In 1990, there was not much information available for tourists to Malawi. Still, Manie van der Merwe dreamed of seeing this country from top to bottom with a few family members and friends.
I don’t give up easily. If I decide I want to do something, I make it happen… and my brother-in-law, Chris van der Spuy, is the same. Thus, we refused to give up on our dream of travelling to Malawi, despite the fact that there was very little information available about this country as a tourist destination.
That said, the biggest conundrum was deciding which route to take. The war in Namibia and Angola was a thing of the past, but recently South Africans were again arrested in Zambia and as a result, we decided not to follow the Zambia route. The only other option was to go through Zimbabwe and the Tete Province of Mozambique, but this also presented challenges as firefights continued to break out sporadically between Renamo and Frelimo. However, we decided that was the route to go, even if it meant that we would have to drive through the Tete corridor in a military convoy.
We wanted to go during the April school holidays so that our kids could tag along. The tour would last a month and Koos and Wilmien – our eight-year-old twins – couldn’t miss school for that long. So, it was decided that my wife, Hettie, and the children would fly into Lilongwe after the schools closed and tour with us from there. They would then fly back earlier to be home when the schools reopened.
The plan was that my father-in-law, Kobus van der Spuy and I would travel in my 2.8 Nissan Safari station wagon. Chris and three of his friends, Steyn Joubert, Bruno Gila and Erika Thorburn, would be in his converted Series 2 Land Rover station wagon. We would enter Zimbabwe at the Beit Bridge border post and drive to the Nyamapanda border post, where we would cross into Mozambique. From there we would drive with a military convoy through Tete to Malawi.
Everything ran like clockwork until we reached Mozambican customs where we had to enter Tete. We handed our passports through a small hole in the wall to the officer on the other side. “Expired!” bellowed the man behind the counter. Our visas were issued for the third month instead of the fourth month!
Now what? The only thing we could do was drive back to Harare to try to rectify the matter there. We had double entry visas for Zimbabwe, which we would now also use up. This meant that we would have to go to the Zimbabwean Home Affairs as well as the Mozambican embassy to get all the right documentation… all in only one day! We had made provision for an extra day on our itinerary, just to be sure that we could meet Hettie in time, but we handn’t expected things to go wrong on such a grand scale!
The next morning, we were first in line at the Mozambican embassy. At first the official behind the counter had no sympathy for me and my problems, but I was able to persuade him with a pack of mixed peanuts and raisins. These were anxious moments, because Hettie and the children were to land in Lilongwe the following day. The man contemplated my predicament for a moment or two and then replied that he would see what he could do and that we should return at noon.
We were starving and went to a nearby hotel for a bite to eat and I phoned Hettie to let her know that we might be a day late. Back at the Mozambican embassy, it was a great relief to hear that the issue with our visas had been sorted out. We still had to get new double-entry visas from the Zimbabwean Home Affairs, but the staff there were surprisingly helpful, and we got through quickly.
When I got back to the Safari, I wanted to place the passports in my documents folder… but it was nowhere to be found. I then remembered that, while at the hotel, I had not closed the window on the driver’s side completely and that someone must have stolen the folder right from under our noses!
Now we had another big problem… my vehicle’s temporary import permit, the third-party insurance, my driver’s license and identity document and a bunch of travellers’ cheques were all in that folder. There was no time to sort it out, so we decided to hit the road back to the Nyanapanda border post. I would find a way around the problem… cross the bridge when you get to it, they say…
That night we camped right in front of the gate and early the next morning we were back in line. Everything went smoothly until the official asked to see my temporary import permit. I acted very surprised and said that I didn’t get anything like that at the Beitbrug border post and insisted that it wasn’t my fault. He thought for a while, quickly looked at the engine number of the Safari and let us go through! If everything else goes well, we would pick up Hettie and the children in the late afternoon…
Driving in the convoy was interesting, to say the least. All the light vehicles were at the front, followed by the heavier vehicles and about 30 trucks. At the very front was an armoured vehicle that set the pace. We had to swerve around quite a few landmine craters and were in Tete by eleven o’clock, allowing some time to explore the village before the convoy left again. There were buildings riddled with bullet holes everywhere and Frelimo soldiers casually stood around with AK-47s over their shoulders. It was quite nerve-wracking!
We had to pay a toll to drive over the Zambezi River on the Samora Machel Bridge and on the other side the convoy was set up again for the last leg to the Malawian border post. However, my challenges were not quite over yet.
At the border post we were each given a small form to fill out. The space was hopelessly too small to fill in all my names – Hermanus Philippus Potgieter van der Merwe – and I only wrote down my initials and surname. The female officer got really annoyed with me and loudly insisted that I had to fill in all the names. I scribbled them on the sides and at the top of the paper and she seemed satisfied by that. Mercifully, that was the last of my African problems and the rest of our trip was an absolute feast!
We were thrilled to see Hettie and the children at the airport late that afternoon. She said that the airport staff were very caring and helpful during the time they waited for us. She also heard that we could go camping at the Blantyre Country Club, so we signed up as temporary club members and could use all the facilities such as the bathrooms, the bar and the restaurant.
The next morning, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast on the veranda of the old colonial clubhouse, whereafter we took the road to the Mulanje Massif – which, at 3 000m, is Malawi’s highest mountain. On the way there we drove through the most beautiful tea plantations, the first of which were planted in 1894.
