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Up and down the majestic Majete

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July 30 2012 was the first day I visited Majete Wildlife Reserve. It was history in the making, as four lions were expected to be translocated from South Africa to make the Chikwawa tourist attraction the only one in Malawi where you could find the Big Five. Only two lions and a lioness from Robin Pope Safaris made it to the reserve, as a lion died 45 minutes into the four-hour flight. As the pacified lions lay in a ‘boma’—a quarantined of the park, where they would stay to acclimatize before being released into the wild—we could only marvel that, at last, there is a chance to spot lions, elephants, rhinos, leopards and hippos in the 700 square kilometre reserve. A visit to the reserve last week, which African Parks has been managing since 2003 when animal populations were dwindling, brought better news. There are now eight lions. An able guide, who knows the reserve as the back of his arm, Jimmy Chikombe says the lions Chimwala and Sapitwa and the lioness Shi
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Malawi’s Island in the Sky

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Sixty-six kilometres from the Malawi commercial capital Blantyre, the Mulanje Mountain sprouts from the lush-green tea plantations and rises high into the skies. The highest point, Sapitwa (which literally means unreachable) is at 3,002 metres above sea level, the highest point in southern central Africa. For the adventurer, Mulanje Mountain, which is fondly referred to as The Island in the Sky, is the next destination. It bears the monicker from the peaks that form ‘islands’ on the massif. It was around six o’clock in the morning when I, together with my guide Albert Marumo, set out from the Likhubula Forestry Lodge, where I spent the night. From a curios vendor near the lodge, I got a sturdy hard-carved Mulanje cedar walking stick and began the four hour hike to one of the more than 20 peaks on the mountain, Chambe. The peak is perched at 2,500 metres above sea level. It was an idyllic hike of great views of the world miles below and a trek through evergreen forests in the r
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MEC is not DPP, DPP ain’t MEC

July 4, 2019 If there is one thing that is so hard to say, it is goodbye. It has been hard for me, for one, to see my colleague Suzgo Khunga bidding farewell not only to those that have worked with her, but even to you dear reader. For three years, I have followed her entries and I daresay she has informed some of my opinions on certain socio-political and economic hazy areas. Not to mention her able news-writing and insightful reporting skills, which I have been able to follow since 2004 or thereabouts. Join me in wishing Su or ABC—Assistant Bureau Chief—as we fondly called her in the Nation Publications Limited (NPL) corridors, the best of times at her next call of point. I know of her hard work and determination and it is my hope these are traits that will continue to be part of her being. I am not a particular fan of long and dreary speeches, but speeches that change humanity, the terse ones, strike deep cords within me. The American President Abraham Linco
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Thoughts from a retreat

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The newsroom is quite a hectic four-wall confinement. It is gruelling and daunting to perform the task of seeking the story of a man who bit the dog. Daunting because that involves dealing with sources that sometimes act funny when you are trying to get that extraordinary story. That pressure really gets to your head. You find whole hours going down the drain and the workload remains just as much as it was when you energetically first entered the room; blank pages—which are supposed to be filled with stories—are just gazing at your face. While you are figuring out who to call for this or that story, you are also wondering which is a good enough picture to go with the stories. Reading a story you just wrote moments before, makes you want to get some paracetamol to ease the headache. You realise that you wrote tenses that were not making sense, the syntax was not correct and that the subjects and verbs were not in concord while the spellings would upset the Queen. All the while, you are
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Moments with Mpasu

It was a little after ten when the four of us arrived at the Chichiri Prison to see Sam Mpasu, one of my most revered Malawian writers. When he wrote Nobody’s Friend, Mpasu was arrested by Dr Banda’s agents. His time in prison led to Prisoner 3/75 of Dr Banda, a grueling recount of his time in the inhuman cells of the one party regime. This time,Mpasu is in jail for the Fieldyork scandal when he was Minister of Education.The four of us, fellow journalist Jack McBrams, lawyer Noel Misanjo,performance poet and media researcher Chisomo Mdalla aka Nyamalikiti Nthiwatiwa were ushered to the visitors’ bay, after going through a rigorous search at the gates. All cellphones were also kept away. You could be wondering why we had to visit Mpasu. What other way could we seek the blessing of someone close to us in the writing art? How else could we have the first step of the Writers Block? This is a writers' group that is being formed. The visitors’ bay is a confined area, with some five bench
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David Livingstone: the other side

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by Kondwani Kamiyala That Dr David Livingstone was a great man goes without saying. How else can a man have his name in monuments in so many countries in Africa, America and Europe? Livingstone’s life is well-documented, in books, journals and he provides fodder for the historian seeking to piece up history. To the Malawian, Livingstone occupies a great space. Apparently, Malawi history records that the evangelist and medical doctor brought to Malawi commerce, modern medicine, Christianity and civilisation. We forsake the fact that there were iron smelters in the land before Livingstone set in, hence the name Malawi. The name is derived from the flames of fire rising from their furnances. Obviously, the iron smelters were selling their wares, either in exchanging of food or cowrie shells. There was fair trade before Livingstone. History teaches us of the barter trade before the arrival of Livingstone. That the natives healed the sick, however crude the means, before he set foot on the
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Dan the sax maestro

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After watching the Malawi Army brass band during parades in Lilongwe, little boys used to go back home and form their own ‘bands’. It is easy to imagine the little boys, with drums made from tins, ‘police caps’ from cartons and empty Chibuku packets making up for boots, walking about the streets of their township and doing renditions of such popular songs as Ku Chichiri Sindidzapita . No one could imagine that one of those little boys, playing songs just for the fun of it, was making the first steps in a long journey to music. No one could ever imagine that the little boy who was so much given to playing a ‘trumpet’ made from a pawpaw stalk would grow into one of the greatest saxophone players to come out of the Malawi soil. Dan Sibale looks back at those early years with a tinge of nostalgia on his forehead: "We used to have fun watching the Army band and we formed our own band and mimicked the music they played. I played no other instruments than the trumpet made from a pawpaw s
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