Into the Wilderness

A three-day journey in Africa's Siberia.

(KK)

Uchesse, Mozambique, August 31 – The sun is going down, a pink ball above the hilly purple silhouette that is Malawi’s Likoma Island. The Miss Nkwichi, the broad, slow-moving wooden boat that brought us here, is moored just off the Mozambique side of Lago Niassa, a.k.a. Lake Malawi. Our five tents are set up on the wide, pale sand beach. Behind them, leafless baobabs stand like giant gray root vegetables stuck upside down in a jumble of underbrush.

Maaike, Devon and Joseph have just come back from meeting with the elders of the small village just beyond the trees, and Francisco has supper underway on two wood-burning clay stoves. Maybe a dozen kids are sprawled on the beach on their stomachs, leaning on their elbows and watching Yohko and me catch up our journals. For a while the kids pretended they came to the beach to play football with a bundle of plastic tied with string. But soon they were all prone on the sand, staring at us unabashedly. Every time we looked at them, they'd smile. When we looked away, they'd inch closer. Eventually, a few make it all the way to the tents.

(Maaike van den Bos)

Three weeks into my stint as a volunteer with the Manda Wilderness Community Trust, I’m tagging along on a trip to some of the more remote villages the trust works with. Maaike, from Holland, is the departing community project manager. She wants to say goodbye to the people she has gotten to know over the last year and introduce Devon, from South Africa, who is replacing her. Joseph, who lives in a nearby village, is the local community liaison. The three of them want to see how the schools that the trust is helping build are coming along, deliver some supplies, and talk with the village chiefs about various bits of business.

For me, the trip is a chance to see some of the tiny wilderness communities along the lake and up in the hills inland. My job with the trust is to write about their work, and this trek lets me see it first hand. Yohko is a Peace Corps volunteer in another part of Mozambique. She’s a good friend of my daughter's and happened to visit at the right time to come along. With us too are Daniel, a local guide who works at Nkwichi Lodge, the eco-lodge that supports the trust’s work, and two lodge boatmen, one named Daliso, the other also named Joseph.

This far northern part of Mozambique has so few people that some call it Africa’s Siberia. But scattered villages do exist in these wooded hills and along the wide, empty lake. The villages are connected by a network of footpaths—there are virtually no roads here, just a few barely drivable dirt tracks. We have reached the first few villages by boat. Tomorrow we’ll hike inland to the next village, and if all goes well, we’ll do the last part of the journey in the back of a flat-bed four-wheel-drive truck.

The calming view from the lake shore is particularly welcome after a full day. Early this morning, we set out in the boat from Nkwichi and traveled about five miles up the lake to our first stop, Chicaia. (See the trip route.) Daniel showed Yohko and me around Chicaia while the others visited the village chief.

Chicaia, Mozambique. In Manda Wilderness villages, most homes are made from mud bricks, with stick supports and rush grass roofs. (KK)

Two of Chicaia's great assets--fish and fresh water from Lago Niassa. (KK)

Inside Chicaia's simple church. (KK)

The new Chicaia school, which the community and the trust built collaboratively. At first, I didn't find it that impressive--but then I saw the other villages' schools. (KK)

Yohko and Daniel heading back to the Miss Nkwichi to continue the trip further north to Chigoma. (KK)

Between Chicaia and Chigoma, a trip of about an hour and a half by boat. (KK)

Some of Chigoma's kids came down to the beach to greet us with play-fighting stances . . .  (KK)

. . . or just to welcome us. (KK)

Like Chicaia, Chigoma is beautifully located, with ample water and plenty of fish to supplement the manioc that is the backbone of the local diet. (KK)

But the community is badly in need of a new school. This is the present one, made from bamboo and rush grass. Because Mozambique is so poor and because this area is so remote, the government hasn't gotten around to building proper schools here yet. It does provide teachers and books. (KK)

The meeting with Chigoma’s chief and village elders was long and arduous. When the trust builds a school with a community, it enters into an agreement that requires the villagers to make bricks, build the school walls and contract with a skilled carpenter to put on the roof. The trust provides the materials the local people can’t make—nails, cement, doors, window frames, roof beams and roofing metal—and covers the lion’s share of the carpenter’s fee. But it’s up to the village to negotiate a good price with the carpenter, and because Chigoma hadn’t managed that, their school construction project had ground to a halt. The meeting grew tense when it began to appear the carpenter may have increased his fee because he didn’t believe the village would pay its share—he may have thought all he'd get was the portion the trust provides.

