Overlanding across Africa and beyond : 4x4plus2.com

23rd September to 7th October

Illegal Immigrants

The border was little more than a figment of a cartographer’s imagination. Nothing marked this international boundary, we were now in ‘The Warm Heart of Africa’ but all around us everything was unchanged, untouched; the high plateau, covered in dense low scrub, continued to the horizon; the overgrown and rutted track unravelled in front us as before; and the occasional Malawian ..or was he Zambian.. still stared in disbelief as we passed by. We drove on for twenty minutes or so before clusters of huts began to pepper the hillsides ahead; we had arrived at Chisenga and our temporary period as ‘illegals’ was to end.

The Malawi border, enroute Chisenga

Across the track was a rusty red and white striped pole barrier, secured to a post by padlock and chain; to its left, surrounded by a tall chain link fence, a low whitewashed brick building in front of which stood a flag pole complete with Malawian flag. We waited and waited and waited; eventually from a hut on the opposite side of the track to, a scruffy and bare foot individual came towards the barrier and with a great flourish drew a key from his trouser pocket, bent over the padlock and then pushed the unchained pole skyward. With a beaming smile he waved us towards the whitewashed building.

On entering, we were brought up short by a long wooden counter behind which sat a smartly dressed customs officer. It was all rather bizarre; here we were in the middle of nowhere at a border crossing that, according to the log book we were asked to fill in, was used about once or twice a month, yet the building was immaculately maintained, the official smartly dressed and fully conversant with the minutiae of overlanding carnet completion. There was however one worrying absentee, an immigration officer. The nearest, we discovered to our horror, was some thirty miles to the north at Chitipa (a regularly used crossing point we had decided not to use!).

Decorated hut and owners, Chisenga

Talcum Powder African Style
We passed through Chisenga, struck by the number of grass thatched huts with ornately decorated mud walls ..at last a difference from Zambia!. and past a policeman who checked our insurance and assumed we might have some English pounds to spare; thereafter the track surface, now well used and suffering from a lack of maintenance, was a thick layer of powdered mud up to a foot deep in places. The red powder had the consistency of talc and, no matter how slowly we drove, created a dangerous lack of grip and a smothering, invasive pall of dust around us and, much to our concern, every pedestrian we passed. The powder seemed to get into every possible nook and cranny inside Boris, and despite Liz’s best intentions with cloth and brush will probably be with us until we reach home next Spring! The powder was unrelenting, only temporarily freeing us from its grip when we entered the outskirts of Chitipa nearly two hours later. We must have looked like aliens ..apologies for the pun!.. to the immigration officer on duty, with our orange hair, blood shot eyes and surrounded by a cloud of dust every time we moved to offer a document and then spluttering out strange husky sentences when asked a question.

Passports stamped, we joined what was the only road that could take us through the Misuku Hills towards the lakeside town of Karonga. On a perfect day, sun and a cloudless blue sky, what should have been a spectacular scenic winding and narrow route traversing the mountainous high plateau then descending to Lake Malawi, was marred by a combination of a return of powdered mud and lorries of all shapes, sizes and degrees of roadworthiness; their hazardous passage having created a numbing corrugated surface, now threw up clouds of powder that hung over the track ahead like an impenetrable khaki fog. What a day, will we ever breathe wheeze free again!

A Lodge of Work Needed
By about 4pm we were entering the outskirts of Karonga, a regional capital and Malawi’s northernmost town of any significance. Bicycles were everywhere, the roads teemed with pedestrians and in the centre was a gaggle of modern one storey buildings that did little to remove the general air of dilapidation that hung over town. The ‘Mufwa Lodge and Camping’ was not mentioned in the Bradt guide and with good reason. It was a typically African venture; in a great location by the lake and close to the town centre, the lodge had seen better days and was, due to a serial lack of maintenance, on the slippery slope to oblivion. Low, one storey buildings, a mix of office and dilapidated motel style terraced ‘apartments’ marked three sides of a quadrangle, the open side offered a superb view out over Lake Malawi; unfortunately the ‘superb view’ was somewhat qualified by an area of mosquito infested swamp between us and it. The centre of the quadrangle was an open area of sand and grass, liberally covered with bottle tops and other rubbish, in the middle of which was a raised bandstand affair, open sided and largely open roofed, containing a red and white jumble of plastic and metal chairs. Our campsite!

Kim Saunders-Fisher
We shared the campsite with Kim Saunders-Fisher, a remarkable Englishwoman and one time Whitbread Round the World Race yachtswoman, who had set up home, a sleeping bag on a mosquito netted table, amongst the chairs on the bandstand. Kim, a short, stocky middle aged woman, was travelling around Africa and, based on her experiences in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 tsunami as a humanitarian medical practitioner in the Indonesian Province of Ache, was visiting hospitals around Africa offering advice on improving their response to a humanitarian disaster. Feeling guilty at not accepting her suggestion of a joint barbeque, we shared our dinner with Kim, listening with increasing amazement to the story of her life; yachts, hospitals, disasters, medical charity and now medical studies at Oxford Brookes University. A remarkable woman.

