illegal. Now there’s an interesting dilemma.

My groin/hip injury which threatened to blight this trip has caused us some difficult and frustrating days so far but just recently has shown some signs of improvement. This is the first decent length hike we’ve attempted on this trip at just over 10 miles and I’m delighted and relieved to get it completed.

Our second day with Isaac is an extended tour of Zomba itself, around Johnston’s extensive botanical gardens and then through the heart of its British colonial history, rambling through backroads and leafy lanes with panoramic views across the fertile lands. A brief call at a family home in a former colonial hospital building is an opportunity to eat some undeniably authentic local food before we descend to an interesting war memorial. Here, those Malawians who were sent to the front line to fight for the British Army in WW1, known as the King’s African Rifles, are commemorated name by name – accompanied by statistics showing that the overwhelming majority of those who made the ultimate sacrifice died from disease rather than by being killed in action. 

From the memorial we gravitate to Zomba’s renowned market, which operates seven days a week and is by reputation Malawi’s best. It is certainly colourful and lively with a huge range of goods and produce, though unfortunately Michaela’s photography is limited by the reluctance of locals to be “in shot”.

A bit more about Isaac the guide. Obviously highly intelligent, he has that very welcome combination of in-depth knowledge and the desire to share it – in fact, if we were to attempt to relate even half of the fascinating stuff we learned from him, this post would drag on for far longer than it has already. Politics, religion, history, cuisine, culture and the natural world all flow easily as we walk, and by the time our two days are complete we feel a substantial increase in our knowledge of his country.

Perhaps most intriguing of all are Isaac’s descriptions of his upbringing and the customs of many of the Malawi people in rural settings like his. Life here, even in 2024, is ruled in many communities by superstition and witchcraft, with time honoured protocols and ancient rituals still forming part of everyday life. According to Isaac, illness is for some Malawians not perceived to be a problem with the body, but rather a spell cast by someone on the one who suffers – the cure is therefore not medicine, but finding who is responsible and casting an evil spell back in their direction. Morning rituals are still performed daily in his village to protect families from spells cast by others.

Sampling the local food

He also relates how, from his community, eight year olds are sent away for a couple of months to spend time under the control of witch doctors. He speaks with anguish of how torturous that time was for him: how young boys and girls were each circumcised with blood stained knives, how he was beaten with a stick every morning, beatings which were doubled if he cried, and how his body was cut by dirty razor blades in dozens of places, an unknown dark liquid then poured into the open wounds to “ward off evil spirits”.

The eight weeks, he says, felt like a lifetime, and his young mind thought it would break him. In the end, he made it, and was ultimately presented with gifts of stylish clothing at the culmination of the period of torture. At no time is he really complimentary, at no time does he say it taught him lessons for life, just that it was simply a period of brutal treatment of young boys and girls which he can never forget.

And then he tells us that such is the pressure from his own community, that he is likely to be sending his sons there when they reach their eighth birthday. For the life of us, we can’t understand, and for a few moments we are speechless. (Note though, he did say that he believes the modern day camps are nowhere near as brutal. We certainly hope that’s the case).

Away from this, there is something alluring about Zomba, nestled in fertile greenery beneath the towering mountains topped by the spectacular plateau which just keeps drawing the eye upwards. Its character is languid and friendly, its atmosphere both relaxed and colourful, yet we now know of the (to us) troubling tribal influences which exist beneath its veneer. Blend Hostel has been a lovely and relaxing place to stay and we have met interesting people travelling for different reasons and with differing aims, from holidaymakers from Mozambique through long term travellers and gap year students, to a Dutch couple working locally on a teaching secondment.

Zomba has been good and being here has proved to be a real education, we continue to be granted proper insights into these so different cultures worlds apart from our own. Time, though, to move on again now, further south towards and beyond Blantyre.

Journeys In Malawi: Southwards In Time For Tea

As we drive through Malawi, every town and village is an explosion of colour, sounds and smells, each place a sensory experience in its own right, in complete contrast to long distance vision which seems to be perpetually blighted by the dense haze hanging in the air and blocking out the long view. We had worked out for ourselves that the haze is a combination of red dust carried by the wind coupled with smoke from extensive burning of scrub, but, now that we’re travelling further south and the haze is thinning, we realise that water vapour from the great lake is the third element helping to create the mist.

