Once a teacher always a teacher

Martin Chirwa with grandchildren Elinart (Aubrey's daughter) and Ulalo Martin (Robert's son)

At Nathenje in 1991

Businessman

Martin Chirwa rented an old shop that used to belong to an Asian and invested some of his retirement money into a grocery store. Back in the 1970s, the president of Malawi, Hastings Banda, ordered all Asians to no longer conduct retail business in rural areas. He believed that Asians were slowing down progress of Africans learning to become retail business owners. Most of the Asian shops at Nathenje were bought by native Malawians but had become dilapidated. It was one of these shops that Martin Chirwa rented in 1991 after his retirement in 1991.

Running a grocery store needs business acumen. Martin was too generous to be a successful businessman. Martin run the grocery for four years from 1991 to 1994. But he was giving away grocery inventory to those in need. By the end of 1995 the grocery store was closed.

When Martin Chirwa was retiring in 1991, his four oldest children were employed and earning income. The middle children were either in college or boarding secondary school. Only the youngest two children lived at Nathenje with their parents. But the older children were paying tuition for the younger ones so Martin was not burdened with tuition obligations. The oldest son, Aubrey, was a game ranger at beautiful Nyika National Park in Rumphi in the north of Malawi. Robert had just returned from completing a Master of Science at University of Kentucky in the United States of America where he had been for three years. He returned to be a manager in the Information Technology Department at Reserve Bank of Malawi. Patrick was an accountant at the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) headquarters in Blantyre. And Evans was a Civil Engineer working for Norman and Dorban in Lilongwe.

Back to teaching

There were political realignments occurring at the international stage in the 1990s. During the cold war, there was competition for international influence between United States of America and Western Europe on the one hand and Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on the other. President Banda of Malawi was dictatorial but was a capitalist. Malawi was therefore aligned with the United States of America. Malawi had become a one-party country in 1975 and had been ruled by one political party and one leader, Hasting Banda, from independence in 1964. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1992, the priority of the United States shifted to promoting democracy. Malawi was forced to first hold a referendum in 1993 on the question of whether people wanted multiparty democracy and then to hold multiparty democracy in 1994. Hastings Banda and his Malawi Congress Party lost the elections. The winning political party was United Democratic Front (UDF) led by a man called Bakili Muluzi.

One of the issues on which Bakili Muluzi run was free primary school education. Elections were in May 1994 and the new school year was starting in September 1994. The Malawi government needed new teachers and resources to meet the increased enrollment due to the free school policy. One of the solutions was to call on retired teachers to return to teaching.

Martin was recalled from retirement and returned to teaching. He grew tired of renting so he bought himself a piece of land behind the shops at Nathenje. He built a modest red brick house with iron sheet roofing and lived there with his wife Elinart. He rented farm land to grow maize and groundnuts.

Martin Chirwa with son Robert (center), Robert's wife Tambu, and grandchildren Ulalo and Kabelo

Zomba 1996 

Final decade

Martin fell very seriously ill in 2006. He had always looked youthful. His hair had not grayed much even at the age of 60. But after falling ill, it seemed like he grew old overnight. His movement slowed and his hands shook. With Elinart still paralyzed by the stroke of 1988 and Martin in poor health, life at Nathenje proved difficult. Some of the children including Grace (now married to George Kuseni) and Beatrace were now resident in the nearby city of Lilongwe. Moreover, Matilda built a house in the Lilongwe City residential location known as Area 25 near where Grace lived. In 2010, an arrangement was made for Martin and Elinart Chirwa to move into Matilda’s house in Area 25 where they could be better cared for by the children. Of course, elder care is difficult. But the children did everything to support their parents. Later Richard was transferred from Salima Technical College (on the shores of beautiful Lake Malawi) to Lilongwe Technical College. This added one more person in the care of the parents. Masiye Joseph became a pastor and was posted at a church in the city of Lilongwe. He was also actively involved in caring for the parents. And Masiye moved into the parents' house in the final days.

The oldest children were scattered all over the world. Their contribution to the care of the parents at this point was primarily financial. Aubrey was an instructor at Dedza College of Forestry. Robert first became a Lecturer at Chancellor College in Zomba before returning to the University of Kentucky in the United States for further studies. He is still in Kentucky to this day. Patrick changed jobs from ADMARC to the American non-profit organization, World Vision International. He was posted to several countries such as Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, and Mozambique. Likewise, Evans changed jobs from Norman and Dorban to The Polytechnic in Blantyre to become a Lecturer. He went to study for a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of Kentucky in the United States. After completing his studies, he returned to Africa and the became a professor at the University of Pretoria where he is still employed.

Kondwani who was the youngest child of Martin and Elinart passed away in October 2011 at age 29. The third from last, Pirirani, is an accountant at Maiwathu Hospital in Blantyre.

Four years after the serious illness of 2006 – and shortly after moving to Lilongwe in 2010 - Martin started become incoherent and was losing memory. He never recovered from this illness until he passed away on 16 June 2016.

