The southern highlands

In Malawian terms I see myself as a northerner.  We were based in Mzuzu which is the largest town in northern Malawi, my Malawian alter ego, Musopole, was from Kameme village in Chitipa district which is in the far north west where Malawi meets Zambia and Tanzania, and all our travels had been in the north. I liked the north.   It's green, the landscape is varied, it's not too hot (at least, as long as you are away from the Lake), and the people are friendly.  It's also a place that people in Malawi who are ambitious  don't want to come to or stay too long.  If you want the good jobs in government or the large Non-Government Organisations you go to Lilongwe in the central region.  If you want to make a career in business or commerce you go to Blantyre in the southern region.  So it is seen as more laid back than other parts of the country and I like the idea of 'laid back'.

So I had a natural prejudice against the south which was reinforced by the fact that the furthest south I had been was Lilongwe, a city that it is not easy to take to.  I talked previously about the contrast between the Old Town and the Capital City but, unless you are in a particularly charitable mood, it is difficult to see that either has much going for it.   The town is divided into Areas that are numbered not on the basis of location but how recently they were built - so it is impossible to find your way around.   Crime is seen as a problem - although I never witnessed it - so the only safe way of getting around after dark is considered to be car. It's in a part of the country that has little in the way of geographical features of interest.  And it's the base for a government that finds it difficult to deliver what Malawian people need. But maybe I am being over-critical.   The Sunbird Hotel in Capital City which we stayed in on the way south and the way back was comfortable, good value and, as with everywhere we stayed, had welcoming and friendly staff.  We had a wonderful host, Cecilia Cruz, who ferried us and our luggage around, welcomed us in her home, and took us to the Four Seasons complex which is an oasis of calm in the middle of Lilongwe.  All the taxi drivers we used - Elson, Bester, and Rhodrick - made sure that we didn't at any stage have to master the complex Area system.

Lilongwe is in the central region and the south itself was a revelation.  I don't know why - I knew about Mulanje as one of the highest standalone peaks in Africa and the Zomba plateau as an impressive geographical feature - but I had the idea that the south was going to be a lot less interesting than the north - generally low lying, featureless, very dry, and overpopulated. It wasn't like that at all.   Our first experience of the south was the coach journey from Lilongwe to Blantyre.  The first major town we passed through was Dedza which lies about 70 km south of Lilongwe; a fellow passenger told us it was the highest town in Malawi,  with significant amounts of rainfall and with snow not unknown in the winter (June to September) months. South of Dedza, the road runs along the border with Mozambique for quite a long way. with rolling hills stretching out to the west across Mozambique and to the east across Malawi (the south of Malawi is wedged into Mozambique with a western, southern and eastern border).  As we approached Blantyre, we moved into generally flatter country but with large hills dotted across the landscape.

Blantyre lies at the foot of at least three of these standalone hills and just about anywhere you are in the city you have a view out onto at least one of them.  The Sunbird Mount Soche Hotel where we stayed (Sunbird were doing special offers and we stayed in them in most places we visited!) was right next to the commercial centre of the town and had a busy city feel at its front - but from the back we had an idyllic view across open land to hills.  Blantyre has also developed organically as a city and there is none of the confusion caused by the artificial Area development structure in Lilongwe.   The centre of the city is the old corrugated iron roofed buildings from the original Scottish settlement which is one of the oldest European settlements in Africa.  The modern developed commercial centre, including the Malawi stock exchange, is on Victoria Avenue which runs north of the old city centre.  Haile Selassie Road, which runs east from the old centre, is a more traditional African commercial  centre, with lots of small shops and a whole phalanx of tailors busy making and mending clothes on the pavement outside the shop fronts.  Victoria Avenue, Haile Selassie Road, and Glyn Jones Road, which also has commercial buildings on it, form a compact central triangle of roads which encompass the main parts of the city.  There is a totally separate part of Blantyre, Limbe, which was developed in the early 1900s as the railway terminus and is some 6 km east of the city centre - but even this seems a logical development to meet the growing transport needs of what was at the time becoming an important commercial centre for the tobacco and tea trade. Blantyre also had a special significance for Nya Kaunda.   The town is named after the small Lanarkshire town that David Livingstone came from and where Nya Kaunda's mother was born.