The thinning of the haze is by no means the only change as we break new ground and pass through the outlying suburbs of the larger city of Blantyre. Blantyre is more recognisable as a city than anywhere else we’ve seen in Malawi, much more developed and with many more modern buildings. Big shiny 4x4s roll in and out of parking lots and supermarkets and office blocks have been added to the landscape.

South of Blantyre and approaching our next base just outside Bvumbwe, one of the more striking – and disturbing – differences is the attitude of the children. Up by the lake they were absolutely delightful, beaming smiles and offering easy friendship. Here, as we pass by groups of children, they have just three stock words of English which they shout in our direction: “Give me money”…..! Interesting how there is such a warm welcome in villages where people have little or nothing, compared to the more aggressive attitude where the gulf between the haves and the have nots is more obvious.

Maybe it’s an extension of what we have termed the “Mzungu Concept”. Mzungu (or uzungu in the plural) is a word given to anyone perceived to have wealth but has been historically directed mostly at white people – it’s shouted out at visitors like us and when we hear it in conversation we know we’re being talked about. It is however a slightly deeper context than simply a term for whites: it has now been explained to us that the opposite of “mzungu” is “munthu”, and “munthu” means “person”. From that you can conclude that we “mzungus” are not perceived to be people at all, but simply a different animal without feelings or beliefs, which perhaps explains why people here have only really engaged in conversation with us once we have taken the initiative and broken the ice. 

Our base at Bvumbwe is the Game Haven Lodge, an isolated place in extensive grounds where zebra and wildebeeste roam. Despite its size there’s only a handful of guests here, but after midday the restaurant buzzes with activity as well-heeled well dressed locals draw up for lunch in those shiny 4x4s. It’s the first time we’ve seen such ostentatious evidence of wealth in the whole of the country.

The spoken language here is Chewa, a derived Bantu tongue also known as Chichewa and by some as Nyanja. Amusingly, Chewa is universally laced with English words – listen to any exchange between Malawians and you will hear recognisable words and phrases embedded in each sentence. We don’t know why we find that amusing, but we do. (Any Brit who remembers the Channel 9 sketches on The Fast Show will understand). 

Just a few miles south of Bvumbwe the scenery changes, the vivid, almost lurid bright green of the tea plantations suddenly dominates every part of the rolling hills, wrapped around every contour of the land in each direction. At times the acres of tea plants with their narrow walkways have the appearance of the world’s largest maze, but the most striking element is without doubt the incredibly bright green of the uppermost layer of leaf growth.

Stretching southwards from Bvumbwe and through the plantation epicentre of Thyolo, these scenic rolling hills have seen the cultivation of tea since 1908. Today there are 44 separate tea estates which together cover a huge area all the way to Mount Mulanje close to the Mozambique border, through the Shire Highlands where the climate is perfect for tea cultivation. A hot, wet summer and a cooler, dry winter which is interspersed with days of drizzle brought by the Chiperoni wind give way to the hottest month of September, which all combine to make the perfect climatic environment. Tea harvesting begins in October but the greater part, about 80%, is harvested between December and April.

Many of Malawi’s tea plantations were initiated by Scottish expats who recognised, and maximised, the crop’s potential. One such was a certain Maclean Kay who instigated the Satemwa plantation which not only still operates today but is still run by the Kay family, its current CEO incumbent being Alex Kay, grandson of Maclean. In between, Alex’s father Chip was responsible for grand expansion of the plantation and the Satemwa Company – the business now produces 2,500 tons of tea per annum.

Clearly laudably conscious of its ecological and social responsibilities, Satemwa runs four health clinics for free treatment of local people, especially mothers and babies, and manages its giant estate with a raft of sustainable and environmentally sound policies. At least, these are amongst the things they tell us as we take a tour of the plantation and factory and indulge in an extensive tasting exercise of a large range of its produce. 

