Bicycles, backpacks, a back-up van and a 14-year-old. What to do when you’re the mom and you’ve never ridden a bicycle except into a bush? You bite the bullet. Knowing that for kids, an adventure in an unfamiliar place is an education. It gives a vision of different traditions, cultures and lifestyle. It also teaches obvious lessons in history and geography. Not to mention resilience. Yours as well and theirs.
“Think local,” said common sense and several adverts promoting tourism.
“You’ve been working so hard, I’ve hardly seen you,” commented my 14-year-old daughter.
“Come to Malawi, the warm heart of Africa,” encouraged the brochure I picked up in a Durban wildlife society office.
Well, Malawi might not be strictly local when you’re living in South Africa, but neither is it as far away is Monaco, Milwaukee or any of those other places where we would need far more South African rands than my bank account would cough up. Being another country and with the romance of Out of Africa always a lure, Malawi seem close enough for comfort and budget yet distance enough to give a hint of the exotic.
So it was that the pair of us, mother and daughter, set off one Sunday evening on the overnight bus from Durban to Johannesburg, the cheapest transport we could find. Our backpacks, dug from the mothballs they’d settled in since last year’s holidays, bulged with sleeping bags, mosquito repellent, suntan lotion and skirts to hide our knees. Women’s knees, back then, had to be covered in Malawi except at the lake we’re just about anything went.
We arrived at the rotunda at 5:30am and jumped on a bus to what was then still Jan Smuts Airport (these days, OR Tambo International) where after breakfast of rubbery scrambled eggs and coffee, we met up with our tour party and jetted off our destination: Lilongwe’s Kamuzu International Airport.
Now, in case you think we were embarking on some luxury African safari tour, let me put you in the picture. Arranged by an company called Trailblazers, the trip we went on was the first organised cycling tour in Malawi.
I confess, I balked initially at the prospect of cycling. After knocking my two front teeth out (luckily the baby ones) on a two-wheeled push-scooter my parents gave me for Christmas one still-baby-tooth-time year, and that was indoors, no two-wheeler bicycle ever appeared in my life.
A friend let me try her two-wheeler once, on a quiet side street. I still recall riding directly into some bushes when I heard a car coming up behind me, and that was the end of that. I remember hell-rides on the handlebars of my parents’ farmer friends’ son’s bike, but that was a case of hoping for the best and screaming with excited terror; not riding myself… So there was no bicycle-riding memory to draw on.
But what self-respecting mother could be so bad a sport as to admit defeat an advance and fess up to an inability to ride a bike?
Necessity having proved itself over the years, not only as a mother of invention, but also of great enterprise, I decided to trust in fate. My daughter’s bubbling enthusiasm was motivation in itself. If I had to cope, of course I would.
Malawi, an independent republic since 1966 — with at that time, an executive life president, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda — looks tiny on the map of Africa. But to any visitor, it is a land of contrasts and distances.
Banda, to give a bit of history, served as prime minister of Malawi from independence (from the UK) in 1964 to 1966, when the country became a republic and he became the first president, ruling until (his defeat in) 1994. An intrepid man, who overcame incredible odds to become only the second Malawian person to receive a medical degree. (In fact, two medical degrees. One in the US and a second in the UK, where he practiced for a time as a doctor in Newcastle and later, in London.)
While he is said to have supported women’s rights and improved the country’s infrastructure, he was known to preside over one of the most repressive regimes in Africa.
For visitors to Malawi at that time, rules included no bell-bottoms. For women, knees covered (hence our skirts while cycling). One of our party got arrested — and fortunately for all of us, released a couple of hours later — for taking a photo of a photo of President Banda that was displayed in a prominent spot along the roadside. Read about Banda on Wikipedia.
Malawi stretches 900km from the north where it borders Tanzania, to the south where it protrudes into Mozambique.
Lake Malawi, which stretches almost the entire length of the country, is the third largest lake in Africa. It is possible to sail for hours without seeing land.
There are several sets of mountains, the most famous for hikers and climbers being Mount Mulanje https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1201/ , which rises from the tea plantations in the south.
Twelve of us touched down at Lilongwe’s airport. For some reason, 10 of the 12 were women. Are women more adventurous? Are women more energetic? We all pondered the issue long and hard and reached no logical conclusion.
