By Burnett Munthali
The forest of Chikangawa, once a symbol of life, commerce, and natural wonder, now carries the weight of a deep and haunting silence.
It is no longer merely a stretch of green across Malawi’s northern landscape—it is a place of mourning, a resting ground for lost souls whose final moments were swallowed by its trees.
A year ago, tragedy struck here, tearing through the hearts of families, communities, and a nation that had to watch as hope turned to horror among the pines.
Time has passed, but the grief has not.
The ache remains embedded in the soil, etched into the bark of each tree, echoing through the wind that sweeps through the forest floor.
Walking into Chikangawa now is like entering a sacred place, not because of its beauty, but because of the pain it holds.
Nature has continued its quiet cycle—rains have fallen, leaves have grown, animals have returned—but something fundamental has changed.
The forest breathes differently.
There is a reverent hush that wasn’t there before, as if even the birds know that this is no longer just a forest.
It is a tomb.
A grave without markers, where no stone bears the names of the fallen, yet memory hangs thick in the air, impossible to ignore.
Each footstep feels like a trespass, each snapped twig like an interruption in a long, sorrowful prayer.
The trees—tall and unmoving—stand as witnesses to what happened, sentinels of a tragedy that time cannot erase.
Somewhere deep within, the shadows feel longer, the light dimmer, not because the sun has changed, but because the spirit of the place has.
Geographically, Chikangawa remains vast and awe-inspiring, but its emotional terrain is where the greatest shifts have occurred.
Maps may show it the same, but to those who know its story, who carry its loss, it is a different place entirely.
It is a place where geography and grief have fused.
It is impossible to separate the landscape from the loss.
Revisiting it now is not an act of tourism—it is a pilgrimage, undertaken with heavy hearts and trembling hands.
One does not walk among these trees without remembering the lives that ended here.
One does not breathe in this forest air without exhaling sorrow.
There is something sacred in the stillness, something reverent in the way even the wind seems to whisper instead of roar.
Chikangawa, once full of the sound of axes and trucks, now sings a quieter, mournful song.
It is a lullaby for the lost, a hymn for the departed.
And as we revisit it, a year later, we do not do so simply to recall the tragedy—we return to honour, to feel, to remember.
Because to forget would be to lose them again.
And that, after all this pain, is something we must never do.
The forest that became a tomb now holds more than trees and trails.
It holds memory.
It holds silence.
It holds us all.
