Cape Maclear

The cape takes its European name from David Livingstone, who reached it in 1859 and named it after his friend Thomas Maclear, Her Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope. Its Malawian name is Chembe, after the village that occupies the bay. Yao and Chewa fishing communities were already established on the Nankumba peninsula, within reach of the trade routes that carried ivory and slaves from the lake towards the Indian Ocean coast.

In 1875 the Free Church of Scotland chose the bay for its first Livingstonia mission, drawn by the sheltered anchorage and the fresh water. The site proved unsuitable: poor soil and tsetse fly forced a move, and in 1882 the mission shifted north to Bandawe, eventually settling on the high Khondowe plateau. A small group of graves near the village is what remains of the attempt, and the failure of the first site is the reason the name Livingstonia now belongs to a town far to the north.

The bay stayed a fishing village through the colonial period. In 1980 Lake Malawi National Park was declared around the shore, the hills and the offshore islands, and it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 for the exceptional diversity of its cichlid fish. Chembe remained the largest of the fishing villages on the park's foreshore. From the 1980s the bay became a fixture on the overland route through southern Africa, and small lodges and campsites spread along the sand, giving the village a second economy alongside fishing.

Cape Maclear is a Chembe village where two ways of life share one beach. The fishing day begins before dawn, when plank boats and dugouts return with usipa and chambo, and it ends with nets spread on the sand. Beside it runs the lodge economy of boat crews, guides, cooks and curio carvers, much of it seasonal and much of it family-run.

The population is mixed Chewa and Yao, and both Christianity and Islam are part of village life; churches and a mosque stand within a few hundred metres of the beach, and the call to prayer and Sunday singing are both ordinary sounds here. Chichewa is the common language, with Chiyao widely spoken, and enough English along the shore for the tourist trade.

Football on the sand in the late afternoon is the village's shared entertainment, and music from the beach bars carries along the bay at night. Carvers and bracelet sellers work the strip, and their approach is direct; a polite refusal is understood and expected. Visitors are asked to respect the difference between the beach and the village behind it — the first is the tourist strip, the second is where several thousand people live, and modest dress and asking before taking photographs are the local expectations.

Several thousand people live in Chembe, in a village that has grown quickly and is hemmed in on all sides by the national park, so its houses are packed tightly along the shore. Most households depend on fishing, on the tourism trade, or on both, and a smaller number farm plots outside the park boundary or trade in the village shops.

The rhythm is set by the water. Boats go out at night for usipa, which is spread on drying racks and open sand in the morning and sold on to traders who take it inland; chambo and other tilapia are sold fresh. Declining catches, driven by years of heavy fishing pressure and a growing population, are a serious concern and have pushed more families towards tourism work.

Electricity and piped water reach the village but are not dependable, and the national fuel and foreign-currency shortages of recent years have made transport and supplies more expensive and less regular. Bilharzia in the lake, malaria and the pressure of firewood collection on the surrounding park forest are the standing local problems. Schools, a clinic and small shops serve the village, but banks, the hospital and the main market are in Monkey Bay and Mangochi.

The lake supplies almost everything eaten here. Chambo, the prized tilapia of Lake Malawi, is grilled or fried whole and served with nsima, the stiff maize porridge eaten by hand, or with chips at the beach bars. Usipa, small silver fish netted at night, are dried on the sand and then fried crisp or cooked into a relish; kampango, a large lake catfish, appears when a boat lands one.

Away from the fish, meals follow the Malawian pattern: nsima with ndiwo, a relish of beans, pumpkin leaves, rape or cabbage, often cooked with groundnut flour. Rice is common near the lake. Tomatoes, onions, bananas, mangoes and papaya come from the village stalls, and roasted maize and mandasi, small fried dough cakes, are the everyday snacks.

The beach lodges cook a mixture of Malawian and international food and will grill the day's catch to order. Drinks are the national ones: Kuche Kuche and Carlsberg lagers brewed in Blantyre, chibuku, the thick commercial sorghum beer sold in cartons, thobwa, the lightly fermented maize drink made in the villages, and Malawian tea grown on the estates in the far south.