Mount Mulanje

Everybody says it’s a beautiful place that you should see. I don’t have time to go for proper hiking but decided to make a day trip with my new colleague Carmen.

I think things here have become more or less done at ad-hoc basis because of shortage of time. So much to do in such a short time.. so for leisure activities there’s just no time for proper planning of how to get there, what to do etc.. well even if you want to do that sometimes you just can’t find information online!

Well anywhere we started off the trip with just one piece of information at hand – take minibus from Blantyre to Limbe, then from Limbe take the minibus that goes to Mozambique border, and Mt Mulanje is just half way in between.

A journey that was supposed to take just one hour dragged to more than two hours because there were just too many stops in between where people hopped on and off the minibus. And because the driver won’t move from any stop if you don’t get four people sitting at one row (super sardine seat indeed!). I think taking minibuses are definitely labelled as high risk activity by our Health and Safety Officers in the UK because.. first, overload of passengers and luggage (there’re usually potatoes or sweet corns or bags of rice or something on the floor..); and secondly, the drivers usually drive crazily they’re hated by all drivers on the road and notoriously known as the nuisance on the road.. but one thing good about them is that they’re available at all times and extremely cheap. This is the most developed private businesses I’ve seen in Malawi. a lot of people doing this business hence could bring the price down. But the down side is the ‘proper’, regulated public transport can’t be established at all as the road is already monopolised by the minibus operators.

So anyway Carmen and I decided to risk our lives for the sake of the beauty of Mount Mulanje. LOL!

During every stop there’s so many dwellers coming to the minibuses trying to sell their goods, mostly fruits and vegetables. And some boys were selling eggs (uncooked ones) with chillies.. can’t make sense of this one.. was he trying to fry the eggs with chillies in front of me..? and also there’re muffins, breads, nuts, sweets, mobile phone top-ups.. etc etc. You basically get a mini-market around you. It’s quite funny when Carmen asked for ‘bananas’ (note: she just said it once in a very low voice..), all the tomatoes around the minibus turned into bananas within 3 seconds! Wow talking about customer service.. the British should really learn from them!!
Anyway we arrived at the wrong station and had to make another trip back to the town Chitakale. We tried the bicycle taxi – this was my first time after one month being here.. it was really fun.. and the seat was comfortable. You even have handles to hold on. We could see people travelling in the bicycle taxi with chicken, pig, babies, ... you name it!

From Chitakale we took another bus to get to a place called Likubhula. We only found out about this place after asking the local people what is nice to see. I brought a guide book but ahh forget about the guide book.. too complicated.. on arrival to Likubhula we were again swamped by a group of people, this time not selling bananas but offering their service as tour guides. And again, had to pretend you were not bothered to take the guide and started haggling. So we managed to beat the price down to about £3 so it’s fine. Most of the times I just try to get the price down as much as possible then give them more than we agree at the end of the task. This will usually make both parties happy haha. Anyway I think it’s really not ethical to bring the price down too much as this is how they earn their living.

I didn’t expect to climb a mountain so steep indeed. It was quite a tiring trip indeed that took about 1 hour to reach the waterfall. But along the way what I’d seen made me feel I really shouldn’t feel tired.. I saw lots of women and girls carrying huge load of firewood from the top of the mountain. And how they carried it? On the head! I really have no idea how they could balance that kind of huge weight on a say 10 year old girl.. I noticed there were only girls doing that so I asked our guide where are the men? He said oh men are supposed to work in the farm and ‘produce food’; the job of ‘cooking food’ belongs to the women – and that including of course collecting firewood. Division of labour. But I guess it’s a bit unfair to ask girls to carry such a heavy weight. I once asked the doctors whether they see a lot of arthritic cases because people carry heavy stuff on their heads a lot. But no not many cases because people don’t live long enough to develop degenerative diseases....

We stopped on and off during the hike up the mountain to take pictures or sometimes to talk to the people who also rested half way after collecting their firewood. There was one girl who was mumbling something to me repeatedly with a blank look. I finally made sense of it after a few minutes that she was actually saying ‘money money money’. Fair skin = money. Yes, even children learn that. The parents actually teach the children to wave to tourists to get something. I’d seen once during my trip to Liwonde that a mother was holding a toddler’s hand and to wave to tourists. We get waves everywhere we go. Children as little as 2 or 3 wave to us. At first I feel welcome because I thought people were really friendly. After awhile I just feel sad.
The waterfall was beautiful of course. But a picture worth a thousand words so please just look at the pictures. Sorry about not uploading pictures until now internet is scarce and expensive so it’s just hard to share pictures. Nothing special happened at the waterfall. I felt like jumping into the water but couldn’t do so. We only had a little picnic (with a small box of biscuits and water) and sat for half an hour.

The way back was easier as most parts of it were just descending from the mountain so it was less tiring. I slipped a few times with my lousy sport shoes. But in fact I shouldn’t complain about the shoes. Our guide wore only slippers and he was stable like a rock. Alas I was just lousy I know. And of course we still saw a lot of firewood women along the side this time I learned to say ‘bo’ (that means how’s it going?) and they would reply ‘bo’ too (which means good). We didn’t stop long enough to catch anybody mumbling ‘money money money’ to us.
At the bottom of the hill I bought a couple of wood crafts which cost a few times lesser than the same thing we tried to buy at Blantyre city centre. I also learned to play the Bao chess game and I bought a set of it. Very interesting we should try. Good way to kill time.

We took another bicycle taxi from Likubhula to Chitakale, which was great as along the way we saw tea plantation. The only problem is you get so near to the ‘taxi driver’ (or rider?) that you can’t avoid some bad smell... anyway I managed to take some pictures along the way – a proof that the taxi was really stable!

So around 330pm we caught a minibus to go back to Blantyre. Couldn’t afford to stay longer as it would get dark soon... irritating!