Sometimes when I go to Africa I end up feeling short-changed. Sure, I have a good time, it’s always great to see the animals, people, landscapes and amazing sunsets, but I inevitably leave thinking that I’ve spent too much time with fellow tourists and not enough experiencing the real Africa. So when I planned my most recent journey I gave myself one condition. I would only go to a place if I couldn’t find a guidebook describing it.

I figured that if people couldn’t find a guidebook to a potential destination then the vast majority wouldn’t go there, and that would give me a better chance of experiencing the real Africa. I keep saying ‘real’. What do I mean by that? I don’t really know. All I do know is that ‘real’ Africa is NOT tribesmen performing fake dances in hotel bars as tourist look on, it’s NOT rich people sipping sundowners overlooking a man made water hole, and it’s NOT the Masai Mara Toyota minibus circus.

The first region I discovered with little or no reference to it in any of the major guides was the shoreline of Lake Malawi, so without delay I packed my gear and headed off to Central Africa. I had no maps, nor did I want any, or any specialised trekking equipment. I planned to procure food wherever I could, drink the water from the lake, and generally live exactly as the local people did.

I flew into Kenya, travelled by bus through Tanzania into Malawi, changed money at the bank in Karonga, ate a lunch of stodgy rice and racing chicken (very thin and sinewy meat) at a greasy roadside market stall, walked five minutes over grass fringed sand dunes to the lakeshore, and turned south to start my walk. I planned to keep going until I got to the end of the lake, four hundred and fifty miles away. I didn’t think I could get lost, I mean, this navigation business isn’t half as difficult as many adventurers like to make out. As long as I kept the lake on my left and the land on my right, I reckoned I would be just fine. 

The people I met during the next three days were not used to seeing a European on foot and I was treated with a mixture of curiosity and incredible generosity. On one occasion I came upon a young man busy washing his ragged clothes in the lake. We exchanged pleasantries and, speaking perfect English as most Malawians do, he introduced himself as Joshua. He showed me to his house, a small mud hut set amidst a green cultivated field a little way back from the beach, and we shared some hastily brewed tea.

‘Why you walking?’ Joshua asked.

‘Because I want to.’ I countered. He shook his head, smiled and said,

‘I know you too proud to tell me, but I tink it is because you have no money for de bus.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few well worn bank notes. ‘Here, take dis, go back to Karonga. Take de bus and return de money to me when you pass through next.’ It was blatantly apparent that he had little in the material sense yet he was willing to give a lot of money to a stranger with no promise of it’s return. I politely declined his offer and thanking him silently for showing me the level of humanity that people can achieve should they want to.

I traversed seventy miles of beach to Chitemba, sleeping untroubled on the soft sand each night, eating mangoes plucked from the numerous trees that shaded my midday siestas, and drinking and bathing in the clear refreshing lakewater. A farmer who I’d met in Tanzania had lived in Malawi for five years and he’d informed me that it wasn’t possible to hike between Chitemba and NkataBay as the mountains dropped straight into the lake and there was no path. I wanted to find out if this was true. Three hours out of Chitemba, at Kondowe, the beach faded away and a narrow pathway led up into the hills. This was to be the only ‘highway’ between the numerous mountain villages that I was to pass through over the next week.

The people in these small villages said that the last time they’d seen a white face in these parts was five years previously and that was a church missionary who had hiked halfway to Nkata Bay in search of souls to save. Because of this the younger children had never seen white skin and many of them ran away screaming as I, the ghost, approached their hut. Older children welcomed me and carried my bag as they escorted me to the regional store, usually a corrugated iron shed stocked with necessities such as washing powder, biscuits, the occasional soft drink and staple foodstuffs that were delivered weekly when the lake steamer would stop just offshore and canoes would paddle out to it to offload the goods.

The going was tough and very hilly. The path led me over steep outcrops and along sheer rock faces, the waves crashing more than twenty metres below. At times I came across makeshift wooden ladders which were positioned to aid in climbing up the vertical cliff walls. As before I slept on the beaches, which were now reduced to small crescents of gold amongst the towering brown and green mountains. Food was never in short supply. As soon as I’d settled down for the evening somebody would appear from a settlement that was hidden nearby and invite me to eat fish and nsima, a bland sort of mashed potato made from the Cassava plant, with them. Evenings were spent laying next to a campfire talking with villages who, despite their isolation, were pretty well informed about world events, although usually talk was of England and what it was like to live there. Some of the fishermen who had motorboats could earn good money (about £700 a month) but the majority of men had wooden canoes and no way of getting their produce to market so their income was low (£5 a month). They had to grow or catch their own food as otherwise they couldn’t afford to eat. A bag of potatoes cost £10 in the shops and nobody anywhere in the world can afford to spend two months wages on a bag of potatoes.

About halfway to NkataBay, outside of the town of Usisya, I was resting under a huge mango tree at midday when I heard the rhythmic beat of several nearby drums. After a swim in the lake to cool off I asked a boy what all the noise was about and he informed me that a witchdoctor was in town and performing a ceremony, to which he was sure I would be welcome. He led me into a brick building lit only by shafts of light falling through holes in the roof and I was introduced to the man himself, not as I was expecting in animal skins (deceived by those Tarzan movies again) but in beige shorts and white shirt. His name was George and he explained his practice as coming half from the spirits and half from what Christians would recognise as God. We settled down on the dirt floor and a meal of goats meat, greens and nsima was set out before us, but before we could finish the sound of an expectant, impatient crowd began to filter through from the larger room next to ours. George’s assistant beckoned me to follow him and he positioned a chair at the head of the room. The crowd of thirty or more smiling villagers clapped as George appeared, minus his shirt and plus some waist bells, and the drums eased into life once more. The villagers chanted in time with the drums and the frantic, dusty dancing; rhythms changed so constantly that it was difficult to tell who held the lead. Did the dance follow the drums or the drums follow the clapping?