Some of the village elders, Chigoma. (KK)

Yet everyone kept talking, and in the end the village leaders decided to reopen the discussion with the carpenter. They hope to assure him they'll come up with their part of the money and get him to agree to a lower fee. 

Chigoma village leaders meet with Devon, Maaike and Joseph. (KK)

After the meeting, the chief posed with the clay stoves we'd brought to Chigoma--and a bunch of the local boys decided to get in on the picture. (KK)

Baobabs along the shore at Chigoma (KK)

Because the meeting went on so long, we reached Uchesse—about five miles further up the lake—much later than we expected. 

Daniel and Joseph secured the boat for unloading by sticking one of the paddles into the sand. We pitched our tents for the night just a little further up the beach. (KK)

September 1 —

Our day began at Uchesse at dawn. (KK)

 

The local fishermen were up and out well before we were. (KK)

Breakfast at the campsite. (KK)

As we set out through the village, we passed several people hard at work. These girls are pounding manioc root. (KK)

After we left Uchesse, our path took us through gently rising land covered in dry grasses and widely spaced trees, then up a steep trail into the more heavily wooded hills. (KK)

The footpath is the villagers' main transportation route.

Once we'd climbed for an hour or two, the path led mainly through flat, dry grassland. (KK)\

One of many anthills. (KK)

Along the way we spotted a very unusual gecko. (KK)

The last part of the walk was very hot and dry, through sparse-looking fields of manioc (cassava) with their spindly stalks and droopy green leaves. These inland towns don't have the abundant water available to those who live along the lake, but manioc can grow even in poor soil and dry conditions.

We couldn't yet see the village of Matepwe, but finally we arrived at the school.

Inside Matepwe's current school. (KK)

Here too, construction of the new school has stalled. Maaike and Devon check the site before sitting down with the village leaders to plan next steps. (KK)

While Maaike, Devon and Joseph met with Matepwe’s elders, Francisco made lunch, Yohko and Daniel went off to look for sugar cane, and I rested in the shade inside the high rush walls of the teacher's compound. The teacher's wife washed dishes in a pan on the ground and then set them to drain on a bamboo rack set over a tiny vegetable patch. I admired her ingenuity--her system uses every drop of water to good purpose. On the sand nearby, white, peeled manioc roots lay on a sheet of black plastic to dry. The woman kept shooing the flies away from the roots, but they returned instantly. Two little girls stood in a corner of the compound, each with a big wooden pestle in her hands, taking turns pounding manioc root in the wooden mortar between them.

The schoolteacher's son. Behind him, the boy's mother makes nsima or manioc porridge. (KK)

(KK)

We brought our own food, and after the meeting was over, we sat in the compound and shared the meal Francisco cooked. When we finished, we heard that the truck bearing building materials and school supplies had arrived. For the first time, it had made it over the rough road that approaches Matepwe from another direction. That meant that Matepwe and the other villages we would visit could move forward with their construction projects--and it also meant we could ride instead of walk on to Magachi that afternoon. But first we wanted to see more of the village of Matepwe.

These round structures are for meals and socializing. (KK)

The building in back is for goats, and the little hut on stilts keeps chickens safe from predators. (KK)

Matepwe is famous in these parts for its two-story mud hut. (KK)

When we arrived at the truck, Maaike and I climbed into the cab with Julius, who owns it, and everybody else piled in back among the sacks of cement and sheets of roofing metal. We jounced along the rutted track past fields so full of termite mounds they looked like graveyards. Dry grasses stood along the road, and the mountains were dark in the distance. Sometimes the road went down sharply into a dry riverbed with a rough bridge across it, and Julius made everybody get out until he had crossed safely.

