Mt Mulanje, 14 April 07: A tale of two toilets
by Lianna
Mt.
Mulanje is a stunningly beautiful and rarely visited mountain plateau in the
far south of Malawi. Overshadowing the green tea-plantations at its base,
the 10 peaks of the massif are primitively mysterious, rising to over 3000m,
packed with dramatic gorges and fast-flowing rivers. Trees cling to every
steep hillside, bedecked with vines, figs and pale-green hanging mosses. Even
the forestry work buildings that are found all over the massif, and the families
that live in them, don’t mitigate the prehistoric feel of Mulanje.
Watching over primordial and managed forests, are several major crags, 300-1700m
high. Most have been climbed before via a handful of adventurous pioneers
in the early 70s. The massif also boasts the longest continuous rock-climb
in Africa, on the 1700m-high west face of Chambe Peak, described in our ancient
guidebook using all those adjectives we love to hate – ‘interesting,’
‘traditional,’ ‘challenging,’ ‘chimney-like.’
mmm.
And
then, the night before it was time to leave, the sluice gates opened and the
torrents came down, drenching the roads that we had to travel to get to Mulanje
and putting paid to any west-face plans, but the 700m high east face was still
a worthy objective.
Now, I’ve climbed here before. Suffice to say,this time I left all my climbing gear down in BiRT, bringing just a pair of runners and my camera… but upon telling the horror stories of that epic half-ascent, I saw eyes light up with the mad glint of a coveted adventure. Stories of endless wet chimneys, dripping with moss and soil, friable rock, beshrubbed walls and a distinct lack of pro. Vegetation that might have been quite solid, were it not rotten or burnt. Stories of a hastily beaten retreat, abseiling off tat draped precariously over small protrusions or wrapped around the stems of burnt and dead Vellozia plants.
These
stories were enough for some people to decide to spend their time walking,
perhaps climbing a few routes on the many smaller outcrops, and maybe taking
a few pictures before relaxing with a book in the sunshine.
But for others, the scene had been set. Adventures and epics would be had. And epics were had. But not necessarily the epics we’d expected. (Those with toilet sensitivities should skip this next bit…)
We got ill. And I don’t mean that a few of us got a little sniffly. I mean that, en masse, we were riotously, gruesomely ill. Only a few escaped the bug that had, we read later, brought Lilongwe (from where we’d come a week ago) to a standstill. We had 20 people in a basic mountain shelter with no beds or showers, and only two long-drop toilets, most of them so ill that they lay in a chilled sweat outside, wrapped in sleeping bags, getting up sporadically to stumble in a panic to the long-drops.
Which
led to a toilet paper crisis that I feel wholly justified in calling an Epic.
We’d each taken what we’d need for 5 days. But we hadn’t
reckoned on daily ablutions becoming so radically more numerous and copious.
Within 36 hours we were all out. No more toilet paper but still lots of very
ill people. Bugger. This could get very bad indeed.
Happily one bright and resourceful soul spent a day running around collecting the biggest softest leaves he could find, and came back with admirably large piles of the things, which were neatly stacked in the toilets for all to use. Disaster averted!
But, enough of that. (Sensitive types can resume reading here)
The few healthy folk put their time to good use by climbing a lovely new route on Chambe (albeit accidentally, when they got a little lost on the normal route.) Following a wide ridge with expansive views of southern Malawi on one side, and the Chambe valley on the other, the route takes you up to a shoulder before breaking out onto a steepening slab, climbed with the exposure gnawing ever more insistently at your heels as you pad delicately up and up, directly to the summit.
Most victims did recover from the Lilongwe Fever, luckily, with enough time
to enjoy a day or two in the massif. Some set out to climb ‘Easy Street,’
the shortest and easiest route on the east 
face.
While some climbed quickly and efficiently, others were quite clearly still
ill. One pair got lost and gave up before they’d even reached the crag,
although how they could fail to find a 700m high, 1km wide crag that loomed
so near the hut I'll never understand. Another pair walked all the way in
before realising they’d forgotten to take a rope!
Others went up the highest peak in the massif, Sapitwe, which means ‘don’t go there’ in the local language. The scramble follows as amazing route, so complex it would be impossible to describe or follow without the red dots that line it. It pads up endless slabs, hops across water-runnels, furkles through tiny gaps between boulders and crawls along tunnels through the dwarf forests. Fun.
Then it was time to slip once again down the slimy tracks, back to the forest station where BiRT would be waiting to take us back to the campsite with its much-needed showers. And loo paper.