After ten sweaty minutes George led me outside to his ‘pharmacy’, a table covered with an assortment of plants, bones and murky liquids in small bottles.

‘I can sell you a potion to defeat you enemies,’ he announced proudly.

‘Fantastic, but I don’t think I have any, not here anyway.’

‘Then you are already blessed,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘go in peace. My assistant will escort you beyond the plain of Usisya.’

On the seventh day of walking I felt weak. My clothes were white with sweated salt. At midday I suddenly felt short of breath and overwhelmingly hot. I passed out five minutes later.

I was dragged to a hut by a man and his two sons. They covered me with wet rags to treat my heat exhaustion, fed me, and then canoed me the remaining few miles to NkataBay. I remember little of the journey, only the kind smile of the youngest son. Once in the town they helped me to a hotel, waved a short goodbye, and slipped away from my life forever without ever asking for any kind of reward.

NkataBay was both a joy and a disappointment. A joy because I could get a change of diet, a disappointment because there was a constant danger from thieves (wherever there are tourists!), the water in the bay was polluted due to small industry, and there were lots of white people acting like it was an 18-30’s resort. It was bizarre to see girls in bikinis walking down dusty streets whilst beggars sat in the gutters; stranger still to see ‘lads’ spending lots of money on beer in a place where many locals couldn’t even afford to send their kids to school.

Three days later I headed south once again. The lakeshore became swampy so I continued on a mud track inland through a pleasantly shaded banana plantation until I got to the sandy beach of Chintheche. Ten miles on was KandeBeach, a favoured stopping off point for the overland trucks so favoured by students and Australian travellers. It was full of loud, lively people who thought that they could change the state of third world education by throwing pens and sweets at local children. As I walked through nearby villages people begged for sweets and when I didn’t give them anything they pelted me with stones and mangoes. The locals that I’d met in the remote northern areas, out of touch with the tourist trade, would never dream of acting in this way. Was it just a coincidence? No, it was just another example of Europeans trying to help in Africa and completely mucking things up in the process.

Four days after leaving NkataBay I set up camp on the shoreline at sunset and laid down, thinking that my muscles ached like crazy because of the thirty five miles that I’d covered that day on foot. Then, as the moon rose, the flu like symptoms set in. My muscles faded completely, and a jackhammer begun pounding away inside my head. A fisherman, whose reed hut stood nearby, said,

‘Dat’s malaria son. Take dese pills. Dey might cure you. It depends on what type you got. All you can do is lie down, try to rest, and wait.’

For four days I lay prostate in the hot sun, wrapped in my clothes and sleeping bag, shivering as if I were in the Arctic. My body became dehydrated, my urine near black, and every time I’d coughed a pain shot into my stomach. At dusk on the fourth day I slipped into the in-between world. I had no sight any more, just the sound of the lake’s waves and fish eagles mixing with the hum of pumping blood.

The fisherman saved my life on the fifth day, pouring water into me at regular intervals, most of which I vomited straight back up. My mind drifted between darkness and occasional flashes of pure, illuminating clarity. I had no fear of death any more, just a regret that I would go without seeing my family one last time.

I woke on day six to harmonious voices being carried to me on the soft lake breeze. I struggled to raise myself up on my elbows and, forcing my eyes open, saw below me on the beach a procession of gaily dressed women leading a scrum of men across the sands. It was the most beautiful of funerals. The men were taking turns to bear the weight of the coffin; there must have been fifty sets of shoulders ready to take the strain at any one time. Fish eagles screeched shrilly as they swooped through the rays of the mid afternoon sun, over children splashing alongside cattle in the lake shallows. In the mango tree under which I lay small lemon yellow birds pecked the trunk whilst emerald green ones ate insects from the leaves. At my feet a blackbird with a bright red head starred at me in silence.

‘Heaven is on earth,’ I said, ‘and this is it. The colour, the sound, the feeling. If I could just bottle this…it’s what da Vinci and the others were always searching for. It’s God.’ Then I heard the flies and cursed, and the fisherman shouted,

‘Aha! You feel da flies again. You are better!’

From then on until SengaBay sleeping out on the beaches became unwise because of the increased risk of hippo. In the north the only wildlife around had been the odd leopard and baboon but now that hippos, crocodiles and hyena were also on the scene with ever increasing frequency I had to be more careful. I managed to find a fisherman’s hut or village shop to sleep in every night where I was bitten constantly and crawled over by an assortment of spiders and bugs. Far better to have a cockroach inspecting my face though than an angry hippo.

I passed SengaBay and it’s atrocious bilharzia and tourist strewn beach in a flash and trudged along the flat, mud terrain which was in places pockmarked with deep hippo footprints and shallow rivers (it would have been a swampy, impassable mess in the wet season). At river estuaries I always waited for locals to wade across first. If there were crocodiles around, I didn’t want to be the one they took.

‘Don’t worry man,’ men shouted, ‘de crocs think you a hippo with dat white skin. Dey scared of hippo.’

The villages of Chipoka and Malembo provided my stopping points before the mud beach once again disappeared and I was forced to cut inland through the mountains, finally reaching CapeMcClear, the end of my journey, forty one days since I’d begun up north at Karonga.

Cape McClear was a very relaxed village with one storey bamboo buildings, a couple of bars and campsites, and a sandy beach long enough to permit a solitary traveller the room to escape from the overland truck hoards that periodically pulled into town. It was the perfect place to finish my hike.