Satemwa also offer accommodation – albeit pricey accommodation – in the unbelievably lovely Huntingdon House on the plantation estate, a wonderful example of those sumptuous colonial homes owned by the landed gentry of the plantation fraternity. Stepping into the house is like stepping into a piece of bygone history – a colonial era which is easy to think belongs in a different century. As well as this deliciously quaint throwback, the factory is a collection of manual processes, harvesting is by hand, and the offices are full of Lever Arch files and mounds of paperwork rather than computer screens. We get the distinct feeling that in spite of what are plainly progressive policies by the Company, some things really haven’t changed that much.

The day before our visit to Satemwa, we called in at another place from the colonial era, the lovely Thyolo House (Note: Thyolo is pronounced Cholo) nestled in the forest. Its restaurant is closed, but the lady owner is “doing lunch” with a friend and, as her chef is cooking for them, she rather wonderfully says he can rustle something up for us. It’s delicious, too.

Chatting to the two elderly white ladies, the visiting friend tells us she was born in Malawi and has lived here all her life, yet speaks with an extremely refined English (dare we say “upper class”?) accent. She tells us how much Malawi has changed in her long lifetime, and in what ways it hasn’t, how the illegal felling of trees is entirely changing the landscape, but also how much she has loved her life here.

When we reach Satemwa and wander into the mahogany hallway at Huntingdon House, the walls are adorned with pictures from the history of the plantation from Maclean Kay’s early days in the 1920s, through three generations and the growth of the business to its latter day size. There, in the middle of all of the photographs, is the well spoken lady we were talking to yesterday.

It seems that without knowing it, we had taken lunch with Dawn Kay, widow of Chip and mother of Alex and overall owner of the entire plantation and Satemwa Company. Well well well. 

Climbing To Dedza: Pottery, Petroglyphs & Bad Tomatoes

Miles trundle by as we journey back north, leaving behind the lush green fields of the tea plantations and soon passing again through the metropolis which is Blantyre with its big buildings, big crowds and big character, then onwards along the M1 through more police checkpoints than we care to count. Green becomes red, rolling becomes flat and then flat becomes spectacular mountain. After Ntcheu we’re not even sure which country we’re in, our maps suggesting that the highway we’re driving along is the border between nations, Mozambique on our left and Malawi on our right. 

Dedza announces itself with a large welcome sign and yet another speed trap, smoke drifting from roadside grills and kamikaze goats choosing just the wrong moment to cross the traffic. It’s a long dirt road off the highway to Dedza Pottery, our home for the next few days where, as the name would suggest, our lodge sits within the unusual setting of a genuine pottery factory where ceramic jugs, tiles and the like can be despatched to anywhere in the world.

Use of their own products at the Pottery Lodge

The now familiar deep orange sunset fills the western sky like every painting of an African sundown; large pied crows caw and fly home to roost as crickets chirp their way into evening. Within minutes it’s pitch dark, stars scatter the sky like sequins on a ball gown and the temperature drops like a stone. The crickets are soon silent as the cloak of total darkness envelopes the baobabs and steals the world from view; voices from the village carry on the breeze, an unknown animal call echoes through the darkness. Chill is the air, thick is the night, huge is the galaxy. At such moments, perspectives change. We are but a tiny dot.

The cockerel which spends most of its time chasing the hens around the pottery garden in an attempt to fertilise every single egg available, crows loudly to tell us it’s time to rise and shine, but the temperature quite clearly says the opposite. Even in this part of the world, high means cool – and at Dedza we are 1,590m above sea level, more than two thirds of the way up the mountains and in Malawi’s highest town. Breakfast time is cold, and in fact Friday stays stubbornly low for most of the day – by the time we make our late afternoon return from our day’s excursion it’s very obvious that we’re going to be in for a chilly evening.

Dedza has two claims to fame. The pottery and ceramics made on this very spot is one, petroglyphs is the other. Up in the rocky mountains above town, at Chongoni, cave and rock drawings fashioned in two separate eras have now been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, though their remoteness means there is little in the way of fanfare here – you would not have a chance in hell of finding the drawings without a guide to take you there.

