Tambu Chirwa - "Let the Children Come to Me"

“Embracing change is not just an escape from monotony, but a step toward living a life full of purpose and joy.”

(Quoted from ‘Trapped in routine? Here’s how to “dishabituate” and rediscover joy’ by Jonny Johnson published in Neuropath on March 8, 2024) 

Graduation Day (December 8, 2018)

Back to School

Tambu enrolled in the Associate in Arts in Social Work degree at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC) in Fall 2012 starting with one mathematics class. The course load was increased starting in Spring 2013. As one who always wanted to contribute to the family income, Tambu was employed as a student worker in the college café at Cooper Campus. After a semester she changed jobs and got employed in the St. Joseph Hospital kitchen. She was on a team that prepared and delivered food to patients.

When she reached the specialization level of the coursework required for the Social Work degree, Tambu needed to complete internships. She did the first internship at Bob Brown Housing. This is an apartment complex facility that offers affordable housing to mentally disabled individuals. The unique feature of the facility is that the residents are provided three meals per day while being afforded enough independence to seek employment and live reasonably gainful lives. Residents are also taken to events such as baseball games. Tambu helped in the kitchen at Bob Brown Housing and offered her minivan to take residents to social events.

The Rock of the Family

The period of Tambu’s attendance at BCTC coincided with losses of all parent figures in her life. Her dad, Dick, passed away in December 2012. Her mother, Lesa, followed seven months later in July 2013. And her adopted mother Helen Brown lost the battle with cancer in September 2015.

Loss of parents is disorienting. Such loss can destabilize a family. Parents act as a glue in a family in ways that are not noticeable. It is only when they are gone that the void they have left is magnified. It is not surprising that the loss of Dick, Lesa, and Helen resulted in some kind of “unravelling” in the Chirwa, Manondo, and Brown families. The grandchildren of Dick and Lesa as well as Helen started rebelling against their parents, uncles, and aunts. Some of the grandchildren started to pursue a wild lifestyle.

In all this, Tambu proved an anchor that stabilized the families. She was resolute in advising the grandchildren how to return from where they had strayed. And she did all that with a lot of love, tough love that is. It took some time for the families to recover. When we all came out of it (to the extent that we could), new traditions were born. There was a general acceptance of a different way of relating as families and it was all okay.

Tambu graduated with an Associate in Arts in Social Work in May 2016. This made her the first among her siblings to obtain a college degree. But she was not finished. In August 2016, she enrolled in a Bachelor in Social Work (BSW) degree program at Morehead State University in Eastern Kentucky.

Juggling

The Morehead State University social work program was conducted at a campus in a small town named Mt. Sterling-Kentucky half-way between Lexington-Kentucky and Morehead-Kentucky. This town is 40 miles from Lexington. The program used a cohort model where an intake of students started and progressed together until graduation. Tambu went to class twice a week driving her minivan. She found a job at a company called Comfort Keepers, in Lexington, that provided care for homebound elderly. She went to work on days that she did not go to class.

WORK PERIOD	EMPLOYER	POSITION	TYPE OF WORK
June 2016 – July 2017	Comfort Keepers	In Home Caretaker	home care for assisted independent living elderly
Fall 2017	Kentucky United Methodist Home for Youth	Junior Practicum	Documenting cases
January 2018 – December 2018	Kentucky United Methodist Home for Youth	Youth Counselor	Visitations with individual residents and life coaching
Fall 2018	Cabinet for Health and Family Services	Senior Practicum	Investigations for abuse/neglect/dependency of children

 While she was attending Morehead State University, Tambu was always busy with employed work. I have put her jobs in the table above to enable the reader to keep up.

In August 2017, Tambu was diagnosed with cancer. She had surgery to remove the cancerous material. She took a month off school and work to recover from the surgery. The oncology doctor believed the cancer was detected early at stage 1. The survival rating was put at 90 percent.

One of the most significant events to occur during Tambu’s college years was that her youngest son Kabelo got married to Katie Harper of St. Louis-Missouri. The wedding was in September 2018. Tambu was over the moon to have a stepdaughter and she loved Katie and her whole family. Three months before the wedding, with the help of her Niece Martha Tambala, she organized a Malawi traditional engagement ceremony called “chinkhoswe” in O’Fallon near St. Louis. For the actual wedding, she ensured that the Chirwa and Manondo families were well represented. From Malawi, she invited her sister Catherine, her nephew and his wife Ronnie and Violet, and my sister Grace Kussein. From South Africa came my brother Evans. From Britain came Tambu’s nephew’s wife Chisomo. The logistics were dizzying to say the least. Ever the organizer, Tambu was on top of her game (while she attended classes – never missed a class).

