We haven’t had many. Nine days after receiving our visas on the Tanzanian border we’re leaving Malawi for Zambia. In that short time we cycled through low, sweaty marshlands in the North; energy sapping headwinds along Lake Malawi; forested hills into the highlands, whose weather and vistas seem more at home in Scotland than tropical Africa; and finally flat farmland to the Zambian border.
Malawi is a beautiful country. Malawians are incredibly friendly; laughing and shaking your hand at the slightest provocation. Yet the country’s problems are only too apparent – Malawi is the poorest country we have visited.
On our first night we pulled into Kaporo, a small town 25km from the border. After a long cycle we searched in vain for a guesthouse, but none were to be found in town. Our luck was not out though – Calum made friends with the headmaster of the local primary school, who invited us to sleep in a classroom. A long night of peaceful sleep was needed but sadly not gained. We put away our sleeping bags in the morning as tired as when we unrolled them the night before… thumping music from an adjacent all-night party may be to blame there.
Sleep deprivation and all day cycling are not great bedfellows. Having woken at 5am and cycled over 100km every day since Nairobi, we decided a day off was needed. We slept all day.
To address fatigue generally we have recourse to that favourite drug of truckers, students and cyclists the world over – caffeine. In Kenya and Tanzania the influences of India, Islam and England combined to make tea omnipresent. Oh how I miss sweet spiced milky masala tea. Crossing the border to Malawi that tea culture disappears and we’re back on the Coca-Colas.
Coke isn’t the only big-western brand in town though for morning refreshment, these towns are big enough for two. The outsides of shops, resthouses (bars), bottleshops (bars), inns (bars), and bars (bars) are uniformly green, daubed in the curly white writing of Carlsberg. These establishments are open from early in the morning, and as we roll into town for our morning coke we inevitably attract some of the town’s most lubricated men. In Malawi, as in many developing countries, the restriction of alcohol sales – when, where and to whom – is far off. Cigarette posters here have warnings in small print but otherwise are more reminiscent of the 1980s, proclaiming the quality of their products for all to see, including kids. While the power of ‘big tobacco’ and ‘big alcohol’ are curbed by advertising standards in the UK, out here their power and profits are evident. They are the only people with enough money to paint everyone’s walls.
Outside influence is not all negative though. In Kiwe primary school where we spent the night, UNICEF and the European Union combined to create a safe water system for the school and adjacent hospital. In an area prone to flooding many water supplies had been contaminated – this new system protects kids and patients from that contamination. The headmaster of Kiwe school told us all this in the light of morning, and about the other challenges facing Malawi.
His school has 13 teachers, and over 1200 students. Class sizes are huge. He put the oversubscription of the school down to overpopulation – families are big and the government isn’t doing enough to encourage people to have less kids.
A growing population puts strain on everything: food supplies, schools, hospitals and what is only too obvious from the seat of a bicycle – the natural environment. As our road wound through pine and eucalyptus forests we have reached huge swathes of deforestation. Timber is a key building supply and charcoal is used for cooking by the majority. Women pass us with great stacks of timber on their heads, and men slog up hills on single speed bicycles carrying great loads of wood. Having seen the weight they are all carrying we can’t complain about the weight of our panniers. People need those supplies, but those trees aren’t replanting themselves.
One evening we found ourselves cycling towards the majestic Elephant Rock (pictured below). We decided to go and camp in the forest below. A peaceful evening was spent around a campfire built by chief scout Matthews.
In the morning as we packed up and ate our oats an armed man in camouflage appeared from the trees. It is not generally a good thing to be surprised mid-porridge by a man with a gun. Thankfully Edward (below) was very friendly. He is employed by a private logging company to guard the forest (with the use of an old british machine gun), from local people chopping it down for firewood. We asked him whether there were any big animals in the forest which we should look out for. He replied: “Yes – bushpigs”.
As cyclists you aren’t out of place in Malawi – (almost) everybody cycles – and those who don’t? They can get somebody else to cycle them! Frequently our three man peloton will be joined by a couple of guys on the same bike, one a professional bike taxi man, the other perched on a cushioned seat behind him. I cycled for Deliveroo before this trip, it was tough work at times, but delivering peoples’ Nandos is much easier than delivering people on a bicycle.
With so many bikes on the road you would hope for some decent cycle lanes as we enjoyed in Tanzania. But roads are often crumbling here, the edges falling away forcing us to swerve into the road to avoid a hard drop onto the dusty sides. Don’t worry though! As with everywhere else in Africa – the Chinese are here; building of roads. Not sure who to put the request to, but we hope they build cycle lanes onto the new roads, for the sake of those hard working bike taxi-men.
Back to our headmaster. He pointed to the hospital near the school – ‘It is full, it is overstretched – the number one problem? Malaria’. In the low lying vicinity of the lake the land is wet – what do mosquitoes need to breed? Water. Stagnant water.
There is a concept in development economics called a ‘malaria burden’ – the term refers to the negative economic effect Malaria has on a country’s economy (measured as a % of GDP). Calculations of national ‘malaria burdens’ account for a range of factors, such as: money spent on prevention and treatment which could be otherwise invested, losses of productivity as affected people cannot work, and the ultimate burden – losses of peoples’ lives.
As we’ve mentioned in other blogs, Malaria is a preventable disease. If you stop infected mosquitoes from biting people, then the Malaria never gets into their blood. When we check into cheap guesthouses here it is always a relief to find a decent mosquito net above the bed. Sleeping behind that blue net you’re safe from a night of buzzing mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. We get to sleep safe, but many Malawians don’t. People in villages say they don’t have nets, they can’t afford them and the government doesn’t provide them. The charity we are raising money for on this trip does.
The Against Malaria Foundation distribute malaria nets – that’s it. They put nets between sleeping kids and infectious biting insects. That saves lives on a huge scale, and all at very minimal cost.
So far we’ve raised (hugely thanks to many of you as donors) over $29,000.
We didn’t get any sponsors to help us pay for this trip, but we did get a corporate sponsor, who promised to help us raise even more money for AMF. Sumitomo Chemical were responsible for creating the first Long-Lasting Insectide Nets (LLINs), the most important defence against mosquitoes. They have promised to match all donations we have had so far… and any more up to $30,000. We want to make the most of their promise. If you’ve enjoyed following the trip or reading the blog (admittedly this one hasn’t been a barrel of laughs) then do consider donating on our AMF page. All money goes straight to the charity for the purpose of distributing nets – saving lives.
Cycling Against Malaria 