‘Climbing is for ladies too’: Transforming Malawi into a climbers’ paradise

A small group of enterprising, local climbers has a bold cause – to attract more Malawians to the sport.

Mulundi, Malawi – Shalom Maholo dangles off the side of a rock face with a power drill in her hand. The 22-year-old steadies herself before drilling a hole in the wall, which she carefully cleans with a brush, then hammers in a bolt that she tightens with a wrench.

She straps the gear to her harness, abseils downwards for two metres and then does it all again, and again and again for 20 metres until she touches the ground 90 minutes later. It’s a physically exhausting, highly technical process which Shalom must get exactly right because climbers here will rely on these bolts for their survival for decades to come.

She’s creating a new climbing route, up which climbers can clip their ropes into pre-drilled bolts for protection while ascending. But here in Mulundi, on Malawi’s western border with Mozambique, Shalom is also making history. She’s the first Malawian woman to bolt a new route in the country, which she names Zikomo, meaning “thank you” in Chichewa.

“Climbing has done so much for me,” says Shalom. “People here think it’s something only white men do, but I want to show that climbing is for everyone, it’s for ladies and it’s for Malawians.

“We’re women, and society thinks that we cannot do it, but we need to take these barriers out.”