Remembering the Past in Blantyre

This blog, hopefully the first of many from Malawi, is inspired by my first “Remembering the Past…” series from Sarajevo, which you can read the first instalment of here.

I’ve now been in Blantyre for just over 48 hours, and since this marks my first time in Malawi, I wasn’t at all sure what to expect. I’m here for my PhD research, looking into the ways in which humanitarian shelter response activities (particularly those in the post-Cyclone Freddy context) influence community resilience and social cohesion in affected populations. I have my first meeting with my NGO colleagues scheduled for next Thursday, so I have nearly a week to find my footing and get settled in the country before the fun really begins…

This morning, Sunday 10^th September, I decided to go and explore the city of Blantyre more closely. I’m quickly learning I will need to adjust my body clock – it seems most people are up and about around 6am with the sunrise, and at least where I am most people are back inside by sunset around 6pm. I managed to get up at 8 (not bad for a Sunday) and headed out to explore about 9.30. I had read about of the main tourist attractions in Blantyre, St Michael and All Angels Church, and I figured that, as it was a Sunday, this might be an interesting place to check out.

The impressive St Michael and All Angels Church

I have been struck since my arrival on the strength of the role that religion plays here in Blantyre. I shared my flight from Addis Ababa to Blantyre with a group of American missionaries who were on their way to rural Blantyre and Chikwawa, and there are a significant number of churches all over the city, of many different denominations; Protestant, Baptist, Anglican, Seventh Day Adventist, Orthodox. 79.8% of Malawians identify as Christian, with a further 14% practicing Islam, and 5% holding “traditional”, indigenous beliefs. Of all the churches I’ve walked past so far though, none are older than St Michael and All Angels. Built between 1888 and 1891, it was referred to by Scottish minister Reverend Alexander Hetherwick as “the first permanent Christian Church erected... between the Zambezi and the Nile.”. This, then, marks one of the earliest moments of Christian expansion into Sub-Saharan Africa, a key moment in colonial history that would shape Malawi, and Africa more broadly, up until today.

I arrived at the church after a long walk along one of the main roads in Blantyre, to the sound of a hymn being sung by the congregation as it echoed around the grounds. Only, the singing wasn’t coming from the church itself, but rather a nearby building I would later learn was referred to as “the annex”. I went up to the church proper, and found its doors locked. I decided instead to wander around the church yard, and stumbled upon a memorial plaque that was sat in front of a cairn (I didn’t know what a cairn was either… It’s a burial mound consisting of stacked rocks, a traditional marker which takes its name from Scottish Gaelic) that listed the names of all the places in Malawi that the first missionaries visited on their trip to Malawi. The plaque in front of it read “This plaque was unveiled on 24^th October 1976 by His Excellency The Life President Ngwazi Dr H. Kamuzu Banda to mark the Centenary of the Blantyre Mission.”

The cairn, first erected in 1936 to mark the place where "the pioneers of this mission first camped" on 23rd October 1876, looked over by the centenary plaque of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled Malawi from 1964 to 1994.

Almost exactly 147 years ago, then, the Blantyre Mission arrived and began the process which led to the construction of St Michael and All Angels, completed 15 years later. Led by Henry Henderson, whose name can still be seen on the Henry Henderson Institute, within the church grounds, and at the Henry Henderson School of Excellence further down the road, this Scottish expedition set off 3 years after the 1873 death of David Livingstone, the adventurer and missionary who had first identified the Shire Highlands of southern Malawi, as a suitable site to build a mission. His stated purpose was to “defeat the slave trade by means of Christianity, Commerce, and Civilisation.”. His long career as a missionary and adventurer made him a folk hero in Victorian-era Britain, and likely influenced Britons attitudes towards Africa more strongly than anyone who came before him. This would pave the way for the massive expansion of colonial rule, culminating in the Scramble for Africa, which would devastate communities and enforce European colonial rule across the continent.

The colonial impact of the Blantyre Mission can still be felt very strongly today in the grounds of St Michael and All Angels. Blantyre itself is named after Livingstone’s birthplace, a village on the outskirts of Glasgow, from where the Mission gave this city its name. As I wandered past the monument to the Scottish Martyrs of Blantyre , a giant clock tower that also houses the church bell and is listed with the names of Scottish missionaries who died in Malawi, from the 1876 beginnings of the Mission through to at least 1937 by my reading, I was approached by a security guard at the church, who I would spend the rest of my time there with.

The Martyrs of Blantyre Clock / Bell Tower

He introduced himself and asked me what I was doing here. I told him I was just looking around, and that the history of this church was fascinating. “Of course,” he said, “can I show you around the grounds? I have been a security guard for many years so I know all the history you should know!”. I agreed, and he immediately took me from the monument into the graveyard, a sprawling open field full with gravestones as far as the eye could see. Near the entrance was a paved section, with a series of around 24 brilliant white headstones.

“This is the memorial for the Martyrs of Blantyre, the missionaries who died here in Blantyre. We have lots of people come from all around the world, but especially Scotland, to see these graves.”