Save the Best for Last

Tambu graduated from Morehead State University in December 2018 with a Bachelor of Social Work degree. After the surgery of 2017, the oncology doctor ordered checkups every three months. The March 2019 checkup revealed that the cancer had returned. Tambu started chemotherapy treatment in April 2019. I became a caregiver to my wife. Two months later, in June 2019, Tambu was employed as a social worker at the Jefferson County office (in Louisville-Kentucky) of the Child Protective Services / Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The job was about protecting children. This involved cases that had already been investigated. There were a few cases where she went to snatch children from unsafe home environments. But most times, she was helping abusive parents or parents whose homes were deemed unfit for raising children to follow court prescribed steps so they could get their children back.

The job required getting started with a Masters in Social Work (MSW) at the University of Louisville. We rented an apartment in Louisville. Tambu completed some coursework towards the master’s. The chemotherapy seemed to be working as the oncology doctor told Tambu that reduction of the cancer was observed. We considered getting Tambu ensconced into Louisville life and career. So, we started searching for a house to purchase in Louisville.

Then Covid-19 came causing closures of offices in March 2020. We kept the apartment in Louisville, but Tambu worked from home in Lexington. Having cancer is emotionally devastating. And yes, Tambu had many moments when she feared the worst and was depressed by such thoughts. Yet, overall, Tambu maintained a positive outlook on life. She continued to work on her passions. And she was more worried about other people, such as me, than she was about herself.

“Are you eating enough food?”, she would ask me.

“Are you sleeping enough?”

And she told her sister Amy that she was worried that her husband Robert would just be sequestered in his basement when she was gone.

Concluding Remarks

So, Tambu overcame the odds. Counted out as a teenager, she stayed the course and ended up being the only one among her siblings to have a college degree. She even started a master’s degree program. She worked hard to maintain a loving and nurturing family. With genuine authenticity she cared for, raised, and protected children whom she loved so much. Along the way, she took care of the elderly, refugees, the poor in West Virginia, and the lonely. At the same time, she provided love and counsel to her siblings and the extended family. All those she touched speak highly of her. And off-course, she took care of yours truly! Tambu was a remarkable woman! Maybe the epitaph says it best, “Loving wife, mother, aunt, sister, and friend.”

Tambu Chirwa - Soccer Mom and Venerated Volunteer

 

Tambu, middle in the bottom row. Father Dick and mother Lesa seated on her left and right. Standing starting with the reader’s left are siblings Anthony, Catherine, Anna, and Davie. This photo was taken in 1997 just before Tambu returned to America.

Super Woman

The main reason Tambu came back to America was to ensure that her children would have access to the best possible public education. My brother Evans Chirwa who was pursuing a doctoral in Environmental Engineering at University of Kentucky chose an apartment for the family in a location that was within a good elementary school district. Ulalo and Kabelo were enrolled at Southern Elementary School in 1997. And so, Tambu was very involved in their school lives right from the beginning. She was a volunteer helper in their classrooms.

One day the boys joined a street soccer game. They were so much better at soccer than all the other kids with whom they were playing. After seeing what Ulalo and Kabelo were doing with the soccer ball, some parents encouraged Ulalo and Kabelo to join organized soccer. They registered for the noncompetitive Lexington Youth Soccer Association (LYSA) in Spring 1998. Even with organized soccer, the boys were still much better than their teammates. So, they tried out and were chosen to play select soccer with Lexington Futball League (LFC) in Fall 2000. Later, Robreen joined the family in Lexington and was also selected for an LFC soccer team.

During school hours, Tambu was volunteering in her sons’ classrooms. After school, the children ate lunch and went to piano lessons at Ms. Amy’s. From there, she took the boys to soccer practice. She then prepared dinner for the family and made sure everyone had eaten enough. To end the day, she made sure the children had done their homework.

The family continued to attend Trinity Baptist Church upon returning to Lexington. Tambu volunteered for many church causes. A daytime women’s branch of an international bible study group called Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) started to meet at Trinity Baptist Church. Tambu started to attend BSF. She also helped with Meals on Wheels routes delivering meals to homebound persons.

