Hurry while Lake Malawi’s beaches last
The lake has been swelling since late February – reclaiming the beaches along its shores, and disrupting the country’s tourism industry.
Jack McBrams in Salima
When bright orange rays gently kiss Lake Malawi’s wavy waters, it is a sight that ordinarily attracts both local and international tourist tourists for the obligatory “I woke up in an exotic place” vacation picture.
But today, at Sigelege Beach Resort in the resort town of Salima, the beach is deserted, save for a few locals. The usually animated John Banana, a curio seller who has been plying his trade here for five years, looks downcast as he arranges his wares. “This is bad,” he says, gesturing at the waves hitting the shore. “If the water comes any higher, there won’t be any beach left.
Next door at the Blue Waters Lake Resort, manager Don Samaraseka is supervising workers as they pile rocks to shield buildings from the waves.
“We’ve packed in about 100 tonnes of rocks along the waterfront and we are still fighting the waves,” he says. When he started working at the resort in 2014, the lake waters were almost 150 metres away from where the shoreline is now, he says.
Along the stretch of the lake, as far as the eye can see, sandbags now line the shore, a frail barrier against the relentless advance of the waters. Some resorts try to pump the water away from their premises.
In the lakeshore resort districts of Mangochi, Nkhata Bay, and Nkhotakota, sandy expanses have been swallowed by the lake.
“The water’s advance knows no bounds,” says George Zibophe, the disaster preparedness official for Nkhotakota.
He says the lake began to swell in February, and tells The Continent of submerged resorts and flooded communities on the edges of the lake. “We’re still assessing,” he says. “But the damage is clear. So many buildings and structures.”
Malawi’s agency for disaster management says the rising waters have affected 1,500 households in Nkhotakota alone, and 800 of them have been displaced.
The National Water Resources Authority says Lake Malawi’s waters have risen to their highest level in more than a decade: 494.97 metres above sea level, 52 centimetres higher than last year.
As the lake swells, communities once defined by its beauty must battle the elements or watch their fortunes nosedive. But even their battles might in the end prove too feeble against nature.
As Charles Kalemba of the disaster management agency solemnly acknowledges, this development, a sudden calamity for human beings, is nature reclaiming its dominion.