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Adventure into the Real Interior

Adventure into the Real Interior


Postby wpeterfinlay » Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:24 pm

Date walked: 09/10/1969

Time taken: 1000

Distance: 2000 km

Ascent: 5000m

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Donald Brownlie examining an old lady by the wayside near Livingstonia


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Chama Mulenga points the way for me. Beyond her is her dad's hut where I had spent the night. Near Lubwa, Northern Zambia


My last post was about an all-night adventure on Liathach in Torridon. Here I go back a few years. Adventures do not always need to be amidst the great hills. They can also be adventures of humanity and my greatest admiration is for those who devote their lives to humanity in its many needs in a very needy world.

This takes me to my time in Africa. I remember missionaries there who lived for many years in remote places, sometimes to teach, sometimes to heal, sometimes, or perhaps I should say always to share in the joy of the Gospel of Jesus alongside the people they lived amongst.

Here my memory goes back to Dr Donald Brownlie from Northern Ireland. I met this very lovely man in October 1969. I was working with the United Church of Zambia and had taken off on my Honda 50 for a break. My wee bike struggled up the 20 hairpin bends from the shores of Lake Malawi to Khondowe, or Livingstonia as it is now better known, and that same night Donald was welcoming me and I stayed with him for 2 weeks in the Stone House (built originally for Dr Robert Laws in 1894). He was such a very friendly man.

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Matron Grace at Livingstonia Hospital with Peter (plus fag!) and 'Medicine' Msisi and my Honda 50

Just 2 memories I will recount. The first in the back of a battered open little hospital truck. Donald was sitting on the floor surrounded by about 20 patients returning from treatment in the David Gordon Hospital in Livingstonia. And as we descended the 2000 feet to the lakeshore they were all singing hymns in the local language, ciTumbuka, with great gusto – and Donald was absolutely simply like one of them. Once down in Chitimba he got to work in a lakeshore mud house ‘clinic’. I can see him with his stethoscope, hens busy scratching away around both patient and doctor! Then it was back up the twisting dusty red road to that magnificently situated mission station with a new intake of patients.

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Donald Brownlie with young patient in his hut-clinic at Chitimba by Lake Malawi

The second memory about a week later. Donald at breakfast looking drained and grey. And he was drained – literally. He had been up all night with a woman losing masses of blood in childbirth. No stored bottles of blood then in Northern Malawi. Donald’s amazing answer was to transfuse his own blood directly into the woman, He was not the kind of man you ever could forget. He served his God and his neighbours with the devotion and love and cheerfulness of a true Christian. I thank God I had the privilege of that time with him.


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The Rolling High Grasslands of the Nyika (photo not mine)

High above Khondowe (which was it's name before being re-named in memory of the best known missionary of them all) lay the amazing uplands of the Nyika Plateau. I took the chance to climb up into this strange vast space of endless rolling grasslands which lies at around 8000 feet above sea level and 3500 above Khondowe. Not green grass here, at least not in October towards the end of the dry season. By this time everything looked yellow and the dryness of it crackled underfoot with each step. And yes, there was that sense that there might be a few tawny rather powerful beasts resting well camouflaged behind the tall grass! In fact I think I could almost say that once something of that sort of size slipped down from one of the few trees in the vicinity not far away! Lions have certainly been seen there quite recently.


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The Rock-Girt Ramparts of Mount Mulanje (photo not mine)

My other adventure was on another motor bike trip this time to the south of Malawi. There I managed an ascent of Mount Mulanje, at 3002 metres the highest mountain in Central Africa. Unlike Laurens van der Post who required a whole army of 'native' carriers (see his 'Venture to the Interior') I set off with just one young Malawian, and that just for the first part. I remember him stopping a little ahead of me and very slowly lifting his foot. The head of a baby puff adder was an inch from his instep. It did not seem to bother him unduly (even though the poison of a baby is apparently every bit as lethal as that of an adult), and he carried on cheerfully enough! Sir Laurens managed a fair bit of window dressing and dramatisation on this as well as on his Nyika adventure, but he seemed to have known well what his devotees would lap up from him!