A Fisherman’s Tale
The following morning, 24th September, after a successful visit (!) to the bank followed by restocking and refuelling, we took the main road south; the lake, lined by fishing villages amongst the reeds, palms and baobab trees to our left and on our right, pressing against the narrow shoreline, the steep escarpment of the six thousand foot high Nyika Plateau. Our efforts to spot the Mozambican side of the lake were thwarted by the heat haze and the increasing width of this rift valley lake; already some twenty miles wide, the four hundred mile long lake would widen further, to more than sixty miles in places.

Fishing canoes,Ngara village Lake Malawi

Cresting a low rise in the road we found ourselves looking down on serried ranks of wooden canoes and lines of racks glistening silver with the small sardine like usipa drying upon them. This seemed too good to miss; we pulled over, parked Boris and went to investigate. As we did so a man in his late twenties approached ‘Mama’, as Liz is often called, and accompanied us onto the beach. Charles (not Arnold or Gordon!) Bennett was one of the Nagara’s fishermen and was just happy to show Mama around the boats and the drying racks. The staple food of most lakeside villages, usipa were caught at night by teams of canoeists using the lights of paraffin lamps to attract the fish into an area where the nets could be closed and the fish hauled on board. We had come across these 2 to 3 inch long fish before in Zambia, where they had been introduced to Lake Kariba and were known as kapenta. Liz loved them fried as an evening ‘nibble’ (accompanied by a beer!) whilst cooking, so soon was bartering through Mr Bennett with the owner of the drying rack; coming away with a huge bagful that would take a fair number of cooking sessions to finish!

Children and fishing canoes, Ngara village Lake Malawi

Manchewe Falls
We left the village of Nagara behind and within an hour were beginning the steep ascent up the escarpment to Lukwe Camp. The steep and narrow rocky track was full of vertigo and hairpin bends, thirty according to Liz ..ten more than in the Bradt Guide!.. not without a few white knuckle episodes we made Lukwe and then, shaded by the roof top tent, relaxed over a picnic lunch. Lukwe Camp, also known as eco-camp because of the pioneering water permaculture project it encompasses, clung to the side of a steep vee shaped valley that fell, almost precipitately, nearly a mile to the lake below. About a half mile above the camp were the Manchewe Falls, accessible by a narrow footpath from Lukwe, and a mile further on and a thousand feet above sat the Livingstonia Mission.
Originally we had intended to take an afternoon’s hike up to the Mission, but we were hot, it was all uphill and Cain, a member of the camp staff, found it easy to persuade us instead to ‘stroll’ with him through the permaculture gardens and on to the falls; leaving the visit to the Mission in Boris to the following morning.

We were glad we did, the falls and their setting were stunning; falling over three hundred and fifty feet from the lip of a hanging valley, the two waterfalls had created a superb backdrop of lush green rain forest that somehow clung to the cliff face surrounding the cascading water in the midst of an otherwise parched landscape. Cain took us right to the edge of one of the falls, a truly vertigo inducing moment for us both, whilst behind the other waterfall we were shown a cavern in which locals used to hide to escape the marauding slavers.

A vertigo moment, Manchewe Falls

Livingstonia
We revisited the falls the next morning (they were that good!) before driving up to Livingstonia. The Presbyterian Mission’s scenic location on the edge of the rift valley escarpment overlooking the shimmering lake a mile below was a case of ‘third time lucky’. Founded on the lakeshore in 1875, the Livingstonia Mission, named in honour of Dr Livingstone, moved ever higher to avoid the decimating impact of malaria and finally settled on its present superb location where the Mission began to be built, a mix of rather dour Victorian Scottish and more romantic English village architecture, in 1894.

After admiring the view ..why was it we were never able ‘to see the curvature of the earth’ that guide books bang on about?.. a visit to the museum with its fascinating Dr Livingstone memorabilia was a ’must’, and very worthwhile; Liz was particularly moved by Livingstone’s letter sent to his son giving the tragic news of the death of his mother from malaria. After which we toured the C19TH Mission buildings ..and a craft shop!.. before taking a talc covered track that we thought would lead us into the Nyika National Park. It didn’t, because it couldn’t! As was explained to us by a very patient Malawian, who must have got very bored with Peter gesticulating and saying ‘but on the map...’ the turning into the park no longer existed and we would have to make a one hundred and fifty mile detour, taking most of the rest of the day, to the only entrance gate into the park. Oh lors!

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