Lessons from my father

The journey is multi-generational

Economic upward mobility need not be a short term or one generation effort. Martin Chirwa did not become a rich man. He did not live a middle-class lifestyle. In fact, his life bordered on subsistence for most of his life. He always fed his family from crops grown in his own garden. The little income from his teaching or journalism jobs was used for the extra expenses of bread, clothes and tuition for family. On the other hand, all his children attained a middle-class lifestyle. The economic upward mobility was not of himself. Rather, it is when his progress is viewed in the long-term context, from his father before and his children after, that mobility is clearly visible. This has taught me that I need not strive to achieve it all in a single day. My responsibility is to ensure that I am providing a conducive environment for my children’s progress.

Balance

Balance is important between serving your country and being there for your family. Martin Chirwa contributed to the politics of Malawi by fighting for independence to the extent of being arrested. He contributed to the development of Malawi by establishing three new schools. He contributed to the future progress of the nation by educating his children to the level where they are in a position to contribute to the country's socioeconomic development. It was his honesty and hard work that enabled him to achieve these otherwise contradictory roles in life. Martin Chirwa showed how working at the intersection of politics, service, and family is possible. Although he told me to never be involved in politics, I would strive to be at this intersection if I ever entered politics.

Never give up  

Martin Chirwa was older than other children when he started school. He was finishing 8th grade at age 20. Yet he was always seeking the next qualification. He studied at night using light from a Tiley lamp. He passed O-level and A-level exams in his late 20s. And he obtained the diploma in journalism in his late 40s. There were many reasons why any reasonable person would stop and say “Enough now”. But Martin continued working for the next stage. Working for the next qualification. Whenever time allowed, he studied. He was a lifetime learner. He was a lifetime teacher. And he was a lifetime father.

Conclusion

God packaged many positive attributes in a small man. Martin Chirwa stood at 5 feet 6 inches (about 1.7 meters). But he had heart. As a head teacher, he motivated the schools he led to make progress in improving academic achievement. In those days, a school was measured by the number of students selected to go to secondary school. He would come to a primary school that did not send students to secondary school and by the time he left there would be between 5 and 10 students selected. He believed that a school can only perform well if it looked like it could. He worked hard to ensure the landscaping and interiors of the schools he managed were in tip-top shape.

Maybe Martin Chirwa’s generation was the “great generation” of Malawi. A generation selflessly serving their country while adhering to a high moral standard. A generation with enough vision to see further in the future rather than being clouded with desires of instant gratification. Consequently, the nation of Malawi was experiencing tremendous economic growth from 1964 to 1980.

Something changed in Malawi after 1980. People started looking for instant personal gain in everything. Corruption started creeping in at all levels of society with the “katangale” culture. I remember how a relative of the village headman at Mngwangwa went to the city and found buyers of the trees in the forest that separated Mngwangwa Trading Center from Mngwangwa Village. The next thing we saw were trucks coming from the city. The trucks brought people who cut down the trees and loaded the logs on the trucks. Suddenly we were able to see the village from the trading center as the forest was no more.

I think it will take a national U-turn for Malawi to get back on course. The population of Malawi will need to return to the mindset of earning “it”. The population will need to return to the mindset of the generation of Martin Chirwa. I am not making this statement to advocate for any “ism”. This is not about capitalism, socialism, democracy, or dictatorship. I am merely attempting to identify the root cause of corruption in Malawi society.      

Founder of schools and educator

Martin Nkhalambayausi Chirwa, 1980s

The story of Martin Nkhalambayausi Chirwa is also the story of his wife Elinart. It is the story of many Malawians who unselfishly worked to move Malawi forward in the golden years after independence. And it is a story of raising children who defy all odds to achieve economic social mobility from poor to middle class. It is a story of Christian service to a church that touches all aspects of people’s lives.

Initiation into the teaching profession

Martin Chirwa’s first teaching post was at Chadza Primary School on the foot of Ngala Mountain located south of Lilongwe District. This was 1964 and Martin and Elinart already had three sons as a third son, Patrick Jumpha, was born while he was attending William Murray Teacher Training College. Two more sons, Evans Mdzeka and Precious, were born during the Chadza years. Elinart was giving birth at the rate of about one baby every two years.

Fast track into leadership

After only two years of teaching experience, the Education Secretary of CCAP Nkhoma Synod determined that Martin was ready for an administrative role in the school system. In 1966, Martin was made headmaster of a primary school at Mbuna near Diamphwe on the border of Lilongwe and Dedza. Robert was being spoilt at his grandfather Grayson’s home and was not starting school at Dzenza. Martin decided that it was time for Robert to join the family at Mbuna and start school. For the first time, Martin and Elinart were settled as a family with their five children. At age 30, Martin was balancing running a school, supporting a family, and continuing education.

The daily activities started with Martin using his axe to split wood around four o’clock in the morning. Elinart would take the firewood and build a fire to boil bath water. She would put a bucket of water on the fire. She would then make a trip to the well to fetch water, walking the one mile distance. Upon return, the water on the fire would be warm and she would put it in the bathroom for Martin to have his bath. She would then put another bucket of water on the fire. She would then go for a second trip to the well. On arrival from the second water fetching trip, the water on the fire would be warm enough for the two oldest school going sons to take a bath. She would then start making breakfast for the whole family. Martin and the children would then go to school.

