Mount Chiradzulu

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Chiradzulu Mountain is a mountain with an elevation of 1,687 meters (5,535 feet).
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Chiradzulu Mountain is located approximately 20 km to the north-east of Blantyre, Malawi's main commercial centre. The administrative district of Chiradzulu in southern Malawi was named after this mountain. Chiradzulu Mountain rises to a peak of 1,773m above seal level and is the third highest mountain peak in southern Malawi. It comes third after Mulanje Mountain, whose famous Sapitwa peak rises to 3,002m above sea level; and Zomba Mountain, which rises to 2,085m above sea level at its peak.

The origins of the name "Chiradzulu" are murky and can be traced back to an old myth supposedly derived from hunters who had forgotten to bring home the tail of a leopard they had killed on a hunting expedition. In ancient local folklore among some of the people who lived at the foot of the mountain, the tail of a leopard was considered to have magical powers and no hunter worth his name would kill a leopard and forget to bring the sought-after trophy home as an essential ingredient for a magical ritual which gave chiefs and notable tribesmen their mythical powers. On realising their foolish lapse of memory the morning after their hunting expedition, the band of hunters reorganised and retraced their steps to the place up in the mountain where they had had their kill. The foolish hunters never made it back home and no one ever heard of them after their disappearance that fateful morning. This was not unusual in those times, for, according to folklore, the mountain was full of ghosts which sometimes exacted vengeance on wayward humans who ventured too far off the beaten track into the thick of the then rich forest jungle by making them mysteriously disappear from the world of mortals, only to be reincarnated as ghosts themselves.

Folklore has it that it is the above episode which gave birth to the name "Chiradzulu", a corruption of two Nyanja words, "mchira" and "wadzulo". "Mchira" literally means "a tail", and "wadzulo" translates to "yesterday's". So "Chiradzulu" literally means "Yesterday's Tail", a reference to the fate of the men who vanished into the jungle to collect the leopard's tail they had forgotten to carry home with them after the previous day's hunting expedition.