Revd Ian Gilmour - St Andrew's & St George's

In the Footsteps of Livingstone?
Jack Thompson writes from Malawi
Yesterday was one of the most interesting days in my time in
Malawi and yet, in a sense, it was foreign to the country. The
previous day I had been picked up by a driver from Zomba
Theological College and driven for two hours to the western
bank of the Shire River. In the darkness a small boat waited to
ferry me across to the other side. In a river usually teeming with
hippopotami, elephants and crocodiles, I couldn‟t help
wondering during the ten minute crossing what was around and
underneath the boat. But, as it turned out, it appears only to
have been water.
We were heading for Mvuu Camp, a tourist lodge on the East
Bank of the Shire, (pronounced SHEE-RAY) where I was to
meet a BBC team making a documentary on David Livingstone.
The following day I was to be interviewed as one small part of
that programme. The last time I had met the producer, Richard
Downdes, had been in the palm lounge of the Balmoral Hotel.
Now we were in very different circumstances, and the palms
were certainly not in pots! We were surrounded by hundreds of
them in the African bush alongside the mighty Shire River, for
much of its course several hundred metres wide.
In a large open sided dining area (a cross between a marquee
and a huge African hut) the BBC team was assembling for
dinner. The team was larger than I had expected: two
cameramen, a sound engineer, a producer, a director, a „fixer‟
(who looked after things like transport, permission to film in
certain places, food etc.) and, of course, a presenter – the
seemingly ubiquitous Neil Oliver. In this case, I discovered, the
word „seemingly‟ was unnecessary, since the series he was
making - „the Last Explorers‟ - involved trips to Antarctica, USA,
Japan and Africa. The team were happy and friendly and, three
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