At the school, first all teachers met in the office while students carried out chores such as sweeping the school yard. A bell would ring and the students would line up by grade in front of the school. Martin would then lead the teachers out of the office. The teachers would line up facing the rows of students. One of the teachers would say a prayer and Martin would give a speech. It was always about the need for the students to be disciplined, obedient, hardworking, and hygienic. A few daily announcements would be made. One of the students played the drum and row after row the students would be dismissed to their classrooms while matching to the sound of the drum.

Due to shortage of teachers, Martin took part in teaching. He would teach and then go around the school to make sure teachers were teaching and students were learning. Sometimes he had to discipline a misbehaving student. Students did end-of-school-day chores to leave the school in good order before going home. Teachers would plan for the next day before going home. Home was right on the school campus for all the teachers. Martin would go home and have a late lunch which Elinart had prepared for him. He would then go to the grocery store to do some shopping such as buying tomorrow’s bread. He would also till the garden. Elinart would go fetch water to be used the next morning. Martin would come home and listen to the news on the radio. He liked to listen to South African Broadcasting Corporation, British Broadcasting Corporation, and evening news of Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. Meanwhile, Elinart would cook dinner for the whole family. The whole family would eat.

Martin would then take his Tilley lamp and go back to his office in the evening to study. The rest of the family would go to sleep. Martin was preparing for the British O-Levels and A-Levels by correspondence through a Cambridge International program. By 1968, he had obtained these additional educational qualifications.

An important encounter with Malawi president Hastings Banda happened in 1967. Banda had just secured a World Bank loan to build a paved road from Blantyre to Lilongwe via Zomba. Banda decided to take a road trip on the dusty road before the construction work started. Martin taught his students some patriotic songs and took them to stand by the road side on the day that Banda was scheduled to pass by. When Banda approached the singing students, he ordered the convoy to stop. He got out of his VM Kombi minivan and climbed up the back of an open Land Rover Defender. He listened to the students sing and then he gave a ten-minute speech in English speaking through an interpreter. That was the closest that Martin Chirwa came to a meeting with the leader of the independence movement. The movement for which Martin fought and sacrificed much.

Founder of new schools

The young Malawi nation needed to educate its citizens. The British colonial government had neglected education. The 1966 census reported that the population of Malawi was 4 million. The number of primary school students in Malawi at about that time was 300,000. Although this number looks small, it represented a rapid growth since independence. The newly independent government was encouraging children to go to school. The problem was that there were very few secondary school places. Only less than 4,000 secondary school places were available. The bottleneck was at eighth grade where students would repeat many times hoping that next time they would be lucky to be among the selected few to go to secondary school.

One of the solutions that was conceived to expand secondary education was to start correspondence colleges. With funding from UNICEF, several Malawi Correspondence College (MCC) Centers would be opened. A teacher would be assigned to an MCC center to recruit students, help them with paperwork and payment, act as a tutor, and organize proctoring of examinations. The government prepared study material.

Martin Chirwa was tasked with starting an MCC center at Nsaru in 1968. He started a new center using Nsaru Primary School premises. After about six months he was transferred to Kamphata at the Nkhoma junction on Blantyre-Lilongwe road to start a new MCC center. Martin started two MCC centers within a period of two years.

Meanwhile, the education department of Nkhoma CCAP replaced the Afrikaans Secretary of Education with a Malawian who happened to be a former classmate of Martin. One of the orders of business of the new Education Secretary was to send Martin to a place in the middle-of-nowhere west of Lilongwe to start a new primary school. The place is called Matunduluzi. Martin Chirwa was at Matunduluzi for a period of nine months during which he started to build a school at Matunduluzi. To us the children, this period felt like a lifetime.

There was no school at Matunduluzi before Martin’s arrival. There was a wealthy resident named Mr. Nkhata who owned a maize (corn) mill, a couple of 5 ton lorries (trucks), and a Ford Cortina sedan. He lived with his wife and sisters in a compound of several houses. Mr. Nkhata made one of his houses available to Martin and his family. The school campus was an open area a short distance from the compound. There were no brick buildings. Classrooms were made of grass wall and grass roof temporary structures. Martin recruited two assistant teachers who had an eighth-grade education. The assistants were assigned to teach first and second grade respectively. Martin taught third, fourth, and fifth grades. The school started with 5 grades making it a junior primary school. Martin mobilized the community to start building school blocks and a teacher’s house. Of Martins’s children, Aubrey was the lone student in fifth grade whereas Robert was one of three students in third grade.

The Nkhatas were very good to the Chirwa family. Mr. Nkhata and his sisters had children the same age as Martin and Elinart’s children. The women used to cook food in their separate homes. The portion for their children was sent to one place. All the children from the different families then went to that one place and ate together. It was a truly communal life. When not in school, we (the children) had a lot to do. We used to hunt grasshoppers, gather fruit, make cars from wires, and take part in harvesting. The education was low quality but life “outside” the classroom was full of fun. I recall the natural taste of a ripe dzaye, psyipsya, and matowo fruit. There was a sense of joy and satisfaction whenever we, the children, caught a big grasshopper after chasing it for a long distance. Edification of the character of the children was enhanced by the community of children that ate together, played together, teased each other, and competed in games created by themselves.

