A Land Called Liwonde

Even weeks after I came back from Liwonde, it still finds a way into my dreams every once in a while, and I find myself sifting through the same videos in my gallery from this magical land for what’s probably the thousandth time.

Having spent the better part of my photography journey in the endless plains of the Masai Mara or Nairobi National Park, the very first sunset in Liwonde was like stepping into another world. A world that I felt like I had only been to as a kid reading a storybook about a mythical place where beauty was never something to be looked for, but instead a feeling felt by the main character sitting under a tree at golden hour, simply slowing down and taking in the world around him.

And on more than one occasion, I put down my camera and simply looked, with no ‘real’ intention apart from being eternally grateful for the mere fact that I was really there. And most of the time, none of us uttered a word, but there were the omnipresent sounds of birds that were only occasionally broken by the crack of a twig as an elephant plucked it and stripped off its leaves, confirming to me that it was neither a dream nor a faraway land from a storybook.

So while I may not have left with a few terabytes of RAW files like I would during my safaris in Kenya, I would be lying if I said that saying goodbye after just 10 days was easy. Because even though the lions and cheetahs had eluded us, their absence gave way for me to be able to notice the beauty often overlooked. From the African Barred Owlets darting through the bushes, to the elephants enjoying their sundowners in the Shire River as we watched on from the boat, this was my first taste of Southern Africa with my eye on the shutter, but something tells me that it’s very far from my last.

Thank you Liwonde, till we meet again…