Walking Tour of a Fishing VIllage near Mangochi, Malawi

 At two hotels in Malawi where Donna and I stayed, along with water sports etc., activities offered included a walking tour of a fishing village. As a bit of background, Malawi is predominantly agricultural, and has a lot of poor people: it is the country with the 4th highest percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the world; 70% of people in Malawi live on less than 3 Canadian dollars per day. Living in a fishing village gives better access to protein for many of the people living there, compared to people living in drier areas, where flooding and drought are causes of famine. 

At our hotel in Mangochi, where the walking tour was offered free of charge by a staff person, at 6:30am (my choice of time, hoping to see more fishermen returning from overnight fishing).Paul, an employee of the hotel, and I set off on a tour of a local fishing village, where Paul lives. In the village, we looked at fishing practices, house building, water supply, a primary school, and a shopping centre.

On the way to the fishing area we noticed lots of women carrying buckets on top of their heads; I was told they were on their way down to the lake to get water.

 

A fishing boat like the one shown below had recently landed and was unloading its fish and large nets. I asked to take a photo of the fish, knowing that most fish in the lake exist almost nowhere else but Lake

Malawi. The fishermen made an arrangement of fish in a basket for me to photograph. The fish with black bars on their sides are a highly-desirable fish locally know as “Chambo”, known to others as Lake Malawi Tilapia, which is endangered because numbers are decreasing.

 

I saw that in addition to the fishing boat which had been fishing overnight, there were some very small canoes made from a log. One is seen above in the first picture to the right of the women.  I was told that a spotter will often go out with the fishing boat at night and shine a light in the water to find schools of fish.  The spotter would then call the fishing boat over to put the nets down. Some fishermen will go out in such a boat by themselves to fish.

 

The fish in Lake Malawi are smaller in size and numbers than they used to be. The government is concerned about overfishing and is trying to have some periods in the year for each of the fishing areas where fishing is not allowed. However, this idea is strongly resisted by the fishermen as it would leave them with no income during those periods.

 

Just as we were leaving the shore a boat headed out for daytime fishing, crewed by what looked like men in their teens and early 20’s, so the same boat can do daytime and overnight fishing.

 

Fish are sold both fresh, and dried and smoked. Many people prefer the flavour of the dried and smoked fish tossed in a pan and cooked with vegetables over that of fresh fish.  As this was not prime season for catching fish, drying tables not needed for fish can be appropriated for other purposes (see below).

Paul and I moved on through the village and I noticed people had been making bricks out of clay from the ground and laying them to dry in the sun.  After they have sun-dried, I was told the bricks are then 

moved to an oven and baked to make them harder for use in building. A picture of an oven is below.

I noticed many partially built homes and a wide variety in quality of the homes. I was told home-building is primarily driven by increased population and tempered by financial concerns.

The first thing you need is to buy a piece of property; after that you can start building your house. After paying for the property, when you can afford to buy some bricks you can buy and lay them; as you get more money you can lay more bricks down until you have your house built. Once the walls are constructed then you need to put a roof on and typically a starter home would have poles across with a layer of plastic to help keep out rain and then thatching on top to help direct the water away from the house.  You can get thatching from a neighbour who has some in stock for sale.

House ready to be rethatched. 

Note when you get better off, you may want a fence around all or part of your property, especially if you have a garden., Fencing can be delivered easily by a vendor on a bicycle.

 

This might be thought of as a “starter house”. The bricks have been covered with a mud plaster.

People cannot afford to buy windows at the same time they are building the house so they often leave the windows filled with bricks perpendicular to the walls; similarly with doors they will leave the doors partially filled with bricks until they can afford to buy a door. Partially filling the door with bricks will help keep out chickens and dogs.

After your house is built you can start improving it in addition to windows and a door, some will put a mud plaster on the side of the bricks to help keep water out and help the walls last longer, and gives the house a smooth appearance. Much later you may need a new roof, and change to a more expensive steel roof.

Examples of houses improved from the minimal; as in our community, there is a wide level diversity in incomes and wealth.

House under construction alongside a stuccoed and painted house (above).

 

Houses of more wealthy families (below). All these houses are in the same village as those above. This village is much more wealthy than a typical village in Malawi not far from a very prosperous town.

 

 

Around the houses people have free range chickens and goats and even domesticated helmeted guineafowl which are native to this part of Africa, but sometimes raised for food and/or eggs in other parts of the world.

 

We next saw a huge tree which is used as a meeting place when the mostly hereditary chief wants to

 

inform or discuss something with the people of his village, and a pump being operated in the village by people getting water from a well. I was told that to access the pump one had to pay a fee of some sort to the chief, and that many people chose not to pay the fee and got their water directly from the lake in buckets. I was told later that a fee is not supposed to be charged: such wells are provided for everyone in a village.

We then saw children heading (mostly) towards the primary school.

The primary school had about eight buildings in a circle around a large central courtyard which served as a play area for the children. Each building had one or two classrooms; each classroom I was told 

would serve about 80 students. In the central courtyard were two or three very large trees; I was told these trees served as extra classrooms as needed, so effectively a tree would be used by a teacher for a large group of kids and who would be learning underneath the tree, much as our schools might use a portable classroom.

We then headed toward the shopping center: on the way we visited a maize mill where people can get their corn ground.

  

  

 

There is much striving for cleanliness and tidiness. Her is a merchant cleaning up the front of her shop before setting out her goods.

The village shopping center is an area on the main street. On each side of the road, there is a row of semi-permanent shops. along each side of the road, in front of these shops, there was a second row of shops on each side of the road between the more permanent shops and the edges of the road. So effectively at any particular point in the street the shops are four deep with a road in the middle. A lot of commercial activity is concentrated in the shopping centre, just like in ours. You can get everything from haircut and phone recharge, hardware, seeds and fertilizer for planting, clothing, fresh vegetables and newly butchered meat or anything else you might need just like many of our shopping centers.

 

Tomatoes and other vegetables for sale on a side street; note the colourful clothing.

 

 

Many shops in Malawi seem to be run by Uncles and Aunts and Mama.  This is an example. My favourite (in a different town), which I did not get a picture of, was Aunt Fai's Liquor Store.

Freshly-butchered meat for sale.

Grains

A restaurant where the menu is posted on the front of the building: Hot chips, Rice, Nima (a thick porridge made from maize (corn) flour and water, used where we might use rice or potatoes), Chicken, Fish, Eggs, Burger, Sausages & Take-Away.

On our way back to the hotel, we crossed the pink-blossom-lined grass runway of an international airport mainly serving the hotel we were staying.

A crossing guard suggested we not dawdle as a plane was planning to land soon. Things seem informal here: passengers and crew from an international flight landing at the airport are expected after arriving to visit the police station near the runway.

Paul and I then returned to our hotel in time for breakfast, having had a great visit to the local village where I learned a great deal. While things in such a village may seem primitive by our standards, I always try to remind myself that life was not so much different in Canada 150 years ago, when Canada was still primarily an agricultural country.