Goodbye, Dr Banda

'You may never have been, may never go, may never even have heard of the place – but Malawi will repay your attention. It is one of the smallest, poorest countries in Africa, often overlooked; but its relationship with us in the West has been extraordinary.'

How to engage with cultures profoundly unlike our own? We travel the world compulsively, wanting to reach out, but seldom feeling sure of how to do so.

A small African country presents us with a near perfect case study. From David Livingstone and the early missionaries, through British colonialists, to today's tourists, aid workers, and even Madonna, Malawi has experienced the whole gamut of Westerners, all trying to connect.

This has made for an extraordinary meeting of worlds, between one of the continent's most fascinating indigenous cultures, and the best and worst of our own. Unexpected and exhilarating, by turns edifying and uncomfortable, it is a story with urgent lessons for our vexed age of identity crisis and multi-cultural faltering.

Here tribal ritual collides with Ancient Greek theatre; roving classicists with ancestral spirits; poets and pop stars with missionary-explorers; hippies and kleptocrats with long-suffering peasants – a tumultuous masquerade around the enigmatic Dr Banda.