Maji Zuwa is located in the northern most section of the country in the Chilumba area of the Southern part of Karonga District, right next to Chitimba.
Many people like our lodge as an alternative jumping off point to Livingstonia - Mushroom Farm - Lukwe Eco Lodge, if they want something different than what is provided at Chitimba. It's easy to do, you can leave your big bags and we're only 5 minutes down the road.
Our turnoff is at Hara Trading Centre (Hara Stage on Public Transport).
We are 500 meters from the road; very walk-able.
Directions on reaching us are as follows:
FROM THE NORTH:
From the border, take a minibus or taxi to Karonga town first and from Karonga jump on another minibus to Hara Trading Centre. You can easily make it from Mbeya to Maji Zuwa with time to spare in one day.
FROM THE SOUTH:
From Mzuzu, take a minibus or bus north to Hara Trading Centre.
FROM LIVINGSTONIA:
Maji Zuwa is 12km north of the Livingstonia turnoff (called Chitimba). A minibus between Chitimba and Hara (Maji Zuwa is 10 minutes).
FROM THE ILALA:
If you’re traveling by boat, we are across the bay from Chilumba port. You can take a taxi from the boat to Maji Zuwa or we can pick you up ourselves at a cost of K15,000 (unlimited number of people). If you get in during the day, you can take public transport to Uliwa and join with a transport from Uliwa to Hara (Maji Zuwa is 5 minutes).
Useful Information
Paying, banking, ATM etc.
We accept Malawi Kwacha, US Dollars, Euro, and British Pounds. We do not have a credit card machine and do not accept credit cards, unfortunately - so please plan ahead with cash. If you need to go to the ATM, the closest reliable one is in Karonga or Mzuzu.
Drinking water
Some places will tell you the water is not safe to drink, in order to get you to buy more water bottles. For us, feel free to fill up at our tap. We pump the water from a 45 meter deep well that runs into the aquifer, it goes through a filter, and we add chlorine to make sure we’ve killed anything that might make you run to the toilet.
Laundry service
This is available through our local ladies who work at Maji Zuwa in the kitchen. The barman can connect you with them and all the money goes into their own pockets to support their families and kids. Laundry is cheap and a normal size pile can’t exceed $5 to get done for you.
Swimming
The water is safe. We also don’t have bilharzia / schistosomiasis because we don’t have the favorable conditions for the carrier snail that breeds the larvae. One of the professors at the nearby university usually brings the students down to teach them to test for it – and he uses our beach as the place to teach the students about a negative result.
Dressing (for the ladies)
Ladies – this one is for you. If you’re going on a village walk or a tour outside of the Maji Zuwa campus, please cover up those thighs. Short shorts are not alright in our culture as the thighs are the sexiest part of a woman here. If you’d like to borrow a cloth wrap to put around your waste, please let the barman know! Our goal is not to damage our surrounding village’s culture. Around the lodge, feel free to be comfortable.
Begging
Please don’t give “stuff” to the children around the lodge. It encourages begging and works against all of our main programming (in consultation with our women’s groups and chiefs) that tries to make children into self-sustaining adults. If you’d like to make a donation of anything, please tell a staff member and they will direct you on how you can do this the right way.
Internet
We’ve been working on this one for a while… they say they are coming to install sometime soon but we know what that means in Africa. In the meantime, while we wait for our high tech beautiful system, we have wireless router we can loan you. You’ll need to load some money in that but the barman can tell you how to do that.
Non-Proft Partnership
Maji Zuwa partners with Determined to Develop (D2D) NGO on a range of development projects in the area, including projects focused on education, health, women's empowerment and the environment. We would love to take you on a tour and talk about development, our real passion and the reason we are here!
If you have any questions, please ask!