By July of 1970, there were two buildings standing at the school campus of Matunduluzi. All the three schools that Martin Chirwa founded are now well established institutions. Matunduluzi now enrolls over 2000 students. Nsaru MCC center is now a Day Secondary School. The MCC center at Kamphata is called Mtenthera Day Secondary School. Given the lack of record keeping tradition, it would not surprise me if people in these communities have no knowledge of the origins of their schools.

The period from the middle of 1968 to the middle of 1970 saw Martin Chirwa doing groundbreaking and pioneering work. It was hard and thankless work. He did some of the work by choice but sometimes he did the work begrudgingly. This period was also a joyous time as Elinart gave birth to two daughters. She named the first daughter Grace Chimwemwe and the second one Beatrace Limbikani. Whatever the case, Malawi needed new schools and Martin Chirwa contributed his small part in building schools for the nascent nation.

Educating the children

In August 1970, Martin Chirwa started to think about the education of his children. The oldest children were approaching junior high school age and needed to start establishing an educational foundation. Martin requested the Education Secretary at Nkhoma Synod of CCAP for a transfer to a more established school that had teachers capable of teaching his children. Martin was transferred to Nathenje Primary School as the new headmaster.

Martin Chirwa (seated holding Richard) at Nathenje. Children standing from reader's right are: Evans, Grace, Robert, Patrick, Beatrice, and Precious (deceased) 

Reminiscing the four years at Nathenje brings a feeling of warmth. The school was a full primary school with teachers of different faiths from all over Malawi. There were Presbyterian Christians, Anglican Christians, Catholic Christians, Muslims, Traditionalists, and some who seemed to have no religion at all. There were male teachers and female teachers. Some of the teachers were married while others were single. There were young, middle-aged, and old teachers. From a child’s point of view, they all seemed to get along. The children of the teachers also seemed to get along just fine.

The sports were amazing. The school had a very good football (soccer) team, a good netball team, and very good track and field athletes. As a thirty-something year old, Martin himself participated in football. Watching my father play football with the older upperclassmen motivated me to play a lot of football with boys my age.

Martin had a box that had art drawings. They were a work of his friend named Semphere. The drawings fascinated me. I started to learn to draw by reproducing Semphere’s paintings. I had a classmate in 4^th grade who was a very good artist. My friend’s name was Moses. His specialty was sceneries. Moses and I started to work together. Unfortunately, Moses left without saying goodbye fleeing the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the early to mid-1970s. Sometimes I wonder what happened to my friend who inspired me so much.

Nathenje has always been a reasonably large and busy trading center. A large regional ADMARC depot was located on the northern edge. Many employees from all over Malawi came to work at this depot. The children of some of the workers became my schoolmates. Most of the shops were owned by Malawians of Asian origin. There was a shirt tailoring shop owned by an Asian who owned peacocks. We used to go to see the beauty of those birds. Asians liked to employ Yao people from Lake Malawi. Most of those employees were Muslims. Some of the children of those workers were my classmates. Living at Nathenje opened my eyes to Malawians of diverse backgrounds.

Two more children were born to Elinart during the Nathenje years, a son and a daughter. She gave them the names Richard and Matilda respectively. Martin and Elinart embarked on the task of raising children. It was teamwork. He was the financier and food finder. He occasionally gave the children advice. She ensured that all the children were nourished, healthy, trained in manners and community living, and contributed to the work of raising the siblings.

Martin rented a piece of gardening land to grow maize (corn) for food. But with eight children, even supplementing a teacher’s salary with farming was not enough. Martin was a photographer. He had a Yashica camera. He used to go to the villages around Nathenje to take pictures. A photo session for villagers was a special occasion. The person to be photographed had to get ready. Preparing for a photo session included taking a bath and wearing the best clothes. Most people had only one set of best clothes so this was not too much of a choice. The actual picture taking took a lot of time because those having pictures taken wanted the best pose. When a roll of film was full of photos, Martin would take the roll to Lilongwe City to have it developed. Photography was an important source of income for the Chirwa family.

Martin established many friendships at Nathenje. It was partly for this reason that he later chose to move to Nathenje after retirement. Life was not always work, farming, and photography. Martin did spend some time with friends. One of his friends was Mr. Mpanje who owned a maize (corn) mill nearby. His daughter who is now Mrs. Mary Muyenza recently reminded me about this friendship. The season after harvest was especially conducive to building friendships. It was heartening to see Martin play a game of mankala during the weekend with his colleagues. Those were the few leisure moments. But even in off-seasons there were usually projects on the school campus as the community frequently embarked on building additional classroom blocks and teacher houses.

Meanwhile Elinart would do all the chores that she had always done. But as the older children became teenagers, she knew they needed training. My mother always told me that I had to do chores ordinarily done by girls because it was my fault that the first four children were boys. I would accompany her to fetch water from the well. She would give me a basket of ground corn to take to the maize (corn) mill to have it ground into flour. She would leave the children with me to baby sit. She tasked me with doing laundry and washing dishes. Perhaps the best moments were in the evening when she was cooking. She would call me to hold the kerosene lamp in the kitchen so she could see the inside of the pot as she was cooking. As she was cooking, she used to tell folklore tales that held my attention that I did not want the cooking to end. She sung some of the best songs as part of the tales. During those moments, she used to give advice about girls, treating others well, being respectful to elders, and being honest. In addition to traditionally female chores, I was also involved in boyhood chores such as helping with building fences and farming.