We camped about 10km outside the village of Mulanje at the Country Club. It was Bruno’s birthday and the perfect opportunity to test out some of our pre-prepared meat. Before we left South Africa, we put braai-ed lamb chops in a sauce in a large plastic bucket with a sturdy lid. Hettie also put cooked mincemeat and wors in fruit jars for us and everything tasted great. Remember, in those days we didn’t have the luxury of a camp fridge!
The next day Chris and I went to arrange a permit at the forestry office to climb the Mulanje Mountain to the Chambe hut, spend the night there and return the following morning. That night we slept on the hut’s porch, side by side, like sardines in a tin. Somewhere during the night my father-in-law decided that he needed a more comfortable bed and went and slept on the pine needles in the forest.
In the light of the new day, we were surprised to see that the Mulanje cedars, which are very rare, are still being chopped down and sawn into planks by hand. These are then carried downhill for about 1 000m, one by one, to the bottom because the cableway that was supposed to perform this task had long been out of order.
The next evening, we were back at the camp and had a drink at the club’s bar. Erika was wearing shorts, and the bartender very politely offered her a kokoi (a piece of cloth that can be used as a sarong) and asked her to cover her legs. At the time, by law in Malawi, women’s legs had to be covered up to the ankles in public. Women were also not allowed to wear long trousers and men’s hair was not allowed to touch their shirt collar!
We were forced to have Landy’s exhaust pipe repaired in the village and took the opportunity to do a little exploration. In a small shop that had the luxury of a fridge, we each wanted to buy a cold soft drink. To our surprise, we were not allowed to take the drinks away – we had to gulp them down right there in the little shop and hand back the bottles.
The roads were very narrow and rounded, so that the rainwater could run off easily. People, cattle, pigs, chickens, children playing, cyclists, cars and trucks all used the same narrow path. Chris had his hands full as he tried to manoeuvre the heavy Landy, and this proved to be too much for Steyn’s nerves. He yelled expletives at everyone in the road and waved his arms around like a man possessed… and every now and then poor Chris would also get a slap to the head!
One of the highlights of the tour was undoubtedly the visit to the African Market at Zomba. Here you could wander around for days without seeing everything… and you could buy anything – from a wet umbrella to a dead rat! Of course, there were also many strange food options, such as dried cockroaches, dried leaves, stems and roots and, of course, also dried fish… the smell was far from appetising.
At one of the shops, rows and rows of material were hanging on a porch and an old man with a step-model sewing machine could make you a very fancy suit – in a day! There were also guys who made the most beautiful paraffin lamps with the finest soldered seams from empty insecticide cans, which still had the SABS mark and instructions in Afrikaans on them. Others could, within minutes, transform sheets of corrugated iron into buckets or funnels, all with very neat, rolled seams. Real masterpieces, I tell you!
Something we found very interesting was the way the cooking oil was packaged in small plastic bags. I suspect it is because the people could not afford a large bottle or container. Late afternoon there would be long lines of people at the petrol stations, where they would buy the same small quantities of paraffin. Before we left Zomba, we first stopped at a bakery and bought some fresh warm bread. The owner said that the flour he uses came from Delmas Mill in South Africa.
The Cape Maclear National Park on the lake was our next destination, where we enjoyed three glorious days of sunshine at the Golden Sands campsite. Hettie, Chris and I had taken our our diving equipment with us and did two very enjoyable dives a few kilometers from our camp. Lake Malawi has hundreds of species of fish, many of which are endemic. Bruno, Steyn, Erika and the kids enjoyed snorkeling around the small islands of Monkey Bay.
From there we drove north along the lake and headed for the Nyika National Park. It is located approximately 1 400m higher than the lake and has an annual rainfall of approximately 2 000mm. It reminded me of the Mpumalanga highveld, and the vegetation was very similar. The water of the mountain streams was very cold… great for drinking, but not so much for swimming. Bruno and the kids were adamant that they wanted to swim, but their bravado was short lived… for a place so close to the equator, it really was rather nippy!
We drove further north along the lake, up to a place where we turned west and after a while, we were staring almost perpendicularly up the mountain. We couldn’t believe that we would have to get out of there by road. The missionaries of days gone by had the road so they could move the mission station to the top of the mountain. This was mostly in an attempt to get away from the incessant tsetse flies and mosquitoes down by the lake. There were 22 hairpin bends and when we reached the top, we still had some distance to go to the Livingstonia Mission Station. One of the old mission houses had been converted into a kind of guest house and we camped on the lawn.
Two days later we hit the road to Mzuzu. There were no campsites in the village, and we were forced to spend the night in the hotel. After almost three weeks of roughing it, it was simply heavenly! The women soaked in the bath for hours. Steyn appreciated a decent toilet, where he could relax with a cold beer and a new newspaper.
From there we headed south again and stopped at the Kasungu National Park before heading back to Lilongwe. This time there were quite a few other tourists, and we had a great time. Chris – who was still living with his parents in Pretoria – merrily handed out business cards to all his newfound friends in the clubhouse bar. To my mother-in-law’s dismay, for weeks after we were back in South Africa, every now and then a German or a Norwegian would arrive on her doorstep and then stay for a few days.
Hettie and the children flew back to South Africa the next day. The rest of us joined another military convoy through Tete to Zimbabwe. Another disaster almost befell me at Nyampanda. The customs officer spotted my precious VHS video cassettes from the trip and wanted to confiscate them before I could pass through. He promised to mail it to me, but I was having none of it. Eventually he gave up.
Just a few last things… My travellers’ cheques that were stolen in Zimbabwe were all cashed one by one in places on the East Rand. Chris and Erika got married a few years later and now live in Melbourne, Australia, with their two children. Years later, in 2017, Wilmien became the fourth South African woman in history to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
