Eating Malawi

Best Unsaid

It is understood the Tonga, a tribe in the North Region of Malawi, came orginally from the Congo River Basin, west of Malawi. Some, however, arrived to the northern east shore of Lake Malawi all the way from the Indian Ocean's coast. They ventured inland, travelling a great distance, eventually finding the giant impass of water. They rowed across it, and once they found themselves standing on the enchanting blue bay that would come to be known as Nkhata Bay, they saw no reason to keep moving.

I saw no reason, either. Having rolled down from Mzuzu early one morning, I found myself standing at the bay, staring into the calm blanket of water that extends to the horizon. I felt revived by the bay breeze, and inevitably enthralled by its luring relaxation. There is something about the breeze in Nkhata Bay, it makes one fall in love with absolutely nothing. I put my bag down in the spare room of a friend's house I knew from Lilongwe, and proceeded to spend the day in a state of complete daze. I had an entire country ahead of me, and more unanswered questions than I had started out with, and yet, I couldn't help the feeling that I had, somehow, reached the place where I could be satisfied.

Every foreigner visiting Malawi needs to find Nkhata Bay, and in that journey he needs to comprehend that what he is searching for is in his own mind, because this bay, a simple town once all told, is an illusion of beauty and freedom; it reflects the thoughts we carry, it intensifies the feelings were didn't even know we had, and it invites mischief in all its innocence. The visitor, like me, will find it hard to pull away from here, will lose his sense of time and purpose staring at the horizon, and will, with any luck at all, enjoy himself greatly.

In an attempt to wake myself up from the mental holiday I'd fallen into, I went looking for the owner of a local dinner whom I'd met at the Mushroom Farm. He had offered to teach me a few Malawian dishes. His little restaurant was closed, however, and a boy selling crafts nearby informed me he had gone to a funeral that morning and would not be back for a couple of days. The best way to find out about local food, the boy said, was to go to the waterfront near the open market, where the fishermen hung out.

Traditionally, Tonga men fish and Tonga women cultivate gardens featuring cassava. These roles are deeply ingrained in the culture of the area, so much so that when I borrowed a dugout canoe and paddled my way to open water, I was stared at in disbelief and even laughed at by passing fishermen who had probably not seen many women paddling on their own before — I smiled back, hoping they were laughing at my gender rather than my paddling abilities.

A jaunt here and a wander there, I ended up making a bee line back to my friend's house, where I found the cook cleaning the kitchen. She called over two fishermen friends who seemed to compliment her knowledge of all things Tonga. Together, they explained what people eat at the bay.

From small to large, both in size and price, the fish slapped on wooden tables every Sunday at the town's market begins with usipa. The bulk of these sardine-like tiny fish arrives largely on the Ilala Ferry, having travelled north for two days from Salima, where usipa abounds. Just before sunrise, the Ilala shocks the bay with a honking entrance that then precipitates a frenzy of business. At this time most of the fishermen who were out all night — fishing in Lake Malawi is mostly done by candle light throughout the night, which from the shore looks like stars on a black horizon, hence the nickname 'lake of stars' coined by David Livingstone — return with their catch.

The air soon fills with the smell of usipa, along with that of freshly-caught utaka,
a small cichlid. In the bay it is most common to get fresh utaka and makerewa, described as a butter fish. Lake Malawi is, of course, home to more species of fish than any other body of freshwater in the world, including over one thousand species of cichlids, characterized by their multitude of colors, which make this place, and particularly the calm waters of Nkhata Bay, a splendid scenario to dive. A unique experience, then, entails going on a night dive to see schools of a large endemic catfish known as kampango. These are predator fi sh, they hunt in packs at night and can attain sizes of over one meter long. They are also gorgeous on a plate with a side of chips and salad. The king of fish, though, both in taste and popularity, is the mighty chambo. What is called chambo all across Malawi can be one of four species under the genus Nyasalapia, that is, a tilapia from Nyassa, the lake.