Page 65 - 2020 SoMJ Vol 73 No 2_Neat

56 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

Enid Waterfield
(1927-2020)

A Tribute by John Wilson

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Enid Waterfield died in Dorset, England on 4 April 2020, aged 93. In
2008, almost 50 years after she and her husband Ken left Nyasaland, she published
a memoir of their life based in Misuku, where Ken worked as an Agricultural
Assistant in the British Colonial Service, to improve the livelihood of the
impoverished people in that remote area through the promotion of soil
conservation and the growing of coffee as a cash crop. Today this coffee not only
generates a substantial income for the local community, it is also their main
incentive for the preservation of the luxuriant evergreen forest of Mughesse as a
source of water for irrigation. This forest is floristically the most diverse in
Malawi, with a particularly rich fauna, especially birds and butterflies. It is
virtually the only Forest Reserve remaining intact in Malawi.
The poverty of the Asukwa at that time is illustrated by the fact that few
boys owned a shirt and shorts, and most of them wore nothing at all. The Konde
women wore only a coloured bark-cloth girdle to support a small piece of cloth
passed between the legs, leaving the ends hanging down before and behind like
two tails (Arthur Loveridge, I Drank the Zambezi, 1954). Misuku was so remote
that Enid had to walk for four days, while already pregnant, from the lakeshore at
Karonga, to reach her new home as a young bride early in 1955.
I believe Not Out of Malawi is one of the best books from Malawi’s
colonial era. It is extremely well written, especially its freshness, enhanced by her
use of dialogue, and her wry sense of humour, especially concerning her husband
and the privations she had to face. The quotations are also an indication of how
well-read Enid was. I believe it stands alongside the work of Elspeth Huxley, who
was Enid’s good friend and mentor, and even Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, to
which the title alludes with tongue in cheek.
The book documents the state of the administration in Nyasaland at that
time, when field officers were required to spend 14 nights of every month on
“ulendo” in the field, and proficiency in the vernacular language was also
mandatory. In 1957, when Britain’s African empire was still intact, but only just,
a total of only 1,782 Britons were employed in the Colonial Administrative
Service. (John McCracken, Experts and Expertise in Colonial Malawi, 1982).
There were only seven British officers in Karonga and Chitipa. Their resources
were equally meagre.
The book also highlights the support that wives gave to their husbands
as serving officers of the British Empire, and the dedication and sacrifices both
made. This is my brief tribute to a most remarkable lady.