Malawi - Cape McClear and Chembe Village

Daan and Mirjam tend to pick the nicest of spots to park up...

I'm summoned to a lakeside campsite:  my friends Daan & Mirjam have found a lovely spot and email to suggest I join them.  They're about to help with a local community project that they figure I'd enjoy too.  How right they are!

The setting is superb - meters from the gently lapping waters of Lake Nasser / Malawi, a huge expanse of fresh water famous for it's colourful little 'mbuna' fish.  The lake is so large it has a tide tugged by the moon; and the water so clear the fish make snorkelling a delight - once you've paddled twenty minutes across to the island in your kayak.

At the end of a sandy track that weaves through the middle of a local village, I find the Fat Monkey Lodge.  The lodge was named after the European guys who set it up a couple of decades ago - they were nicknamed 'the three fat monkeys' by the villagers, and the name stuck.

I find Daan & Mijam lazing by the beach - they've been here a few days already and have finished all their bike and kit maintenance.  I'm keen to take a swim and settle in, but shortly afterwards the hard work begins and the next few days are a blur of activity.

The community project has been initiated by a retired Dutch man called Gerrit.  He's been holidaying  in Malawi for years (on and off) and took his time to work out what would benefit the local village most.  They have plenty of elephants already, so another (white) one would be a waste of resources and effort.

His project started with supplying a few swings - something unknown to the local kids.  They'd never even had a rope on a branch to enjoy, and childhood finishes quickly out here. 

Gerrit found a local manager - honest and hard working - and together they planned and built a play centre.  The centre is financed by monies raised by Gerrit in Holland, using his business skills to tap the wealthy wine drinkers. 

Then came non-profit hire-purchase solar lamps (to replace with 'free' electricity the candles still used by most villagers); next comes environmental initiatives to do with recycling and collecting plastic waste.  Plastic rubbish is a plague the world over, from what I can see, so getting the kids to keep their village clean would be a great result and help the flow of tourism to this area.

All in all, a few well-thought-out intiatives are making a real difference in this village without changing the fundamental culture or feel of the place.

These flowers add a splash of colour to an otherwise dusty and drab landscape

'Tourist' is a bit of a dirty word amongst backpackers and travellers (and we include ourselves in that), but the foreign currency is needed.  Malawi remains one of the world's poorest countries, and nearly half the population is chronically malnourished - life expectancy is only 43 years (according to March 2010 Lonely Planet guidebook).  Although the country is urbanising quickly, 80% of the population live in rural areas, so any failure of the crops causes terrible problems - such as the famine in 2005.

Looking for Mbuna fish!

Keeping that in mind, anything we could contribute to local projects seemed worthwhile.  In my case, it involved working with Daan & Mijam to film and edit a short movie concerning Gerrit's main project.  He will use this to promote the donations of children's toys and finance from his old business contacts in the Netherlands.  

I'll add the video to this blog in due course, as it gives a pretty good look at the village too.

The work kept us busy and left us pretty exhausted (producing a movie normally takes me 10-15 hours, and this one had to be turned around in two days if we were to hit a particular deadline).

We left the campsite and enjoyed a superb ride up the coast of the lake until we reached another picturesque shoreside campground.  The deep, soft sand road in was horrendous (I dropped the bike going in, and coming out!), but the cool swim afterwards made up for it.  

Malawi is turning into one heck of a nice country to visit.