Malawi

Malawi stretches along Lake Malawi, a deep freshwater lake filling a trough of the Great Rift Valley. Its clear water holds hundreds of species of cichlid fish, most found nowhere else. At the lake’s southern end the Shire River flows out past the elephants of Liwonde towards the Zambezi. Highland plateaus flank the rift: the grassland of Nyika to the north and, far to the south-east, the granite Mulanje Massif, whose slopes carry a cedar found only there.

The name recalls Maravi, a confederation of Chewa chiefdoms. In the nineteenth century Ngoni warriors arrived from the south and Yao traders sent captives to the coast. David Livingstone reached the lake in 1859, and Scottish missions came after him, giving the city of Blantyre the name of his birthplace. A British protectorate followed in 1891, later named Nyasaland, and John Chilembwe led a rising against colonial rule in 1915. Hastings Kamuzu Banda led Malawi to independence in July 1964.

Men of the Nyau societies dance the Gule Wamkulu, masked as animals and spirits, at Chewa funerals and initiations. Most Malawians are Christian, with a Muslim minority strongest among the Yao of the south. Nsima, a porridge of white maize, comes with greens, beans or chambo, a tilapia from the lake, while fishermen dry usipa on racks by the shore. Burley tobacco has long been the main export, beside tea from Thyolo and Mulanje, sugar, macadamia nuts and pigeon peas.