Grayson Chikanda had moved into the house at Mngwangwa in preparation for retirement. When the academic year ended each July, all the Chikanda children used to come home to Mngwangwa with the Chikanda grandchildren. The end of school year recess months brought bonding to all the cousins. All the cousins treated each other as brothers and sisters. I am using the word cousin in American/Western Europe way here. The Chikanda family was one large close family so that all the cousins called, and still do call, each other brother and sister.

All good things must come to an end. Martin Chirwa was transferred to Balang’ombe Primary School at Chief Chimutu’s headquarters in East Lilongwe in August 1974. Aubrey was selected to Robert Blake Secondary School in 1974 and a year later Robert was selected to Likuni Boys Secondary School. Having two children in secondary school brought new financial demands. The two oldest boys needed school fees and pocket money. Martin had a lot of help from the Chikanda in-laws in meeting the cost of education for his children. I remember my aunt Velinas Judith (later Mrs. Sitima) used to buy groceries for me when she worked for Malawi Pharmacies in Lilongwe. However, the help was not enough. The Malawi Government embarked on taking over many private schools. Many teachers were moved to government payrolls. Schools such as Balang’ombe became government schools and Martin became a civil servant. One more child was born to Elinart in 1976. She named him Hector Pilirani.

Martin Chirwa and oldest son Aubrey, early 1975

The family was struck by grief in 1977. The fifth born son, Precious, passed away. He fell ill while staying with the grandparents at Mngwangwa. I was at Likuni Boys’ Secondary when he left us. My parents told me that he died of polio.

Transition to journalism

Nkhoma Synod CCAP had a monthly magazine called Kuunika. The longtime editor of Kuunika retired in 1978. Martin applied for the job and was hired. Therefore, in 1978 he became a journalist after 14 years of teaching. The transition did not cause too much financial hardship. The government allowed teachers to take early retirement. It was a win-win as he would start drawing pension to supplement his employment income.

Martin bought a motorcycle to use as he traveled to Nkhoma Synod CCAP churches throughout the Central Region gathering church news and promoting sells of Kuunika. He brought changes to the magazine by introducing an English editor’s page to satisfy the increasing number of educated members of the church. He also introduced color to the magazine. In addition to producing the church monthly publication, Martin was involved in Bible translation projects.

With respect to life's conveniences, Nkhoma was a step up for the Chirwa family. Nkhoma is the headquarters of the CCAP church in the Central Region. It is connected to the national electricity grid run by the para-government corporation called Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM). Running water is supplied from the streams of Nkhoma mountain. The official residence was large with four large bedrooms, separate kitchen and living area, two full bathrooms. There was a big water boiler that used firewood to heat the water. Nkhoma is a small town. It has a hospital, a printing press, a nursing school, a theological college, a secondary school (the teacher's college that Martin attended in the early 1960s had be converted into a secondary school), a big market, and a post office. My father's office had a telephone.

Martin received a scholarship to study for a Diploma in Journalism at Daystar University in Kenya. He also went for a refresher course in journalist in Lusaka, Zambia. Meanwhile the two oldest children were selected to go to University of Malawi. Knowing the financial constraints of the family, the children who were in college started using some of their stipend to help their younger siblings. More relief came in 1983 after Robert graduated from college to become the first holder of a university degree on both the Chirwa and Chikanda sides. He was employed in a Blantyre bank and used some of his income to contribute towards siblings’ school fees. Aubrey transferred to the newly opened Natural Resources College in Lilongwe. Aubrey became a Game Ranger.

The middle children had grown into secondary school and college age. Patrick followed his older brother’s footsteps going to Likuni Boys’ and then later University of Malawi Polytechnic to study business. Evans went to Robert Laws Secondary School and the later went to University of Malawi Polytechnic to study engineering. Grace went to Nkhamenya Secondary School and then University of Malawi Bunda College. Beatrice went to Likuni Girls Secondary School and then the Polytechnic to pursue secretarial studies. To make matters worse, the government was no longer providing full scholarships to university students. Incidentally, the last two sons were born at Nkhoma. They were named Masiye Joseph and Kondwani.

Martin and Elinart struggled financially but ensured that each child did not fail to complete education due to financial reasons. The children knew the struggles. There were times when one of the children thought of giving up. As is Malawi tradition, Robert always took one of his siblings to live with him. At first he lived with Richard in Blantyre. Later he lived with Pirirani in Lilongwe

One of the important roles Martin played in raising of the children was giving of timely advice. He was an astute observer of what was going on in each child’s life. If he noticed that one of the children was straying off the required progress, he would call that child to his office. He would then give unsolicited advice. I remember him telling me during one of those sessions to avoid politics. He never gave reason for this advice and I did not ask for an explanation. However, I knew why he was advising me this way. Many people were being arrested and having their lives disrupted during Banda’s rule for political reasons. Banda was becoming increasingly dictatorial. This in addition to the usual issues of dishonesty and manipulation that go with politics. Martin Chirwa told me how the world seemed unfair as it did not always seem to reward the best. He advised me not to imitate other people but to focus on my goals in life. Those father-son moments were special and worthy of cherishing. And those moments brought out some frank realities. As an example, he told me about his own struggles and financial situation.

