Ahem,
On the ninth day of the month, I travelled to meet my sister-in-law Julia and her long-time friend Christine at Heathrow to spend the rest of the month with them at the Toleza farm near Balaka in Malawi. Hitches, snafus, and hassles from previous similar journeys were much reduced, and we were driven to Toleza by the farm’s driver Mr Chapotera, after a sultry pitstop for provisions from a supermarket near Blantyre.
Toleza Farm continues to survive the predictable challenges of extreme weather and the random excesses of national government and local politics. Just in the past few months there have been typhoon-type storms, floods, drought, the doubling of the minimum wage by a government chin-deep in debt, and an IMF-forced devaluation of the kwacha by 90%. Most of these events would knock many companies, even countries, off course, but farming is an ancient commitment ingrained with a resilience to temporal setbacks, especially in Africa.
The extreme poverty in the several villages close to the farm makes it difficult to require any business to be an exclusively profitable activity, but seeking and creating a balance between business viability, sustainability, employment, and community development seems a worthwhile humanitarian challenge, valuable in the currency of peace, happiness, and food security. It’s also a great place for a robust African bush holiday.
One day we all went for lunch and a boat trip at the Mvuu camp in the Liwonde national park on the Shire river. While the entry fee was exorbitant, and the lunch very poor, the boat-trip up and down the Shire was unexpectedly exciting. The guide warned us that it was not a good season to find wildlife on the river, but we had close encounters with elephants, hippos, and crocodiles, and an excellent briefing on the birdlife and flora. The Liwonde national park is also home to the black rhino, buffalo, sable antelope, impala, and warthog. The Shire riverbank is a bird-spotter’s paradise, lined, like a military row of giant guards with elegant Borassus palms from seeds distributed in the wake of long-disappeared oriental traders.
We visited the Mua Mission, established in 1904 by missionaries, and the KuNgoni Centre of Culture, with its collection of wood carvings by local sculptors and artists. The museum describes the unique history and culture of Malawi’s tribal origins, which encompass the interacting cultures of the Chewa, Ngoni and Yao ethnic groups, their masks, rituals, and life milestones, including childbirth, puberty, coming of age, and death. The racy depiction of certain rites and customs have, sadly, been eliminated, having survived generations of post-Victorian raised eyebrows only to fall foul of modern tourist sensitivities. But the overall story is a creation mythology – humanity as a tree grown from one seed but producing many branches, leaves and flowers.
We went on together to stay in Cape Maclear, David Livingstone’s first attempted mission site, on the edge of Lake Malawi, at a welcoming but budget-level hotel after not being able to secure reservations at any of the better appointed ones by the lake (admittedly we were very late in deciding upon our trip). The Mgoza Lodge was dark and noisy, and had not expected us despite our booking. This forced me to check in at a nearby hotel of similar character while Julia and Christine were accommodated in bedrooms that seemed to offer less than a good night’s sleep. However, our drinks and dinner were served reliably if tardily and the cooking was good. Julia and I were able to see the stunning Lake Malawi evening sight that we had come for: dozens of fishing-boat lights on the lake after sunset, strung across the night horizon like a necklace of twinkling stars. I passed an uneventful, even comfortable, night in a lakeside room at the hotel next door, which in truth was broadly similar to several hotels and lodges in which I had stayed while living in the Cote d’Ivoire. Julia and Christine were less lucky with dodgy mosquito nets, a broken fan, and dull-to-dim lighting. However, breakfast was restorative for us all and we enjoyed a boat trip around Thumbi West Island and a close view of its swooping fish eagles, sentinel egrets, and multicoloured cichlid fish. We then made our way back to the farm, my sleep-deprived companions contentedly dormant in the car for much of the journey.
A final flurry of road trips consisted of two separate dashes to the nation’s capital Lilongwe, where Julia and I met with her friend Mama Cecilia Katzamira, once the Chief Hostess of ex-President Hastings Banda, now the respected elder of the political party he founded. She was, as always, happy to see us and we went for a long drawn-out catch-up about life, family, and politics in Malawi over lunch before we drove her back home.
In the evening, I had arranged to meet Kate and Rob, close friends of Jessie who have worked and lived in Lilongwe for several years and had two children, one of whom, Elle, is Jessie’s god-daughter. They kindly invited me to dinner and even picked me up from the hotel. We shared a relaxed evening over Rob’s home-made bread and pasta as we talked about life in Africa, and the challenges facing NGOs.
Three days later, we were back to take Mama Katzamira at her request to visit a farm in which she and Julia had shared ownership, located two hours’ drive away. We had hardly spent an hour there before a sudden squall of rain ruined our picnic and we were travelling back after a hasty farewell. We had breakfast the next day in a hotel in Lilongwe with the tenant of the farm. The journeys in all amounted to many hours of careful but concentrated and difficult driving by Mr Chapotera in slapping rain along tarmac and dirt roads with almost as many pot-holes as the roads of Sussex.
We came back to a rain-pelted England more than 25 degrees cooler than where we started. Only then did I realise that I had inadvertently left a bag of clothes in Kensal Green after arriving there to catch breath from the airport before moving on to Sussex. There I slept for hours, then woke up with a back pain but in time for a pre-birthday lunch party organised by Alli with all our daughters and their partners. We had roast lamb and a vegan meat loaf banquet with an excellent Basque cheesecake made by Jessie. I was given pre-birthday cards and presents, all thoughtful and carefully chosen. The following day, Ella kindly fetched the bag that I had left in London.
L to R: Lionel, Kay, Gwen, Ella, Sam, Jessie, Jurrat, March 2024
And so, back to the first week of the month. Gwen came to stay the night with us, courtesy of an excellent local bus that runs regularly from Brighton to Uckfield for the barely believable price of £2. We played Yahtsee in front of the fire, then went to the Alma Arms for drinks. After dinner, we watched the film Saltburn, which was unusual but with a lop-sided plot that revealed itself most awkwardly in a race against logic in the last five minutes. Ella and Sam visited us on the morning after their wedding food-tasting dinner and overnight stay in nearby Buxted. We saw Fionnuala and Andrew for lunch in mutually equidistant Partridge Green at the Green Man, a fledged gastropub where the pub part had shrunk, crowded by cruets, crabcakes, and croutons. The pub in a previous form must have been a notable stage in the smugglers’ path to London from Shoreham or Worthing.
Yours on the crux,
Lionel