Dedza

The hills around Dedza hold some of the oldest human traces in central Malawi. The granite shelters of the Chongoni area were painted in red by BaTwa hunter-gatherers over a very long period, and later in white by Chewa farmers whose designs are linked to Nyau initiation and funerary ceremonies — a sequence of use that led UNESCO to inscribe the area as a World Heritage Site in 2006 and makes it the densest concentration of rock art in the region.

Bantu-speaking farmers settled the highlands, and from the fifteenth century the Chewa-speaking Maravi chiefdoms held the plateau. The nineteenth century brought upheaval: Ngoni groups moving north from southern Africa settled in the Dedza and Ntcheu highlands and raided their neighbours, and slave and ivory caravans crossed the region towards the coast. The British took the area into their protectorate in the 1890s, and Dedza grew as a colonial boma and district headquarters in the cool highlands, with a mission, a school and a market serving the surrounding villages.

Its position shaped everything that followed. The town sits on the main road between Malawi's two largest cities and close to the Mozambican border, which made it a trading and transit point, and a place of refuge and crossing during the Mozambican civil war. The pottery workshop on the edge of the town and the growing interest in the Chongoni shelters gave Dedza a modest tourist trade that it retains.

Dedza is Chewa country, and Chichewa is spoken as a first language throughout the district, with English used in offices and schools. Chewa society here is matrilineal: village membership and land pass through the mother's line, and uncles hold much of the authority that fathers hold elsewhere. Headmen and chiefs remain important in village affairs, and outsiders are expected to greet them, or their representatives, before working in a village.

The Nyau secret societies are strong in these hills. Their masked dance, Gule Wamkulu, recognised by UNESCO, appears at funerals, initiations and chiefly installations, with dancers in full-body costumes and carved masks who are understood to be spirits rather than men in costume. Uninitiated people, including visitors, keep away from the dancers and do not photograph them. The white paintings in the Chongoni shelters are tied to the same tradition, and some sites are still used ceremonially.

Craft is the town's other identity. The pottery workshop trained local potters and made Dedza a known name for ceramics, and carving, basketry and weaving are practised in the villages. Catholic and Presbyterian churches dominate the religious landscape, with choirs, weddings and funerals the main public gatherings, alongside the district's football matches and market days.

Dedza town itself is small, while the district around it is one of the most densely settled rural areas in Malawi, with more than 800,000 people at the 2018 census farming small plots in the hills. Most households live in brick houses with iron or thatched roofs, gathered in villages along the roads and streams, and collect water from boreholes and standpipes.

Farming is the district's living. The cool highland soils grow maize, beans, potatoes, cabbages and tomatoes, much of which is trucked to Lilongwe and Blantyre, and small-scale tobacco is grown as a cash crop. Forestry plantations on the hills provide timber and charcoal, legally and otherwise, and the pottery, the shops, government offices, schools and the transport trade along the M1 employ much of the town. Cross-border trade with Mozambique is a steady sideline.

The day starts early and cold in the dry season, with fires lit against the morning chill and buses loading before dawn. The pressing issues are familiar across Malawi — rising prices, fuel shortages, patchy electricity — with local ones alongside them: the pressure of a growing population on small landholdings, deforestation of the hills for charcoal and erosion of farmland on the slopes.

Dedza eats the highlands. Nsima, the stiff white maize porridge eaten by hand, is the basis of lunch and dinner, served with ndiwo — a relish of beans, pumpkin or bean leaves, cabbage or tomato and onion, often thickened with pounded groundnuts, and with goat, chicken or beef on better days. The cool soils make the district one of Malawi's potato-growing areas, and potatoes appear boiled, in relish and as chips at every roadside stall.

Highland vegetables and fruit are Dedza's market speciality — cabbages, carrots, tomatoes, peas and, in season, strawberries and peaches sold in baskets along the M1. Lake fish reaches the town dried rather than fresh: usipa, the small silvery fish of Lake Malawi, sold by the heap and cooked into a strong relish, and salted chambo brought up from Salima and the lakeshore.

Street and travellers' food is straightforward: roasted and boiled maize cobs, fried cassava, mandasi, the lightly sweet fried dough eaten with tea, and grilled meat cut on a board with salt and chilli. Thobwa, the sweet fermented maize or millet drink, is made for gatherings, chibuku sorghum beer and bottled lager are drunk in the bars, and tea, grown in the south, is taken sweet and milky against the highland cold.