'Old Boma' in Blantyre - the orginal colonial administrative office at the junction between Victoria Avenue and Haile Selassie Road

Tailors lined the pavement of  Haile Selassie Road 

View from our bedroom in the Mount Soche Hotel - the front of the hotel faced on to the busy Blantyre commercial centre 

St Michael's and All Angels' Church in Blantyre - headquarters of the  CCAP (Church of Central Africa Presbyterian) in southern Malawi

From Blantyre we travelled east to the tea growing area centred on the town of Thyolo.  Here the green tea growing fields stretch as far as the eye can see - it feels like being in the middle of a wine growing area in the south of France.  We stayed in Huntingdon House on the Satemwa tea estate which is one of the smallest in the area but still employs up to 2,600 people between January and  May, when the tea plants grow fastest, and around two thirds of that number at other times of the year.  The estate was the first in the area to achieve fair trade status and this is reflected in the the work it does to ensure that people on the estate have educational opportunities, health facilities  and other community activities.  But life for workers on the estate is very hard.   They get paid 17 kwacha (around 2 pence) per kilo of leaves collected; 100 kilos in a day gives them a wage of 1,700 kwachas which is about double the minimum wage in Malawi but still amounts to less than £2 per day.   In addition, changes to weather patterns, with later and lower rain fall, are affecting yields which has a knock-on effect on the ability of workers on the estate to make a living. There is also of course a wider political undercurrent about the legitimacy of the original tea estate concessions and measures that might be taken to rectify what are seen as historical injustices.

Huntingdon House on the Satemwa Tea Estate

Tea pickers in the Satemwa fields

Tea tasting at the Satemwa factory

Our journey from Thyolo to Zomba took us past the Mulanje massif which is on the eastern border of Malawi with Mozambique.   Low clouds meant that we couldn't see the highest peaks but we did climb up to a beautiful waterfall with a pool at the bottom where we were able to cool off in the clear mountain water.  Zomba itself is at the foot of another massif - the Zomba plateau - which rises high above the plain.  The town, which was the colonial capital and remained the capital for the first decade of independence, is much smaller and less busy than Blantyre but in certain ways has a similar feel with a number of old buildings built in the late 19th century, a traditional African commercial centre and views of hills from almost anywhere within the town. It is also the home of Chancellor's College which is the top university in Malawi.

Waterfall part way up Mulanje - a dip in the pool allowed us to cool off

View of the Mulanje Massif

Hotel Masongola - built in 1886, it's the oldest building in Zomba

Mathews, who we had first met in Nkhata Bay, showed us round Chancellor's College where he is studying Economics

The  Zomba plateau itself is magnificent.  It's a huge mound rising out of the surrounding countryside. We spent two nights in the Ku Chawe Inn which is on the plateau and has beautiful views down to Zomba town and across the Malawian plains.  The Zomba plateau is the place that foreign dignitaries are taken to admire the Malawian landscape and we had a walk which took in Queen's view, where the Queen Mother was taken on her visit in pre-independence 1957, and Emperor's view where Haile Selassie was taken on his visit shortly after independence in 1965.

Emperor's or Queen's view - you pays your money and you takes your chances

Lake Chilwa from Emperor's View

Sunset - view from our hotel, Ku Chawe Inn, on Zomba Plateau

Looking back at Zomba Plateau from the road to Liwonde

Our penultimate night was spent at the Liwonde National Park which lies on the Shire (pronounced sh-i-re) river.  It was our first sighting of the Shire river and it was very impressive - a huge expanse of water which has its source at the south end of Lake Malawi and joins the Zambezi river in Mozambique.  On the 30 odd kilometre boat journey up the river from Hippo View Lodge in Liwonde Town to Mvuu Lodge where we were staying we passed large numbers of hippos, some elephant families, numerous varieties of birds, and fields full of termite mounds which looked like standing stones placed long ago by a pre-historic tribe.   The boat had to swerve at one stage to avoid a crocodile that had popped its head above the water.

The Shire river

Hippo (and friends) grazing on the banks of the river

Elephants wallowing in the river

A crocodile cools off in the river

The Saddle Billed Stork - some beak! 

Matthews, our guide, serves sundowners on the game drive at Mvuu Lodge

After a final night in Lilongwe, we travelled back to London with an overnight transfer at Addis Ababa. Like Dar es Salaam, Addis was a complete contrast to any of the towns or cities we had seen in Malawi.  It is a large, developed, modern city.  Our hotel was reached by travelling along what was the equivalent of the North Circular Road so we only got a limited sense of what the city was like.  There were aspects of a modern city that all of us would want to avoid - traffic jams, vehicles belching out noxious fumes and a low lying smog hovering over the city.  But there was enough excitement and potential to make us feel that Addis, as with Dar, is a city we would want to visit again so we could get to know it better.

View from Addis Ababa's equivalent of the North Circular Road

So now we are back in London.  There is probably one more blog left in me...to tie up the loose ends and give my final impressions of our 5 month sojourn in Malawi.