The graves of the “martyrs” were in significantly better condition than those that surrounded them, even those that were much more modern. I wondered how many foreigners came to visit these graves, and if that was a reason why they were kept in such a pristine state. I asked my guide.

“Oh, we have people come to visit these graves most days. I thought that might be why you were here.”

I told him that no, I was just here to look around and that I was actually here to do some research on the Cyclone Freddy response and humanitarian action in Blantyre and Chikwawa. He pointed back to St Michaels and All Angels and explained that the reason that the Sunday service was taking place in the annex was that the church had been flooded when Freddy hit, and that they were not sure if it was safe for a full congregation to enter due to water damage to fired-brick foundations of the 132-year-old building.

“We have to have services in the annex until the engineers say it is safe,” he explained, “but if you like I can let you in to see.”

Why not? We crossed back over the courtyard and met with some of the other security guards at their station. One of them had the key to the church, and agreed to let us in. As we stood in front of the extensive main entrance, the other guard went through a service entry and went to unlock the door from the inside. My guide nodded as we heard the clink of the lock. “Freddy was a massive disaster, we were all affected. All of the houses here were flooded, including mine. The engineers have checked the church but we are waiting for their results, none of our houses have been checked. Lots of people died. We must never forget. We don’t get disasters like that here in Malawi.”

Cyclone Freddy was a storm on a scale that had not previously been seen in Malawi’s southern region. Though storms and flooding do affect the area through most rainy seasons, Freddy was the most powerful and longest-lasting cyclone on record. It also reached further north than other storms like 2019’s Cyclone Idai or 2021’s Ana, causing devastation across the city of Blantyre. My guide explained that he had lived in Blantyre for 8 years, and that nothing came close to the ferocity of the floods that Freddy brought. The thought that this storm may have permanently rendered the oldest church in Malawi unusable for its services is a bleak one, and a reminder that disasters like this not only take lives but can erase cultural histories. I am writing this the day after the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Morocco, killing thousands and destroying multiple sites of cultural and religious significance. 6 months on from Cyclone Freddy, and I still find myself passing reconstruction sites everywhere I go. Everyone I have spoken to so far since arriving has a story about Freddy, most of them are still not living in their homes, and instead have been forced to rent new houses whilst they rebuild their own from scratch, at their own costs. Long after these disasters have left the news cycle, they continue to cause devastation and heartache for the people who went through them.

We stepped inside, and the weight of the history of the room was immediately obvious. It is obviously a site of extreme importance for the devout congregation who worship there, but it is also a site that encapsulates the colonial history of the Mission. Adorning each of the walls are plaques dedicated to the founders of the Mission, to David Livingstone and Henry Henderson, and to Reverand David Clement Ruffelle Scott, another Scottish church missionary who was based in Blantyre from 1881 to 1894. He, my guide excitedly told me, was the architect who built St Michael and All Angels. With no architectural or construction experience, he designed and oversaw the construction entirely as an amateur.

A view from inside St Michael and All Angels

A very interesting fact that I would have preferred to have learned outside of the flood and storm damaged, nearly 150-year-old building.

We left the church and I thanked my guide for his tour. As we parted ways, I noticed another plaque that I had not yet read. Standing to attention before an expertly kept lawn, it overlooked 6 young trees. This one was marked 2016, for the 140-year anniversary of the Mission. The plaque read “These mibawa trees were planted by all heads of synod departments and staff marking environmental restoration as one way of fighting climate change”.

Mibawa trees are a protected indigenous tree in Malawi, known for their hardwood mahogany. The trees I saw, six years on from their planting, were still extremely young, spindly and shorter than me. They have a lot of growing to do. Mahogany trees are a long-term investment, taking up to 30 years to reach maturity. These young, fledgling mibawa trees had evidently survived the impact of Freddy, and will hopefully survive to adulthood and become a dominant feature of the otherwise lawn-covered gardens of the church.

Two of the mibawa trees, flanking the plaque that marks their planting in an effort to curb the impacts of climate change in Blantyre. A small, but meaningful act of environmental restoration.

Climate change is a threat that will define the immediate future of Blantyre. The same colonial structures that enabled the Blantyre Mission to set up where it did, to build St Michael and All Angels, and to dominate southern Africa for decades, are now contributing to the climate crisis that is currently impacting the lives of the members of this multi-generational congregation.

I am here in Malawi as a researcher, and as a member of the international humanitarian community that is engaging with local people to support their recovery from disasters like Freddy. The humanitarian system suffers from its own critique as a “continuation of the colonial system”, an argument that is strongly evidenced in the top-down approaches utilised by donors, UN agencies, and NGOs, and by the failure of the localisation agenda thus far.

These are issues that I’ve tried to grapple with back in my office in Loughborough and before that in London supporting humanitarian organisations through QSAND, but here they seem much more prescient, and immediately at the forefront of everything. I have only just arrived, and I have a lot of learning to do.

Ndakondwera kukudziwani*, Malawi. I look forward to learning more about your history, and your future.

*Pleased to meet you