It rises in the Mchinji area near Mocambique in the west and travels north-east across the broadest part of the country before slicing through the peaked and pleated woodlands of Nkhota kota Wildlife Reserve on its final rush to the Lake. I sat on a grassy bank at Bua Camp in Nkhota kota Reserve, and watched the broadly sinuous dance of the Bua. For a river that has trekked across the broadest part of this densely populated country, and then wriggled and squirmed its way down the escarpment of the Great Rift, it is neither exhausted by its travels nor overburdened with silt. With a hiss like a giant blow torch, the Bua shimmies and glitters. Shapes of fish thread its depth and young fry stitch spangles in its shallows.
Pied kingfishers hang like six-winged cherubim above the smoother reaches.
Green-backed herons skulk among the reeds and rocks. From overhanging branches giant kingfishers, opulent in charcoal and russet and silver, pontificate in voices thin as party-squeakers. Trumpeter hornbills wail like disappointed children, and crowned hornbills flap past quacking thinly like rubber toys. Perhaps one needs a high-heeled voice to compete with the hoarse male roar of the river. A flash of black and white from an Acacia albida across the river drew my eye.