This was the scariest bridge--but we made it. (KK)

Finally, we rattled into Magachi, another cluster of mud houses, and came to a stop by the chief's house, the leaves of a big mango tree pushing into the open truck window. A dog ran up, followed quickly by the smiling chief, who shook all our hands as we got out. Magachi had been waiting eagerly for these building materials to come, and now they were here.

We fell into the same pattern as the day before--Maaike, Devon and Joseph met with the village leaders while Francisco, Daniel, Yohko and I set up camp. 

First, we had to cut the grasses to make ourselves a campsite--Daniel and Francisco did most of the scything, but Yohko also gave it a try. (KK)

 

Once we got the tents up, Daniel helped Francisco in the camp kitchen. (Yohko Ogawa)

The villagers brought vegetables for our meal and firewood so we could cook. We also bought a chicken, and I couldn't watch while they wrung its neck. (KK)

With the tents set up and Daniel and Francisco cooking supper, Yohko and I decided to get a wash. It had been a hot and dusty day and we felt grimy from head to foot.

But when I asked Daniel where we could go, he said, "There is a problem with water in this village."

I thought he meant the water was far away and said we didn’t mind going a ways. “We heard there’s a river,” I said. “Can we go there?”

“No,” he said, though I didn’t catch why.

“Is there a pump where we can get some water?”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Is there anywhere we can get just a bucket of water?” I couldn’t believe there wasn’t any. People live here—there must be a water source somewhere nearby. Mustn’t there?

Finally, with an expression I couldn’t quite read, Daniel asked one of the boys who was hanging around Francisco’s improvised kitchen to show us where to go. We borrowed a metal pan from Francisco and followed the boy across the overgrown football field, past the chief’s house and the meeting at the mango tree, down a path between mounds of manioc plants to a reedy, muddy area. The boy showed us a water hole dug into the ground. It was maybe four or five feet across and five or six feet deep with a small puddle of muddy water at the bottom. He immediately made as if to jump down into it with the pan, but we stopped him.

I was starting to understand what Daniel had been trying to tell us. Not only did the water look dirty, but there was so little of it. How could we take the village’s last gallon to do something so frivolous as to wash when we were sure to get dirty again traveling the next day?

But judging from the stand of reeds near the hole, we guessed the river must be nearby. Yohko gestured in that direction and since neither of us spoke Chinyanja, tried some Portuguese.

“Río?” she asked.

No, the kid said to her in Portuguese. You can’t go there—the women are bathing there.

That sounded promising, and I wished we’d brought our soap and towels with us. But the boy looked worried about us going past the reeds.

Just then, though, a woman came from that direction and Yohko asked her if we could get some water to wash with.

Of course, she said and led us down a rough path to a place with three or four water holes, hand dug into the clayey soil, several of them full almost to the brim. There seemed to be a system for bathing—one hole looked slightly sudsy, so maybe that was for soaping up and actually washing yourself, others looked more clear.

The woman indicated the nearest hole, which had maybe 10 gallons of muddy water at the bottom. She took our pan and lying on the edge of the hole, reached down impossibly far and filled the basin with water. Yohko and I took turns carrying it back to the campsite. Then we rigged up our capulanas in the trees and made ourselves a little bathing area. One at a time, we went back behind the wall of fabric, stripped down, and using a cup to dip water from the pan, managed to clean ourselves up a little bit. When Devon and Maaike got back, they did the same.

All four of us felt much better afterward, honestly grateful for a gallon or two of murky water between us. But it was sobering to realize we had no drinking water except for the small amounts left in our water bottles. We drank warm orange soda with our supper and brushed our teeth with the least water possible. We could go thirsty the next morning--we were going onwards to a village that had a pump, after all. But I wondered what would it be like to live there, with nothing but a sudsy, shared waterhole to wash in, day after day. I still don’t know where they get their drinking water. The villages decide what projects they want to work on with the trust, and I was puzzled why Magachi had chosen a school as its first priority and not a pump.

September 2 —

We were up again at dawn and struck camp quickly, skipping breakfast. All of us jumped into the back of the truck because Julius was giving a sick woman a ride to the hospital in Cobué, and she.needed to ride in the cab. Before we left Magachi, we went by the old school the trust and the village are working on replacing. Like the others we'd seen, it had reed walls, a thatching grass roof, and rows of uneven plank benches. 

