Breezing Through Malawi

Lake Malawi shore, early morning

When the Group of Six first picked me up, there were actually only four of them.  We met Jenni and Pete the next day just in time to be blocked from traveling down a southern Tanzanian road that, within the last two years, now runs through a national park.  Since foreigners pay entry fees for both vehicles as well as themselves for each 24 hour period in the park, it was going to cost us $600 to drive along this road.  Locals pay 1000 Tanzanian Shillings for the same privilege, which is less than a dollar.  Welcome to Africa!
Rather than pay that ridiculous amount of money, we backtracked and found a deserted grassy plateau where we could camp.

This out of the way spot was quiet and beautiful, but not completely uninhabited.  For here we encountered the siafu ant, yet another of an African pest that the world didn't need.  These ants roam, thoroughly swarming whatever patch of ground they happen to be on.  Should you step on them, scores immediately start crawling on your shoes, up your legs, getting as far as they can until you flick them off.  They are big, and they lock on.  Of course, they bite.  Poor Jenni got them first, then some got on Pete, whereupon he, with real flair for the dramatic, shot them with a flare gun.  Since we were next to waist-high dry grass, we had our first bush fire of the night.  The second one was more intentional and served to warm us and cook the chili.  The next day, we drove all the way to the border with Malawi, leaving Tanzania behind.  The border proceedings were orderly by my much lowered standards and quick by anyone's standards.

The defining geographic feature of Malawi is Lake Malawi, part of the Great Rift Valley, which keeps getting bigger because the Nubian and Somalian tectonic plates keep pulling apart.  If you look at a map of Africa, you can see how much of this rift, or tear, in the earth's crust has filled up with freshwater, at least south of the Sahara.  Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Malawi, not to mention smaller lakes such as Nakuru and Navaisha all appear, to my uneducated eye, to be the work of tectonic action.  Following the western shore of the lake, we made our way south and stayed at a proper campsite, which was great because I had not availed myself of the bush shower facilities these guys have and was consequently pretty ripe.  The other nice thing about proper campsites is they have bars.  And bars in Malawi have Kuche Kuche, the hilariously named local beer.  We arrived at night, so it wasn't until the next day that I could see how lovely the lake is.  The water is very blue and far off in the distance, you can make out Tanzania (further south you can see Mozambique instead).  The lake is so immense that it's often referred to as a sea.

The excursion du jour the following day was high up in the hills to visit Livingstonia.  Named after the famous explorer Dr. Livingstone, the town was founded by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries who couldn't take the malarial conditions found at lake level and sought out a more salutory climate to spread the Good Word.  Now, it's a sleepy little city with not much more than a technical college and a church with a tin roof and a stained glass window depicting Dr. Livingstone encountering native Africans.  He's got his compass and his sextant and the locals have the African equivalent of togas.  Pretty tasteful depiciton for the early 1900s which is when all these big red brick buildings were built.

The next day we headed further south down the lake near Kande Island.  The particular campsite we stayed at, Kande Beach, does a booming business in the big overland trucks plying the highways of Africa.  They look like semis, but they act as buses (max capacity 24 or so, and there were five of them at our campsite.  The next day were the Overland Olympics, which I found rather a frightening prospsect.  Luckily, so did Pete and Jenni, and they had a plan to escape.  In these unofficial Olympics, each truck constitutes a competing team, there are events like tug-of-war and three-legged races, and there is assuredly large amounts of booze a-flowing.  For me, it's a bit like New Orleans Mardi Gras; I'd be happy to watch the proceedings from a comfortable balcony in the French Quarter, but I don't want to be in it, wading through the muck of the actual scene.  I was going to miss the pig roast feast scheduled as the closing ceremony, which was the only real bummer.  We left the four others to compete and represent whatever contingent would have them, and we headed west onto the Viphya Plateau.

View from the Fire Tower Hill, near Luwawa Dam

The Luwawa Forest Lodge was our home for the next three nights, and this place won me over, even if we did have numerous skirmishes against the siafu, including one battle where they were swarming the camping spot I'd staked out.  I squealed very much like a girl, kicked off my shoes, and started frantically picking these critters off my feets, legs, and pants.  Pete was a hero and retrieved my shoes with a stick, flinging them to knock the ants off.  There were still a few ant heads embedded in the rubber of the flip flop afterward.  But let's get back to how nice Luwawa is; it's nice and cool, even cold sometimes, particularly on clear nights.  There is a constantly stoked wood oven that provides hot water at all times.  Hot water availability is pretty unusual in most of Africa.  Even more unusual, the water supply comes from a nearby stream that is actually so clean and free of parasites and other scaries that it's drinkable!  The last drinkable tap water I encountered was in Cairo, and there it tasted like bleach.  The plateau is dotted with tree plantations, and the lodge has made the most of the setting, marking numerous trails in the area.  The owners have two giant, obedient mutts that we could drag along with us on our hikes.  It was really a lovely time partly because we had the campsite all to ourselves.  A few guests stayed in the lodge, but the group of fifty English schoolkids due to arrive were delayed a day.  That, and the manager's generous offer of a free night, persuaded us to stay one more night.  This was very canny of him because we were running out of food, so we ended up spending loads more on dinner at the lodge.  But tender beef stroganoff and chocolate cake with custard sauce are hard to come by in Africa, so I'm not complaining.  Plus talking with expats always gives you an interesting perspective on a place, by which I mean, you learn what a hassle every little thing is.

For example, Malawi is very poor and heavily dependent on foreign aid, much of it British.  His Excellency, President Bingu wa Mutharika, recently purchased a presidential jet, using some funds from the Brits that were not earmarked for such a purpose, Malawi having many more urgent needs than a jet to whiz the Prez around his petite nation.  Around the same time, some diplomatic cables were leaked showing the British High Commissioner to Malawi commiting the cardinal sin in politics - telling the truth - and His Excellency promptly ejected him and his family with 72 hours notice.  Her Majesty's Government responded in kind, which doesn't seem to have been expected on the part of the increasingly authoritarian politico.  Now there are intermittent petrol and diesel shortages, not unknown before all this and generally caused by foreign exchange shortages, but these can't have been improved by the diplomatic row.  The new rule is you can only fill up your vehicle's gas tank at the petrol station.  Sounds sensible at the outset, yes?  But in a country where all kinds of businesses and residences rely on generators, either due to the crap infrastructure or simply the geographic distance from same, filling up a jerry can doesn't make you a hoarder; it makes you the norm.  We've found diesel without any real work so far, but the petrol queues are absolutely insane.  I've never seen lines of cars this long.  Ever.