Malawi is rich in spiritual and natural values, if not in things material.  It is Africa for beginners, explains Philip Game.

On a long, hot stretch of road I’d begun to nod off, when the bus ground to a halt.   A pair of phantasmagorical figures, Nyawu dancers masked and costumed in feathers, technicolour rags and war paint were prancing at the roadside, strolling players in search of a gig. 

Malawians are versatile.  Perhaps the Nyawu dancers help out at the Pack and Go Coffin Workshop.  Or turn their hands to Motor Repairs and Optical Lens Grinding.  Auto suspension and chiropractor would be logical too.   Country buses are heavily laden with bicycles, chickens and anything else that passengers need to shift, since private cars are very much a luxury.   Children race to clamour at our windows: they’re ragged but not listless. 

Malawi is rich in spiritual and natural values, if not in things material: crime is moderate, the welcome untainted by envy.  Scots missionaries, from Dr Livingstone onwards, left a legacy of staunch piety and a quest for learning.  Politics are not too alarming in this relatively stable country where we meet more masked dancers than military.  This is Africa for beginners. 

Lake Malawi, one of Africa’s largest bodies of water, stretches more than 500 kilometres down the eastern border of this landlocked nation.  Diving, snorkelling and fishing are popular on this inland sea free of tides or currents.  Although bilharzia is an occasional hazard, the risk is largely confined to stagnant waters (and when properly diagnosed, treatment is straightforward and painless).  Sailors travel here to compete in a challenging eight-day sailing marathon each July.  

Onshore the landscape is rich in scenic variety and in wildlife habitats.  Impala, giraffe and elephant browse beside muddy rivers; Mount Mulanje’s highland wilderness tempts intrepid walkers.  Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, has one of those airports where your very arrival suggests what lies ahead.  The plane slows to a halt outside a compact, whitewashed terminal, little changed in decades.  Well-wishers wave from the first floor balcony whilst the good-natured chaos prevailing in the luggage bays implies that each new arrival is a big event. 

Leaving the terminal, the road weaves past hamlets of hand-pressed brick and thatch; shopfronts identified with homespun sign writing; dusty roadside markets in which each vendor presides over a tiny mound of produce. Nearer to the town, hardly a city, roadsides fill with commuters tramping home. Eucalypts clothe the hills and valleys. 

The century-old Blantyre Sports Club welcomes visitors to its Friday night follies, to join a cheery gang of expatriate Britons tucking into locally-brewed Carlsberg, peri-peri chicken (a southern African favourite) and chips. 

Saturday morning means choir practice at the red-brick St Paul’s Cathedral Church.  Seventh Day Adventist ladies dressed in their best shimmering satins stroll to morning services.  Most women wear gaily printed wraps; a typical design might incorporate Coke bottles or telephones.  Many bear aloft wicker trays of bananas whilst infants cling to their backs like boles on a tree.  How many different ways can one braid, plait or shape a head of frizzy hair? 

The street vendors assure you that Saturday morning means better deals on wooden bowls, chiefs’ stools, game boards, figurines, statuettes and paper knives, but after watching them touch up the dark gleam of ebony with Kiwi shoe polish, we’re not quite so sure. 

Handwritten notices in stores announce the arrival of fresh supplies of utaka andusipa, the local lacustrine fish.  Huge dark-leaved mango trees and African flame trees line the streets, enlivened further by a richly-hued frangipani.   Billboards bearing ‘a personal message’ from the President urge Malawians to change their bedroom habits and halt the spread of AIDS. 

Plantations of tea and tobacco unfold below denuded, humpbacked crags as the road winds north.  Most towns have a cement-floored resthouse where spartan dormitory beds cost a few dollars.   Time out for lunch of grilled Chambo fish or chicken, served with patties of nsima mavie, a corn meal enlivened by chilli sauce.  

Reaching a muddy landing late in the day, we squeeze seven people’s baggage onto a motorised punt and chug out into the muddy Shire (shee-ray) River, the main artery of the 580,000-hectare Liwonde National Park.  Lone fishermen cast their nets from dug-out canoes.  Hippos bathe in families, the ripples closing in ominously as the ponderous creatures submerge. 

Glimpses of crocodile, elephant and herons enliven our progress towards Mvuu Camp, which offers campsites as well as safari accommodation.   Priced in US dollars, the safari lodges don’t come cheap, but considerably less than in some reserves in Tanzania to the north. 

Spine-chilling grunts and groans reverberate from the river during the wee hours.   In the morning dung balls the size of coconuts lie scattered about; bushes and saplings are torn or trampled. 

Elephants are visible in the reeds across the river as we sit down to breakfast.  Then we set out on foot, led by an experienced guide named Danger (!) and shepherded by an armed ranger. 

The Borassus palm, a spiky firewheel of fronds, and the bottle-shaped trunks of the baobab, the tree God tipped upside-down in anger, distinguish these sparse woodlands.  Waterbuck, identified by the ‘target’ markings on their rump, stand their ground as warthog and the smaller fawn-like impala race for cover.  Bird sightings include hoopoe, lesser blue-eared starling, redbilled hornbill, crested barbet, darter, plover and African jacana…  We climb an anthill to admire a family of elephant browsing by the river, downwind. 

At the southern end of Lake Malawi, Cape Maclear, near Monkey Bay, has developed into a favourite chill-out retreat for overlanding backpackers.  We ride a speedboat out to Bird Island, a parched islet favoured by nesting African fish eagles.  The boatman hurls fish fillets into the air… slowly the raptors rise from bare boughs, swooping down in an elliptical path to snatch the bait. 

Our most vivid impressions of Malawi, reinforced by the drive west to the capital, Lilongwe, will be of rust-red hillsides crowned with thatch-roofed conical huts, of huge spreading flame and mango trees, of beaming faces.  Depressing reports of famine and AIDS don’t tell the whole story.