The wetlands surrounding Lake Nyasa in southern Tanzania form a living ecology where water, plant life and memory are inseparable. Rather than a backdrop, this landscape is understood as a sentient presence, shaped and animated by milulu (Eleocharis acutangula), a plant with deep ecological and cultural significance. In its dense growth across the waterlogged terrain, milulu reveals the wetland as an active archive. It is holding traces of labour, communal life, spiritual practice and everyday life.

Traditionally, milulu is woven into mikeka, mats that circulate through social and ceremonial spaces, including gatherings, prayer and ritual contexts. This practice continues today, sustaining livelihoods, in particular for women weavers, while carrying forward forms of generational knowledge embedded in making, sharing and remembering. The wetlands remain both material and mnemonic, formed through ongoing relationships between people, plants and water.

Knowledge in this landscape is transmitted through lived practice, kinship and storytelling across generations. Mligo, a 97-year-old grandmother who grew up harvesting milulu near Lake Nyasa and weaving mats for her community, is part of this continuum of care and making. Alongside her, the weavers of the Kidingili community, Se’ Gadau, Mama Eniadi, Mama Bariki, Se’Kyando, Dada Atu and Maria Alfa Chalamila, continue to sustain and transform this tradition. Turakella Editha Gyindo, Mligo’s granddaughter and an artist, engages with this wetland through writing and reflection, extending this lineage of attention into contemporary forms of narration. Through these intertwined practices, the wetlands are understood as more than an ecosystem: they are a living continuum of knowledge, relation and memory.