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.