Although Martin did not spend much time with children in the fashion of Americans and Europeans style, Martin knew how to bond with his children. For example, he always considered it his responsibility to give each child their first driving lesson. It was important to him that each one got a driving lesson from their father. Martin bought an old early-1970s used Nissan 1000 sedan. I was working in Lilongwe and he called me to go to Nkhoma. He took me in his Nissan to an open field and started to teach how to drive. I was about 26 years old at the time.

In 1987 Aubrey married a girl from Chitipa. In 1988, Robert married Tambudzai Manondo of Ntcheu. Two months later Elinart had a stroke that left her paralyzed on the left side.

                      Martin and Elinart wedding in 1958       Robert and Tambudzai Wedding, 1988

Martin retired the editorship of Kuunika in 1991 at age 55. He loved Nathenje the most among all the places he had lived in Lilongwe District. He rented a shop at Nathenje Trading Center and used the money from his second retirement to start a grocery business. The next blog will conclude Martin Chirwa’s biography with his life in retirement.

Independence Fighter

Martin Chirwa during the time period presented in this blog

Events during the 1958 to 1964 phase of Martin Chirwa’s life helped define his view of the world and shape the rest of his life. More importantly, this time period impressed on him how he would raise his children. It is not an accident that this period coincided with the climax of the independence phase of the nation of Malawi.

At the time Martin Chirwa was starting school at Chikhutu in 1948, his teacher Grayson Chikanda had a young family. The rest of the family will be introduced later but for now let it suffice to bring to the reader’s attention that Grayson and his wife Jane had a second born daughter named Elinart who was born on 25^th May 1941. After establishing the school at Chikhutu, Grayson Chikanda was transferred to Nkhoma and later to Dzenza (currently on the edge of the city of Lilongwe). Martin continued to be in contact with his teacher and visited him and his family from time to time. By the time he finished school at Namitete, these visits had drawn him to Elinart and he fell in love with her. 

When Martin found a job at the Post Office in Limbe, he proposed to Elinart for a hand in marriage. Elinart was hesitant because at 17 she had plans. She had an eighth grade education and had ambitions to become a nurse. But Martin convinced Elinart that he was going to take care of her. So the two got married in 1958 and went to live in Blantyre.

Martin and Elinart Chirwa in 1988

To put the events in Martin’s life from 1958 to 1964 in perspective, the colonial history of Malawi needs to be revisited.

David Livingstone came from Scotland to Malawi as a missionary/explorer in 1859. Three types of British settlers followed Livingstone’s visit. The first type was made of Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries. The second type was made of farmers. And the third type was made of British business people who came to trade with the missionaries and farmers. Livingstone personally pushed for the settlers to come. His rationale was that it would help fight slave trade. At that time, Arabs came to Malawi and bought slaves from chiefs using salt and clothing. The Arabs then sold the slaves in Zanzibar to people from Europe and the Americas .

The settlers sought protection from the British government. A British Central Africa (BCA) protectorate was established in Malawi in 1860. The settlers gave the name of Nyasaland to Malawi. In 1891 the BCA became the Nyasaland Region Protectorate and then simply the Nyasaland Protectorate in 1907. In 1953, the British Colony of Southern Rhodedia (now Zimbabwe), the Northern Rhodesia Protectorate (now Zambia), and Nyasaland were merged into a British run semi-independent country called Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland run by the settlers.

There was a political group of Malawian Africans called Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) that was fighting for independence. This group decided they needed a messiah figure to start an uprising in the fight for independence. They settled on a friend of Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana which had just won independence from Britain in 1957. This friend of Kwame Nkrumah was Hastings Banda. Hastings Banda left Malawi when he was young and trained as a medical doctor in Tennessee, USA and Glasgow, Scotland. He then practiced medicine in Liverpool, England and then moved to Ghana where he practiced medicine from 1953. Hastings Banda accepted the invitation of NAC and came from Ghana in 1958 to lead the independence movement in Malawi.

The reader will notice that the year that Martin Chirwa started working coincides with the return of Hastings Banda to lead the independence movement. Martin immediately became politically active. He became a chair of the local Limbe branch of Hastings Banda’s party. He organized political meetings, sold NAC membership cards to raise money for the party, and went door to door recruiting for NAC. The British federation government decided to crush the independence movement. Hastings Banda and some of the leaders of NAC were arrested for political agitation and a state of emergency was declared in March 1959. Martin Chirwa was arrested for a false charge of embezzling post office money. Martin suspected that the true reason for the arrest was that he was a NAC leader. He appeared before a court judge on 19^th June 1959. The judge could not find evidence of the charge brought against Martin and ordered that he should not go to prison. However, the Post Office decided that Martin should lose his job. A day after the court ruling, Elinart gave birth to their first born son on 20^th June 1959. She named him Aubrey Chimwai (“Very Lucky”). Thus, barely one year after finding a job, Martin was unemployed and had responsibilities of taking care of a wife and young son.