Lke all the local schools--old or new--Magachi's had a wheel hub hanging from a tree to serve as a school bell. (KK)

Francisco on the back of the truck, soon after we left Magachi. (KK)

This stretch of road had better bridges, but they weren't level with the road. So the guys got off the truck and made ramps out of stone so we could get across. (KK)

We stopped in M'condece just to say hello. Their school is done and furnished, though somehow they got the desks meant for another school. (KK)

Students gathered outside M'condece school. (KK)

A student at M'condece. (Yohko Ogawa)

M'condece was a good last stop, a reminder that for all the hurdles these school building projects face, the results are very much worth it.

More about Manda Wilderness Community Trust:

• a short video two volunteers made
• the trust's web site
• an article I wrote for Air Malawi's inflight magazine

Off to the Great Unknown!

(Nkwichi Lodge)

 

The wilderness conservation organization where I will volunteer next month is pretty remote. That’s a big part of its appeal, both for me and for the people who stay at the associated eco-lodge, but making arrangements to get there turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected.

Nkwichi Lodge and the Manda Wilderness are in northern Mozambique, on the eastern shore of Lake Malawi (or Lago Niassa, as people in Mozambique call it). The folks I’ll work with told me the easiest way to get to Nkwichi is to fly to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, and then take either a charter flight or a battered old steam ship up the lake to the lodge. So I did my usual cheapskate search for the lowest fare, went on Air Malawi’s website and reserved a flight from Johannesburg to Lilongwe.

I reserved it, but then I couldn’t pay for it. The site wouldn’t let me uncheck the “Pay Later” button, and I couldn’t find any way to actually buy the ticket. I emailed their reservations department. I called. Then I called the two other numbers they gave me, both of which were out of service. Finally I got an email that said I could pay at the Johannesburg airport. I emailed back asking if that meant I could pay on the day of departure. I’m in Gaborone now and won’t be in Jo’burg until the day I’m flying. No answer.

I asked my landlord if he knew how Air Malawi’s procedures worked and he said, “Oh, Air Malawi!” in a worrisome way. I asked a travel agent for help—no luck.

But then it turned out to be a good thing I hadn’t paid for my ticket. Right at this juncture a friend in Mozambique emailed me to make sure I’d heard about the upheaval in Lilongwe. I hadn’t, but the news was grim—demonstrations over food and fuel shortages, violent conflicts, multiple deaths. That poor country.

I began my travel planning again. I thought about going overland from Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, but reading online accounts of shaky buses and breakdowns and missing bridges quickly cured me of that idea. I wasn’t eager to find myself stranded in the boonies with my inadequate Portuguese, and I’d had enough shaky buses in Madagascar.

Flying sounded good. But though I could tell from my Mozambique map that Lichinga is the closest airport to Manda Wilderness, I couldn’t for the life of me find any airlines that fly there. Kayak turned up nothing. Expedia, zilch. Travelocity wasn’t even sure the place exists. LAM, the national airline of Mozambique, showed Lichinga on its route map but its booking engine couldn’t come up with a flight, even a sold out flight. It started to seem like the place wasn’t really there.

Finally I went by the local office of South African Airlines, a partner of LAM’s and a really good airline. A helpful man there connected me with a knowledgeable travel agent, and she shortly emailed me. She'd actually found flights and she quoted me a fare.

Still, there was a bit more comedy to go through. I asked the agent if she wanted my credit card number and she emailed back, “I’m sorry, we don’t take credit cards.”

More emails.

“How can I pay?”

“Cash or cheque.”

"Where are you located?"

She told me. I trundled down to the office with a wad of pulas and am now the proud possessor of a ticket to Lichinga.

At least I hope that’s what it is. After all my attempts to find flights, I know Lichinga’s airport code is VXC and that’s what’s on my ticket. But where the travel agent’s computer was supposed to fill in the airport and the town, the ticket says instead “Unknown, Unknown.”

(KK)