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.