From "Nyasaland Demands Secession and Independence" by Chiume, July 1959

Notice the only woman on the NAC committee, Rose Chibambo, who was imprisoned

With his wife and newly born son, Martin went back home to northwestern Lilongwe to live with his father and mother at Dzalo in Fulatira village. However, the village would not allocate land for Martin and his family at Fulatira because Chewa culture is matrilineal. Fulatira is Martin’s father’s village and that is a problem. Martin went to his mother’s village of Mumbi near his school of Chikhutu. There he was given a garden that he farmed for one season.

Martin continued political activism. The leaders of NAC who were not arrested including Orton Chirwa (no relation) and Kanyama Chiume decided to change the name of the political party to Malawi Congress Party (MCP). Martin Chirwa rode his bike around Northern Lilongwe selling MCP cards to raise money for the party while recruiting members at the same time. Political meetings were outlawed by the state of emergency. It is important to note that there were many skeptics of the possibility that the Caucasian settlers who had been entrenched could ever be uprooted from Nyasaland. Therefore, convincing people in the villages to join the independence movement was a difficult task. For three years (1959 to 1962), Martin crisscrossed Lilongwe as a political activist fighting for independence.

Back at Dzenza, Grayson Chikanda was now in his early 40s and was beginning to think about life after teaching. Grayson’s father had been more or less a nomad. One of the places that he lived briefly was Mngwangwa Village. This village is in Northwestern Lilongwe, 18 miles (about 30 kilometers) from the city on the road that goes from the city to the border with Dowa district. Mngwangwa had a Farmers Marketing Board which meant one Caucasian worker lived there. The British established a government corporation to buy tobacco, corn (maize), peanuts (groundnuts), and other crops from African farmers all over Malawi. This helped the government to control how much farming was taking place and how much money native Africans had. But then I digress. Grayson Chikanda claimed the property given by the chief of Mngwangwa to his father. He built a house on the bushy edge of Mngwangwa Village. Grayson asked his unemployed son-in-law Martin to go and live in his house at Mngwangwa. Thus Martin, Elinart, and their son Aubrey moved to an isolated house surrounded by bush. They farmed a garden about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from their house.

Grayson and Jane Chikanda effectively adopted Martin as their own son from this point onwards. Martin was treated as a son in addition to their own children: Drovia, Elinart, Clifford, Mercy, Baxton, Velinace, Cleanness, and Patricia. Elinart had a second son at her parents’ home at Dzenza whom she named Robert Masautso (“Problems”). (In case you are wondering, Jane was a midwife). Grayson and Jane immediately took Robert with them as a baby and started raising him at Dzenza.

Hastings Banda was released from prison in 1960 and independence negotiations started immediately. By 1962 it was clear that independence was won. Martin was now 26. Grayson decided to have a talk with Martin. Grayson advised Martin to train for a more stable career. He impressed upon Martin that farming in the village was hard and does not provide a steady income for raising a family.

Martin heed the advice of his father-in-law, stopped political activism, and took up a more traditional career. He decided to go into teaching. In 1962, the young man, Martin, enrolled in the Presbyterian William Murray Teachers Training College at Nkhoma. Elinart lived alone in the isolated house in the bushy portion of Mngwangwa village at the time of her husband’s absence away in teacher training. It was a difficult time for Elinart. Martin graduated in 1964 and obtained his teaching certificate. This is a very appropriate coda of the independence fight portion of Martin’s life. As it turns out, his new training would be useful in the next phase of the nation of Malawi. The life of Martin Chirwa was interwoven with the transitions of the nation of Malawi which incidentally gained independence in 1964.

People like Martin Chirwa are the reason independence came to Malawi. Their names will not be written in books. They will just be mentioned as “people” who demanded independence. They will not be studied in history classes. But they are the unsung heroes of the country of Malawi.

First Malawi Cabinet

Courtesy of Ebony Magazine, Vol 1. No. 7 September 1964

I can do both

IN MEMORY OF MARTIN NKHALAMBAYAUSI CHIRWA (1936 – 2016)

Martin Nkhalambayausi Chirwa during his later school years. 

I do not have a date for this photo but it should be from the mid to late 1950s.

Martin Chirwa was born on November 11, 1936 in a village called Fulatira in the northwestern part of the central Malawi district of Lilongwe. Everybody who knows Malawi will at this point immediately ask, “don’t Chirwas come from the northern Malawi lake shore district of Nkhatabay?” To answer this question, I will start with some background before proceeding with the early years of Martin.

Around the late 1800s, a man called Gideon Chirwa came from the north and married a girl called Agnes in Fulatira village. The village chief allocated a piece of land to the south of the village to Gideon and his wife. Gideon named his part of the village Dzalo. Oral history says this name is a corruption of Jalo, the name of the village of his origin in Nkhotakota which is just south of Nkhatabay. It is plausible that Gideon’s ancestors moved from Nkhatabay to Nkhotakota. For some reason, Gideon trekked further south to Lilongwe. However, it is clear that it was not Gideon’s generation that came from Nkhatabay as he did not speak the language of Nkhatabay.

Gideon’s oldest son was called Jonathan. Jonathan married a girl called Delia from about 5 miles (8 kilometers) north of Fulatira. Jonathan and Delia had three sons by the start of the second world war in 1939. Their third son was Martin.

Jonathan and Delia Chirwa in 1988. Both are deceased.