The petroglyphs are in two forms – red painted representations of the hunter gatherer lifestyle drawn by the pygmy population an incredible 10,000 years ago, and similar drawings in white produced by Chewa settlers 8,000 years later. These rocks are only partially protected from the elements, in gulleys and passages rather than in caves, making it all the more remarkable that they are still so clearly discernible after so much time. This is paint fashioned from animal blood and vegetation after all, not some modern day synthetic product. 

As it turns out, it’s not just a guide you need to find these hidden gems, we really should have taken a 4×4 rather than our Toyota with its low ground clearance. Forty five minutes of rocky dirt road lead to the first site, large semi-hidden boulders and sharp cambers just two of the hazards, and by the time I’ve driven there, on to the next site, and back again, it’s been two hours of dead slow disaster avoidance. As it happens, we get grounded three times and I spend the whole time fearing flat tyres or worse. It’s a relief in the end to get back to the potholes, goats and roadblocks of ordinary Malawi.

One of the factors which led us to hire a car in Malawi was the state of the shared minibuses: they look hugely overloaded and poorly maintained. Whilst in Dedza news filters through that on the day we were driving up from Bvumbwe, one of the minibuses was involved in a dreadful accident. There were TWENTY FIVE people on board a 12-seater minibus which crashed just north of Lilongwe and quickly burst into flames. All 25 were killed. Gulp.

Tomatoes in hot countries are normally a joy, tasting of sunshine in a way that no other foods can, except here in Malawi where they somehow manage to make them disgusting. God only knows how anyone can make tomatoes taste this bad, whether it’s pesticides or chemical treatment, these things look delicious yet taste not of sunshine but of something somewhere between floor cleaner and swimming pool water. Even Michaela, with her “I’ll try anything” and “tomatoes with everything” mantras, is pushing them to one side and rejecting the red bits from her omelette.

Dedza provides the base for our last bit of Malawi housekeeping, including ATM for the last cash supplies, a haircut for me which costs 50p, and a failure to source any deodorant . It’s impossible to ignore, and we choose our words carefully here, that deodorant or perfume is not the scent which is strongest when you’re up close with a local in Malawi – but, after discussion with a lodge employee who revealed his pay level, we calculated that a small can of deodorant to him is the equivalent of someone on the average wage in England paying £140 per can. Which explains everything. I wouldn’t buy it either.

Our last excursion out of Dedza is over the mountains of the Great Rift Valley to a small village which is often described in guide books as Malawi’s gem. Founded in 1902 by one Claude Boucher Chisale and his group known as The White Fathers, the Mua Mission was initially a co-operative for the craftsmen and craftswomen of three tribes, the Chewa, the Ngoni and the Yao. With the creation of its first church three years later it soon carried a more powerful Catholic message.

Having chosen a Sunday morning to visit the Mission, we see it in what is quite possibly its best light: a cacophonous and joyous celebration of faith in an explosion of noise and colour. Hundreds, possibly more, ladies in colourful dress, many dressed in colour schemes which must represent sub-groups within the church sisterhood, all revelling in their togetherness. It’s a wonderful sight regularly soundtracked by the harmonious singing which we all associate with black Africa.

The Mua Mission community, still a centre for the stylish mostly wooden carvings of the local craftsmen, also houses a fascinating museum charting the rituals, ceremonies and cultural milestones of each of the three tribes, with a fabulous collection of genuine headdresses and costumes from many of the ceremonies. Photography of those sacred costumes is, unfortunately but understandably, forbidden. The detail of the ceremonies and beliefs is as informative as it is alien – there are certainly many practices within the tribal villages which seem very strange to us. 

Mua Mission

It’s a fabulous drive back up the Rift Valley and to the top of the range, from this direction there’s no mistaking the fact that Dedza is the country’s highest town. Coasting back into town running the gauntlet of food sellers who sprint alongside the cars in an attempt to make a sale (mind you, the home made crisps, chips to Americans, are worth the modest expense), we prepare for our last evening in Dedza and the start of our journey into Zambia.

