Within a decade Livingstonia had become a proud model of Christian

Within a decade, Livingstonia had become a proud model of Christian dedication.The burgeoning hill-top town had the largest hospital in central Africa, a fine school, a towering church and ranks of devoted white missionaries. By 1906, there was even a small hydroelectricity plant.But if the good doctor could see Livingstonia today, he might be seized to a fit of biblical fury. The Victorian houses, now inhabited by local nurses and teachers, are falling apart from lack of maintenance. Their tin roofs are leaking and barefoot children run wild in the unkempt gardens.His own house, which has a view over the sweep of the lake, has been split in two: part grotty guesthouse, part mouldy museum. When I arrived, a mud-splattered motorbike was parked on the rotting porch.

In the living room, plastic flowers poked from a pair of empty beer cans on an antique table. The bookshelf held a few dozen tattered, often coverless, volumes such as The Friendship Book of Francis Gay: A Thought a Day for 1943.The museum was akin to a Victorian jumble sale. The walls were plastered with tattered newspapers and faded photos and the drawers were stuffed with slides from the “magic lantern”, a projector used by Dr Laws to educate villagers about everything from prehistoric cavemen to Norwegian fjords For a few pounds, the guard booked me a room for the night. His name was Genesis, but this seemed to be the end, not the beginning, of an era.But Livingstonia is not extinct.

The school remains one of Malawi’s finest, and the hospital is hobbling along thanks to the last whites in town, the Irish couple Dr Donald Brownlie and his wife, Una. The Brownlies fund their work through the Irish government and from the pockets of Northern Irish churchgoers. A lively man with a kindly smile, Dr Brownlie sometimes takes to the pulpit at the local church. But the local Christians were faltering, he complained, due to a particularly African evil: witchcraft. One school almost closed after a teacher was accused of being a sorcerer.