Cape Maclear, Malawi

Kept pumping with kind-heartedness and altruism, my first real adventure as an impressionable teen began in the “warm heart of Africa” and I had no idea how much I was about to learn about the country’s contrast between quality of life and quality of heart.

David Livingstone titled the country’s central reservoir “The Lake of Stars,” and it is; it really is. As the sun goes down over Cape Maclear, you can rest on a twinkling shore beneath the radiance of the Milky Way, overlooking the water and spotting hardworking fishermen by the soft glow of their lanterns, while you listen to a small band of children sing the night away to their own music.

As Malawi woke up, I knew I was there to take in its physically overwhelming beauty as much as I was there to be inspired by the hidden beauty of the natives.

A spontaneous opportunity to visit the village behind the idyllic scenes of the lake brought about the most hard-hitting memory I have from my trip; there was a paradox in every direction.

To your left you can watch two men wearing loose cotton trousers and straw hats, taking it in turns to use a handheld saw on a tree trunk in the hope they can create a table. They crack jokes and work hard together despite the heat of the high sun.

Ahead of you a small girl walks hand in hand with her brother, each wearing a pair of scruffy flip flops and carrying their weekly shop: maize, a cupful of beans and some rice. They’ve barely lived twelve years of life between them and they already have to walk hours for a nutritional pittance but they do so with a grin from ear to ear.

You don’t even need to look to your right to be moved by the sound of several locals singing to the sound of three untuned guitar strings and a drum made from a broken bucket. They dance underneath the disintegrating ceiling of a small room decorated with toilet roll.

Now look behind you. Absorb the picture of a group of children playing with a ball of litter tied together with plastic bags; men holding up the meaning of a hard-earned living as they try to sell their home-grown sugar canes, and crowds of women trekking for miles together as they sing, while their thoughts hold up substantial weights of commodities.

The absence of negativity in this great nation is something to aspire to. In a world driven by money, people of this developing country have the most developed hearts of all and made me appreciate a whole new, beautiful spectrum of life’s colours.