From here we commence the most uncertain section of the journey so far as we make our way north from Dedza, then across the border, out of Malawi and down to Lusaka, capital of Zambia. It’s a journey of three days, two one night stands and multiple legs relying on connections, any one of which could go wrong and impact the next. There are so many points at which things could go awry that we don’t expect this next bit to be at all straightforward. Hopefully, one way or another, we’ll see you on the other side. Deep breath, here we go…

Out Of Malawi And Into Zambia: It Nearly Goes So Well

Before we leave Dedza on that journey to Lusaka which is filled with potential pitfalls, we really can’t leave the pottery without a Monday morning tour of the factory. A willing employee named Owen walks us through the entire process from raw material to finished product, and we have to say that every single stage is fascinating. If you’re ever tempted to order any Dedza pottery, we can guarantee that the legend “handcrafted” is absolutely genuine – despite its global appeal this is very definitely a cottage business using only time honoured processes.

Yes some of the machines reducing the raw material to powder are driven by electricity, but from that point on it’s potters’ wheels with treadles, skilled hands delicately shaping the products and gentle touches creating intricate paintwork as each item is individually decorated. The identical and uniform nature of the items which are the finished products is nothing to do with mass production and everything to do with individual skill. Watching these guys at work is so stimulating: the potter revels in our awe, whereas the painters are barely aware that we are there.

Soon enough it’s time to move on and start the journey away from Dedza which will eventually lead us to the capital of Zambia, dragging the Toyota in its red dust cloak for one last slog along the potholed roads. An event free journey means that by the time we reach Lilongwe we have over the last couple of weeks covered 1,326 kilometres of Malawi motoring without major mishap and, moreover, without falling foul of Malawi’s notoriously punitive police.

We’re warmly welcomed back into the Lilongwe hotel like old friends, and then Leonard the car hire man provides the only hitch of the day by pulling the “card machine not working” trick which necessitates a detour to an ATM to settle in cash. Next morning Yami, a guy we met first time round in Lilongwe just over two weeks ago and hoped would be reliable, turns up fifteen minutes early, smartly dressed and car freshly cleaned, to drive us to the border. We are over some of the potential pitfalls already, but the bigger hurdles undoubtedly still lie ahead.

British nationals don’t need a visa to enter Zambia, but we’ve read accounts of demands for the 50 USD fee anyway, plus challenges about the length of your stay and proof of return ticket or onward transit, neither of which we have. In the event the guys at Zambian immigration are polite and friendly, slap the required entry stamp into our passports and we are soon through into a new country.

Our next perceived hurdle is money. Obviously we will need immediate cash for transport from the border to Chipata, half an hour or so into Zambia, but you can’t get Zambian kwacha in advance, and the border has no ATMs or official exchange bureaux. Black market rules the roost here and the only way forward is a battle with dodgy guys in the street offering ludicrous exchange rates. We’ve been unsure about this bit from the start.

In truth it turns out to be a bit of fun. At Mchinji on the Malawi side, we are surrounded by – and we mean ABSOLUTELY surrounded by – shady characters surreptitiously showing wads of cash and shouting out numbers. We ignore them and press on, figuring we might get a better rate on the other side.

From here, the huge hurdle, the major pitfall where everything could collapse, is transport. First we have to get to Chipata, our next one night stand, but we don’t have any local currency. Second, and by far the biggest hurdle, is that tomorrow we need to catch a bus from Chipata to Lusaka, and we don’t have tickets. Online information is extremely sparse, none of the bus companies have a website and the only piece of solid information we have is that the latest bus leaves at 6am.

And here’s where things could really fall apart. How will we get to Chipata? How/when will we get bus tickets? Will there even be tickets available? Even if we get tickets, how will we get from hotel to bus station so early in the morning?

More shady characters approach us over the border, this time offering lifts in clapped out cars, there’s not an official taxi or bus or even an overloaded minibus in sight. They tell me their fee.

“I don’t have Zambian kwacha”, I tell them. They go into a huddle.

“You got dollars?”. I do, but I tell them that I don’t.

We haggle, we barter, we reach a deal and we feel happy, even a little smug, with our work. Buoyed by our success, we play games with the next set of shady money changers and end up only being ripped off to the level we had budgeted for (and we’re not talking big numbers, we didn’t of course leave ourselves with wads to exchange, just enough to get to Chipata).