These are Martin Chirwa's parents.

Jonathan took his wife and children and went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1940 where he worked as a brick layer. The third son, Martin, was less than four years old when they traveled to Rhodesia by railway. After the second world war, in 1946, Jonathan returned to Malawi with four things. He brought some money he had saved, a larger family as three additional children were born in Rhodesia, a brick laying skill, and cool items such as bikes for his children. Jonathan decided to invest his money in cattle. Of all his children, his son Martin was at the perfect age of ten years old to be the cattle herder. The two older sons were more useful assisting with farming while the one son born in Rhodesia was too young. Cattle herders are needed in Malawi to make sure cattle feed on naturally growing grass on common grounds. Also, it is the cattle herder’s responsibility to ensure cattle do not eat crops in people’s gardens. Martin would open the cattle corral early in the morning and take the cattle to the stream where they would feed on green grass growing along the stream (the dambo) and drink from the stream. In the evening he would herd them back to the corral.

About the same time period, the Malawi synods of Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) embarked on an expansion program. One of the places chosen for expansion just happened to be less than a mile from Martin’s mother’s village. The place is called Chikhutu in Northwestern Lilongwe. In those days, establishing a church station involved concurrently starting a prayer house and a school. Students enrolled in school had to become church members and denounce their cultural heritage. The central region CCAP was headquartered at Nkhoma on the east of Lilongwe. CCAP Nkhoma sent a teacher named Grayson Chikanda to open the school at Chikhutu. Grayson Chikanda was to eventually become Martin’s father-in-law. Incidentally, Jonathan used his bricklaying skills to build the church and school at Chikhutu.

Grayson Chikanda had been instructed by the church to recruit six year old students from around Chikhutu to start the equivalent of kindergarten. At age ten, Martin was too old for kindergarten. Even if he was eligible for kindergarten, his father would not let him go to school because cattle herding had higher priority. Martin begged Grayson Chikanda, the teacher, to let him enroll in school anyway in violation of the age requirements. Grayson Chikanda bent the rules by giving Martin a false birthday for school enrollment purposes. But before enrollment, Martin needed school fees money. He could not ask his father for school fees money because he was not allowed to go to school in the first place. Martin secretly did casual work to earn the six pence (about a nickel) needed for school fees and enrolled in school at about 12 years of age. His father was furious when he heard that his son had enrolled in school. He thought the cattle would starve to death if Martin went to school.

Martin was confronted by his father with the question, “who will take care of the cattle if you will be going to school?”

Martin replied, “I can do both school and cattle herding.”

Martin promised to take care of the cattle after coming from school every day. Martin’s father finally begrudgingly accepted the compromise. So Martin became the older cool kid at the school who rides the bike to school. The story is told that when the inspector of schools came from the church headquarters at Nkhoma, Grayson Chikanda would tell the bigger kids to sit in the back and hunch over to avoid detection. Thus, every school day in the morning Martin rode his bike the 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Fulatira village to school at Chikhutu. In the afternoon he rode the same distance back home. After arrival back home he took the cattle to the dambo.

The school at Chikhutu was like an American elementary school as it started with Preschool and ended at grade 5. To continue school, Martin went to a boarding school at Namitete west of Lilongwe about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from his home. He passed the eighth grade government examinations in 1957. Armed with an eighth grade education, Martin found a job as a Post Office clerk. He first attended training in Zomba and was then posted at Limbe Post Office in the southern Malawi city of Blantyre. This was 1958 and the young man Martin was now about to turn 22.

A life well lived

In memory of Martin Nkhalambayausi Chirwa (1936 – 2016)

Martin Chirwa passed away on June 16, 2016 at the age of 79 after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Elinart with whom he was married for 58 years, 10 children ranging from 57 to 37 years old (from oldest to youngest) and their spouses, 21 grandchildren, and 7 siblings.

Martin Chirwa is my father. Of course I am biased, but there are few people who contributed to family, friends, church, education, and the country of Malawi, as much as my father did. My only question is, “how did he do it?” My father is truly one of the most unsung heroes of the world. And my father is my mentor.

I will write about this amazing man who walked the earth living an honest and hard-working life full of integrity. I hope that you will go along with me on the journey that attempts to retrace how my father lived his life. Some of the information to be penned was known to me prior to my father’s death. But there is also plenty of new information that I learned when I talked to my father’s two older brothers last month.

Just as a quick preview, my father personifies the much desired upward social class mobility that economists always talk about. As a young boy, he was a cattle herder. By his death, all his children were living an upper middle class life. His parents never stepped in a classroom and yet all his children had been to college and obtained some form of higher education qualification.

I will try to present his biography in chronological order. It will start with his early life and the struggles he faced to get a basic education. This will be followed by his political activism during Malawi’s fight for independence. To me, the most amazing phase of my father’s life was the third. This is the phase when he became a teacher and planted new schools while raising a large family together with my mother. This phase will also chronicle my father's transitioning to journalism. The concluding part will cover his final days on earth after “retirement”.

Martin Chirwa gave us so much of his life. He is looking happily at the positive fruits of his labor. And I believe the God who loves us and sent us his son Jesus Christ approved the way my father accepted the calling and was led by the Holy Spirit.