Nick Clarke ran a tourist lodge in Malawi. He has some er...advice for us.

Two years ago we lived on the lakeshore in Malawi. We ran an eco-tourist lodge, completely isolated, without electricity, transport or communications. That said it was a little piece of paradise. Traditional African huts, a wooden bar/restaurant area built on the rocks overlooking the locals doing their washing or the kids fishing. We baked our own bread in wooden fires and grew some of our own vegetables. We had a constant stream of vendors, sitting on the 'selling log', waiting with wide grins, to barter for the meagre food stuffs they had grown, picked or stolen. We employed 14 or so full-time villagers and over six months we hired various labourers and thatchers to rebuild the huts, as well as buying the reeds for the rooves off the local women. We became part-time doctors for the community and regular contributors to the school. The football team were also sponsored and carrying the logs from the mountains became an integral part of their training. From online bookings people came to stay from as far away as Denmark and Cape Town, but most of our too infrequent guests were people 'doing' Africa for a year or two. I would call them 'real travellers'. The two German bikers, on the world road for three years. The English guy in a Land Rover into his second year's African adventure. The Italian couple, only for a short stay, missing their kids, eating us out of hut and home! These people appreciated the effort and time we put in to create a tranquil place for people to spend an enjoyable and relaxing time experiencing a little taste of Africa whilst eating fresh food, swimming. canoeing, watching the wildlife and seeing how local people lived by visiting schools, festivals and sports events. All the time contributing in a small way to the local economy, by staying with us, eating the food and buying local goods.

This is how it should be!

We never made a profit from our venture, we had never set out with this aim. All the workers were on a wage incentive; the more money we scraped together the higher their wages became. The life was hard and we spent all our meagre savings, but we loved it and felt that we were doing some good, in our small way, into helping the local people, with employment and money going around the local villages.

Into this isolated utopia would walk the sullen faced backpacker, or a couple of new world hippies in a VW and a haze of smoke, incessantly droning their bloody didgeridoos! They would greet us reluctantly and get down to business: How much can we knock off the price of camping? The camping was already a modest 70p a night. They had always paid cheaper somewhere else. My answer? Go back somewhere else!

Moaning, they would cook rice from the huge bags they'd bought at the government wholesalers and eat it in their little haven of isolation, venturing over, reluctantly, to buy one beer. The next day they would traipse off to walk miles to the government trading posts to buy cheap alcohol.

What a waste. You see, what I object to here is their itinerary, which I believe goes like this:

"I have loads of time away from Uni or work and I have to travel for as long as possible. Therefore, I must spend as little as possible even if this means I don't actually do or see much and sometimes stay in miserable places and eat badly. This then leads me to only communicate with other people in the same boat, rejoicing together in our secluded moodiness and we get to tick off thousands of faceless places in our guidebooks."