To keep things moving, there were two group leaders: Roger Garland from New Zealand, 24 years old and seeing the world before taking over the family sheep farm back home, and Mark Head, a recently qualified doctor from South Africa who told us he was thinking of setting up a practice in Malawi.
Before we left, we were assured that it wasn’t necessary to be experienced cyclist. Relief. We could ride at our own pace and the back-up vehicle would always be in the right place — at the back — to pick up stragglers and dropouts. When tired, our bikes would be strapped to the roof of the van and we could rest and enjoy the view from inside.
Well, this all turned out to be true. As the rest of the party were all veterans of the two-wheeler, the reassurance didn’t mean as much to them as to some of us.
The women on the trip were, in fact, amazing. The group included two medical doctors and three psychologists as well as a recently widowed “housewife” (her description) who said she had decided to think positive and use an adventure to help her get over the death of her husband.
All of them whizzed along as if they’d been born with wheels instead of legs and climbed mountains like proverbial mountain goats.
To give some idea of such a holiday trip in case any mothers — or fathers — are feeling the urge to follow a suit, here or some extracts and memorable incidents from my diary.
Day One: Set off gingerly at the insistence of group leader, Roger, who was keen for us to break the ice — break a leg? — and cycle from the airport.
My daughter, I will call her by her initial, K, going forward, and I chose mean-looking red machines from the line-up of hired bikes on offer. Hoped the colour would help cars to avoid us. Unfortunately, no three-wheelers. For me, not her, she being an adequate rider, if not as “seasoned” as the rest of the party.
Difficult to ride a long skirts. K and I decide it was better to hitch them up and sit lumpy then risk catching them in the spokes. We both managed the 4km to the main highway. It felt much further…
The others completed 40km and kept going until after sunset. For us, though, a promising start.
I learn my first useful lesson the hard way. I can’t do two things on a bike at once, namely ride and answer questions. Some kind soul asked me how I was doing. I said “fine” — and fell off. Bought Dettol and Savlon cream from a roadside store. Obviously, that was what they meant by “Bring first aid kit.” I’d only bought Anadin.
K, fortunately, is more competent than I am, I note at the time, having ridden friends bikes in the suburbs. She said she enjoyed her day and, after a braai at the Grand Beach campsite, crawled into her sleeping bag under the stars and fell asleep.
Day Two: Woke up on the sandy lakeside beach to a wonderful sunrise — a pink glow over Lake Malawi. The lake looks so much like a sea that neither K nor I could get used to the idea of no salt stinging our eyes when we swam.
Discovered with relief our bottoms were not bruised from the unaccustomed experience of sitting on bicycle saddles.
We wondered through the nearby fishing village and saw hundreds of fish being smoked in kilns for market. Rode from the beach to the hippo pool — total 10km. Both of us battling with the old-bike gears.
Resorted to walking uphill, riding down. Lots of Ebony stores on downhills. Zoomed past them, afraid to stop in case not able to restart. The kids all wave and shout. K is in command. She can raise an arm to wave back. I feel like I’m riding a tightrope. Have to cling to the handlebars and concentrate.
Didn’t want to appear unfriendly so got hoarse shouting “Hello” while staring straight in front. We’re major entertainment on our bikes.
Decided it was because no TV (back then) and not much happens. Families run great distances to laugh, look and sometimes touch as we pass.
Boarded a ferry at Chipoka. Big and roomy, just like the boat that takes one from Italy to Greece. Slept on that deck, too, the pair of us, on a mother-and-daughter Europe odyssey. Here, a bit sooty. A bit hard. Good for the back, I remind myself.
Day Three: All day on boat. K made friends with some children. They spent most of the time on deck playing jacks with bottle tops. The people here are amazingly friendly. They’re always smiling. Feel envious of those wonderful white teeth, dazzling against burnished ebony faces.
Day four: Woke up in our sleeping bags on the beach. The local children, so enterprising, brought us boiled eggs, peanut brittle and freshly baked biscuits at 20 tambala each (in their currency, 100 tambala being one kwacha).