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The 'Red Route' led through Jumbled Boulders and Juniper Thickets towards the Summit (photo not mine)

Anyhow I carried on to nearer the summit, and now on my own, trying in the amazing jungle of jumbled boulders and juniper thickets to follow the splashes of red paint which give it the name of the 'red route'. To quote another adventurer: 'Red arrows were painted on rocks at regular intervals, and without them even George, who had been guiding the peak for 12 years, may have had trouble following the same route every time. I have rarely followed such a convoluted, mind-boggling course up a mountain.....We shinned up slabs and round the edge of boulders on horizontal ledges with airy drops below, and through narrow gaps between others.....We found ourselves in miniature forests between rock faces.....there were boulders to crawl underneath.....' That is very much as I remember it and if I had read that before I would never have attempted it on my own. Up at nearly 10,000 feet alone there certainly were moments or rather minutes and more of anxiety! No wonder it's Malawian name is 'Sapitwa' which translates from the Chichewa as 'Don't Go There!' But I had gone there and I made it to the top with nothing of the sort of crowd one would expect on the highest mountain in Central Africa - expect on many a Munro indeed! In fact I had it all to myself for as long as I liked....or until I thought 'I better see if I can get myself down from here!'


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Donald on a Search in thick forest near Livingstonia for a Stream to operate a Hydro Scheme for his Hospital

But this has been a bit of a digression into the realms of boasting of my achievements! As I have said the achievements that mean far more to me are those of people who give their lives without a thought for themselves or any kind of consideration do do with 'reputation'. In fact they would not even think of what they do as being 'achievement'. That is where I left off with Dr Brownlie at his hospital and clinics in northern Malawi. When I was there he was amazingly the only doctor in the whole of that part of Malawi. Back in his native Northern Ireland he could only think of the huge number of doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals there and he just longed to be back with the people he knew needed these services more than western Europeans can ever begin to imagine. He suffered later from the tyranny of President Hastings Banda and after eleven years was expelled on a trumped up charge of performing an abortion. He served in Uganda for a number of years before returning once more to his beloved Malawi for the last four years of his life. He died in 2004. A truly wonderful Christian and human being.

I will close with this end-piece. I was transferred in 1971 to Lubwa in Zambia's Chinsali District. Lubwa was like Livingstonia a Mission station and one of the first people to serve there had himself been sent there from Livinstonia. His name was David Kaunda. Yes, Kaunda. A famous name in Zambia's history. His son's name was Kenneth Kaunda who did so much to bring about Zambia's independence from colonial rule and of course he was the very first President of an independent Zamia. I used to visit his mother who lived in a traditional Zambian hut not far from me. Her name was Helen Kaunda and she had come so many years before with her minister-teacher husband from Livingstonia to help to found churches and to bring the joy of Christ as so wonderfully expressed by African peoples to a new region of the continent.

The real interior is where the Love of Christ reigns for the ordinary, and especially for the many suffering, people of the world.

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Donald with patients near Mlowe on the shores of Lake Malawi
Last edited by wpeterfinlay on Mon Nov 15, 2021 7:06 pm, edited 8 times in total.
wpeterfinlay
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Re: Adventure into the Real Interior

Postby Alteknacker » Wed Nov 10, 2021 11:22 pm

Interesting.

You don't seem to have loaded the correct link for the pic - it's not showing.
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Re: Adventure into the Real Interior

Postby wpeterfinlay » Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:46 am

Thanks for this, Alteknacker. Think I've sorted it now!

Glad you enjoyed this, Mel. Now the photos are in place it should give a clearer idea of it if you have time for another look!
Last edited by wpeterfinlay on Sun Nov 14, 2021 9:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Adventure into the Real Interior

Postby Mal Grey » Sat Nov 13, 2021 11:32 am

Fascinating, thank you.
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Location: Surrey, probably in a canoe! www.wildernessisastateofmind.co.uk

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