Islands in the Sky
A Map Reveals a New World
Welcome to your free monthly article. This month past, I appeared on Exhibiting Faith, a podcast by British art writer David Trigg, that examines the intersection of faith and art. We discussed my Church Forests of Ethiopia, Gingers and Border Patrol projects, and, more uniquely, the foundational role of faith in my work. I also mention the place where I decided to become a photographer, and that is the subject of this article.
Today’s post is in memory of the late Richard Anderson, my inspirational geography teacher who died last month, only a couple of years after retiring. He taught me how to read, and therefore love, maps.
Islands in the Sky
Spread across southeast Africa is an archipelago of mountain islands, the subject of amazing research I stumbled on by conservation scientist Dr Julian Bayliss, and visualised in this map.
In this part of the world at the turn of the century, while leaning out of a single prop Cessna with the door removed, I decided that I wanted to be a photographer. No, that I needed to be a photographer, to document overlooked stories like this – entire mountains, indeed chains of mountains, hidden from sight. Few had heard of them and not many have today despite the massif being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site last year.
Some fellow Zoology students and I had planned an expedition to the Mulanje Massif in Malawi in the summer of 2001. We lived in huts for two months, surveying monkeys and the endangered endemic Mulanje cedar. We finished our time there by walking the entire plateau over the course of a week and ascending the highest point in Malawi, Sapitwa peak (3002 metres). I wore sports sandals, owing to blisters. By then, though, we were like mountain goats, and we reached the summit in half the time normally expected. The mountain had changed us, yet we could do little to change the dire situation there: the endangered trees were being felled, and nothing was being done to protect them. I had always longed to return, to show why this habitat needed to be conserved.
Two of those students remain in nature conservation. One is a medical doctor, and the other started a very popular bakery in London Fields. I became a photographer, covering stories that consider the interplay between environment and culture.
In 2014, I did return, though for a story on rural palliative care. The first person I met as I stepped out of the car was our previous guide, Redson (pictured with his trusty Pan-Sonic radio back in 2001). What were the chances?
On that journey, I also passed through Addis Ababa airport, and that brief touchdown sparked the beginning of my long-term project, The Church Forests of Ethiopia. Though I realise now that the seeds for that project really began years before, on the Mulanje Massif.
Julian Bayliss’s research reveals the landscape I so loved in a new way: Mulanje is part of a wider, threatened ecoregion of global significance, a chain of sky islands crossing Malawi and Mozambique, home to numerous endemic species and an area facing one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa. To make matters worse, Mulanje is threatened by proposals for bauxite-mining projects, right in the beautiful part of the massif where we stayed and studied. It is heartening to see both local and international pushback against the proposals.
I would love to make it back there one day and find it thriving. In the meantime, these photos I’ve dug up from the archives will give you a sense of what a special place it is.
Map taken from A biogeographical appraisal of the threatened South East Africa Montane Archipelago ecoregion, Bayliss et al 2024.
All photographs © Kieran Dodds 2026
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An interesting read Kieran. The community of Dunblane have an active partnership with Likhubula in Mulanje. Ruth, my wife, visited as part of a group in 2008 and also climbed Sapitwa during her stay.
So much interesting information in a short article!