Had them for breakfast washed down with warm sherry bought at the airport in Johannesburg. Amazing how conventions change on holiday. When nature calls, the bush suddenly becomes an acceptable toilet.
K insisted that I wear her shoes when mine broke on the hot track back into town. Holidays like this, I decide, bring out the best people. It should be compulsory for mothers to get away with their kids. When all the routine day-to-day hassles are forgotten, you relax and grow close again.
The occasional adversity of adventure unites. Had shoes stitched at the market. We both bicycled 25km today and walked up only two hills. K had a persistent suitor, a fellow called Crispin from the Malawi security services. Roger picked him up hitching. He said he was 33, “but I’m still really a teenager.” She did a quick duck when he started calling me his mother-in-law and started talking about goats and cars and a marriage settlement.
Day five: Woke up at 6:30am on the sandy ground in the Rumphi guesthouse garden. Had coffee and rusks instead of on bikes into a howling gale. Not fun.
K and I persevered briefly, but after consultation, stopped. Decided we had come to enjoy ourselves. This was torture. We went into one of the dozens of tea houses that line the country roads and ordered a cuppa while waiting for the back-up van. The tea house, like many others, was about the size of my bathroom. A tiny kitchen table and three chairs fitted in neatly.
The people here have all sorts of methods like this to earn a bit of money. Our waitress swopped addresses with K and asked if they could be pen-pals. It’s common practice and the people actually follow up and write.
Day six: Didn’t ride today. Instead, got up early and were dropped at the foot of a cliff. We were to climb for four hours up a rough and winding dirt road to a place called Livingstonia, named and memory of David Livingstone.
The first bend, at the bottom, was marked Bend 19. We presumed Bend One would be the top, but this is Africa, and it was only half-way. Pant, pant… huff, huff… Too huffy and panting to look for a view to admire but loved the picture of us all collapsed in front of a Coca-Cola sign when we all collapsed, vying for the shade of a little brick building at the top.
On the way down, kept company with Colleen and Linda, both medical doctors, one doing an internship in Cape Town and the other in Windhoek. Both amazingly fit.
Got back to the van after dark. Worked out we had walked 50km. Felt like one of those marathon runners whose joints become paralysed at the end of the race.
K was justifiably impressed as she had taken it easier and stopped en route. She brought me dinner in bed — in my sleeping bag under the stars on the beach. She would not bring me a chocolate brownie for dessert (and I was too achey to go get my own).
I learned in the morning why. She had been told, sworn to secrecy, that — except for a couple made specially for her, whoever was making the brownies was lacing them with Malawi Gold which, to read from this Wikipedia link, is among “the best and finest” marijuana strains in the world, regarded as one of the most potent psychoactive pure African sativas.
In the years since we were there, its reputation and availability has led to “a profound increase in marijuana tourism and economic profit” albeit, while Malawi’s parliament legalised cannabis cultivation and processing for industrial and medicinal uses in 2020, it has not been decriminalised for recreational use in the country.
Learning in the morning about the secretly laced brownies, some of the night’s “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” antics, which kind-of registered in my tired haze, made sense.
Day seven: Up early. Drove eight hours back to Lilongwe. K played charades and guessing games with the others in the van, or sat up on the roof with some of us who perched there, among the bikes, watching the countryside whizz by.
The ideal thing about travelling in a group like this is that it lightens the load on a parent as your child always has someone to keep company with.
Day eight: Had hot showers. This takes on new importance after a week without them.
During the second week, we saw the south of the country.
We actually stepped in a bed in the Liwonde National Park. The game guard warned us not to venture to the toilet after dark for fear of lions. Saw no lions, just lots of elephants.
Bought and swapped T-shirts for ebony and ivory along the roadside. K got elephant hair bracelets, ebony carving for school friends and a khanga (Malawi sarong) for a favourite teacher.
We discussed the ivory. Decided we could buy some because it came with a government certificate to say the animals had been culled and not poached.
The last two days we spent at Cape Maclear where one day K and I will drop out and live like royalty for the equivalent of (a shoestring) when we get sick of the rat race.
Travel Notes: Malawi Travel Advice.
Malawi Responsible Tourism. An early version of this story was published in Living & Loving magazine in March 1987.