And then, from nowhere, lady luck kicks in, that dash of serendipity which cuts through all the crap like it never existed, and everything starts to fall into place. Our driver, amused by how we’ve conducted ourselves with the dodgy border people, introduces himself as Soven, and launches into helpful chat about Chipata, about Zambia, and, more importantly, about onward transport. He gives Michaela his WhatsApp number and says to message him if we need anything. We do, of course, need quite a bit.

So after dropping the backpacks at our Chipata digs, Soven picks us up again, drives us into town and takes us on a tour of bus company offices. He recommends one – the oddly named Power Tools Bus Company – as the most reliable, and the safest. “The others have too much speed”, he says, and we know exactly what he means.

Power Tools’ office lady is not only helpful but blows the “latest bus leaves at 6am” myth right out of the water: the last one is in fact 9:30. Tickets snaffled, Michaela asks Soven if he will take us to the bus station at 8:15 in the morning.

“Of course”, he smiles. My God, we’ve nearly cracked this.

Zambia indulges in what is known as power shedding – long controlled power outages to conserve resources. We fall asleep in enforced pitch darkness, fumbling around without power but more than content with our day’s work. So far so good.

Day 3 of the journey is upon us with sun streaming through the windows and exotic bird calls heralding the new day. The power is still off. Soven, still smiling, is here early and tells us he’s been working four hours already, having started with a 4am pick up at the border. Without fuss we’re loaded on to the Power Tools bus, backpacks in the hold below, smiling with a sense of achievement and, we have to admit, patting ourselves on the back. We’ve cracked this. There may be an 8-hour bus journey ahead of us, but we’re breathing a sigh of relief. Two days ago this journey was shrouded in uncertainty and riddled with potential pitfalls; now we’re on the final leg. Next stop Lusaka. 

And then. And then we get caught by the unexpected. Our Power Tools bus leaves promptly at 9:30, we’re off on the road, all pitfalls overcome and Lusaka in our sights. But it’s not quite done yet: fate, which has dealt us such a kind hand over the last couple of days, decides to give us just a few chunks of payback.

Monitoring Google Maps as we travel, it’s pretty obvious that this is never going to be done in eight hours: we’re four hours in and nowhere near half way. The African pop music on the video monitors which was a cool and fitting accompaniment to the passing scenery at first is now starting to grate just a little. Food sellers board the bus or approach the windows at every stop, the landscape outside becomes progressively more dry, people snooze, the African pop music, more often than not praising the Lord, blares on.

Sometime during the afternoon a fellow passenger who is way too close to us for comfort has an astonishing bout of motion sickness and fills nearly half of the aisle of the bus with vomit. Time for an unscheduled stop for the crew to buy mop and disinfectant, but not until after we’ve all had to cover our noses for half an hour. By now, this journey is becoming more than a bit of a tester: we are getting the depressing feeling that our day is unravelling and our good luck is running out fast. Darkness appears long before any hint of Lusaka does and we start to wonder if we’ll get any food tonight. The African gospel pop, so appropriate all those hours ago, grinds on, praising Jesus, asking for forgiveness. Michaela is developing the look of a caged animal. 

By the time the hot, tortuous bus ride reaches its merciful conclusion we are nearly three hours late: the journey has taken just twenty minutes short of eleven hours instead of the scheduled eight. We left just after breakfast, we’re arriving long after dark. For the last couple of hours it has taken an enormous amount of willpower not to put a hammer through those TV screens and shut the f**cking African pop music up for ever. It’s a good job we don’t actually have a hammer.

But, like everything, it’s over eventually, and even though the bus terminus is the very definition of chaos it takes no time at all to grab a taxi and reach the hotel. Never has checking in felt this much like salvation; rarely has a hot shower felt this good. Half an hour later we’ve had a couple of beers, we’re tucking into a decent meal and we feel human again, happily relaxing our tense shoulders with that caged animal feeling banished and almost forgotten. I even catch a sparkle in Michaela’s eye. She’s got that sense of achievement look about her again. We made it.

What can you say, huh. All of the things we thought might go wrong – didn’t. The thing we thought would be straightforward – wasn’t. Such is travel. Such is life.

Let’s get out and see Lusaka.