Lake Malombe

Lake Malombe lies on the Shire River about twenty kilometres south of Lake Malawi. Its waters are extremely shallow and follow the river and the rains, and in dry spells the lake can recede or vanish. The lake bed itself lay dry for several hundred years before it refilled in the nineteenth century, so for much of this period the Shire ran through a low basin rather than past a broad open lake. The wider Shire region formed part of the histories of Maravi and other societies whose political and commercial relationships reached across southeastern Africa. Inland networks connected communities along the river with routes toward the Indian Ocean.