Salima

Salima's story is one of a crossing point. The lakeshore plain here has long been farmed and fished by Chewa communities, and in the nineteenth century the shore north of the town lay on the routes by which slaves and ivory were carried from the interior towards the coast, with the great market of that trade at Nkhotakota further up the lake. Missions and colonial administration arrived with the British protectorate in the 1890s, and a small boma grew where the road from the plateau met the lake.

What made the modern town was transport. The extension of the railway north from Blantyre reached Salima in 1935 and ran on to the lake port of Chipoka, linking the Shire Highlands and the port of Beira, in Mozambique, with the lake, and goods were transferred here between trains, lorries and the steamers that worked the lakeshore. Salima became the district headquarters, a market for the rice, cotton and fish of the lakeshore plain and a staging post for anything moving between Lilongwe and the water.

A line west from Salima to Lilongwe and Mchinji followed in the 1970s, and the new capital at Lilongwe, completed in 1975, gave Salima a second life: the surfaced road east made Senga Bay the nearest beach to the capital's residents and its large foreign community. Lodges, campsites and weekend houses spread along the shore from the 1980s, and tourism became the district's other trade, alongside fishing, rice and the lake's increasingly hard-pressed fish stocks.

This is Chewa country, and Chichewa is the everyday language, though the lakeshore has long mixed people: Yao traders and fishing families brought Islam along the water from the south, Tonga and Tumbuka fishermen have moved down from the north, and the town's market draws traders from across the region. Mosques stand among the churches in some villages, and both Christian and Muslim festivals are marked.

Fishing sets the rhythm of village life. Crews go out at night or before dawn in wooden boats, often with lamps to draw the usipa, and the catch is landed, sorted, dried and sold by women who run much of the lakeshore trade. Nets and boats are frequently owned collectively or by a village patron, and their maintenance is a communal business carried out on the beach in full view.

The Chewa of the district are matrilineal, and the Nyau societies that perform Gule Wamkulu, the masked dance of the Chewa, are active in the villages inland from the shore, appearing at funerals and initiations rather than for visitors. Uninitiated outsiders keep a respectful distance and do not photograph the dancers without permission. Football on the beach at dusk, church and mosque on the weekend, and the long sociability of the market are the town's other constants.

Salima town itself is small, the administrative centre of a district of about 478,000 people that stretches along the lakeshore and inland to the foot of the plateau. Most people live in single-storey brick or mud-brick houses with iron roofs, either in the town's grid of compounds or in the shoreline villages, and water comes from standpipes, boreholes and the lake.

Three trades support the district: fishing, farming and the lakeshore tourist business. Rice grown on the plain is a local speciality alongside maize, cassava and vegetables, and the fish landed on the beaches — chambo, usipa and others — are sold fresh, smoked or sun-dried and carried up to Lilongwe's markets. The lodges at Senga Bay employ cooks, guides, boatmen and guards, and the town's shops, workshops and transport services serve everyone else.

The day begins before dawn, when the boats come in and the market opens, and slows through the heat of the early afternoon. Declining fish catches, rising prices, unreliable electricity and the cost of fuel are the pressing worries, and the lakeshore's exposure to storms and flooding late in the rains is a recurring one. Weekend traffic from the capital is the district's busiest tide.

Salima eats from the lake. Chambo, the prized Lake Malawi tilapia, is grilled whole over charcoal or fried and served with nsima, the stiff maize porridge that is the foundation of every meal, or with rice grown on the surrounding plain. Usipa, the lake's small silvery fish, is the everyday protein: sun-dried on racks, then simmered with tomato and onion into a strong relish, or fried crisp and eaten whole. Kampango, a lake catfish, turns up in stews.

Ndiwo, the relish eaten with nsima, is otherwise made of beans, pumpkin leaves or cassava leaves cooked with groundnut flour, or cabbage and tomato, with chicken or goat for a celebration. Mangoes, bananas and cassava grow well on the warm lakeshore, and roasted maize cobs, fried cassava chips and mandasi, lightly sweet fried dough, are sold at the roadside and the bus stage.

Thobwa, the sweet, lightly fermented maize or millet drink, is served at gatherings, and chibuku sorghum beer and bottled Malawian lager are drunk in the town's bars. Lodges along Senga Bay add grilled fish platters, salads and Malawi gin to the local repertoire, and sweet milky tea is drunk all day.