Tambu’s weekends were filled with many activities and events. As a soccer mom, she drove to the boys’ competitive games some of which were hundreds of miles out of town. Another time demander was going to church twice each Sunday and participating in the many church events. Although there were many activities that required her attention, Tambu always made time for herself. She was always a member of a fitness club and regularly attended aerobics classes. In summer, she took the boys to a swimming pool every afternoon.

It is important to mention that Tambu had friends who sometimes gave her a breather from time to time. The Berry’s, who had been instrumental in Tambu’s settling in Lexington in 1989, have a son named Matthew who was born about the same year as Kabelo. Matthew’s mother, Karen Berry, trained as a nurse and was working at Cardinal Hill. Work schedules of nurses are complicated. This complication worked in favor of both Karen and Tambu. On off days, Karen would take Ulalo and Kabelo to spend the day with Matthew. On days when Karen had to work and needed a baby seater for Matthew, Tambu would have Matthew over to play with Ulalo and Kabelo.

Soccer in America is mostly played by children from middles and upper economic classes. It was, therefore, difficult for Tambu’s family to keep up with the financial demands of soccer. But Tambu made sure that the boys stayed in soccer. There were moments when she overheard some parents gossiping asking, “why do they continue being involved in soccer”. What the boys lacked in money; they made up for it on the field. They were good at soccer.

The school age class of BSF was run concurrently with the men’s evening group. Tambu wanted the boys to start attending BSF. So, she signed me up for BSF with the intention of having me take the boys to their BSF class. The boys and I did BSF for seven years from 2002 to 2009. Thus, Tambu made sure that the family was developing in all the three human facets of body, soul, and spirit.

 

Lexington Family

Helen Brown always called before each Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. She would call on the landline phone and say,

“Hello! This is Helen. We are eating at 1:00 o’clock”.

Helen’s dinner table did not always have the same people. She always had an eye to identify a close friend who needed company during the holidays. But Amy and her children Hannah and Sadie as well as Tambu and I with our children Ulalo and Kabelo were always there. There were times when Helen’s sister-in-law June and her husband Joe were invited. June and Joe Ritchie’s daughter Kelly was also sometimes invited. Once in a while, a foreign missionary who was in the country for the first time would also be invited. These dinners deepened the cousin relationship between our boys and Amy’s daughters.

Tambu used to invite Helen Brown, Amy, Hannah, and Sadie to Ulalo and Kabelo’s birthdays. At these birthdays, Tambu cooked chicken using her special recipe and served it with sides such as rice and vegetables. Everybody loved Tambu’s chicken. There was reciprocity in these birthday invitations as Amy always invited Tambu’s family to Hannah and Sadie’s birthdays.

 

Leadership

During the six years of 1991 to 1997 when Tambu was back in Malawi, she had become the defacto leader of the family. Although she was the youngest in the family, her older siblings valued her decision-making. They usually went with her final word in matters of parental care or how to relate with extended family members. This trend continued when she came back to Lexington. There was very good communication in the family in consultation about family matters.

In 1999, Trinity Baptist Church was approached to consider hosting a family seeking asylum from a refugee camp in Congo. The congregation was divided into pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant camps. Tambu shared the experiences of her friend Jean Munyabagisha and her husband Leonardo. When the church members heard Tambu, they were swayed into voting for hosting the refugee family.

Helping the new immigrant family settle in Lexington was a lot of work. One of Tambu’s lasting legacies was that she helped the new immigrant family find an apartment near Henry Clay High School. Subsequent immigrant families from Congo followed this family resulting in a large immigrant community in the Henry Clay High School neighborhood. There were many good soccer players who were children of some of the immigrants. As a result, the Henry Clay High School soccer team became very good. They went on to win the Kentucky State Soccer Championship.

Tambu wanted to return to her Presbyterian Christian tradition. She also wanted to take the children into a more structured environment as they transitioned into high school age. In 2005, the family transferred Christian membership to Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Lexington. One of the criteria that swayed Tambu to join Second Presbyterian Church was that it was sponsoring an American missionary family in her home country of Malawi. There were many members of this new church who had been exposed to the international community. In particular, Jack and Angene Wilson had a long track record of living in many countries including African ones. Second Presbyterian Church also had members who had befriended Tambu and I on the soccer field sidelines. One of the soccer friends who were members of Second Presbyterian are the Wethall’s. Todd and Holly Wethall and their children Andrew and Anna became close friends of ours.

Upon joining Second Presbyterian Church, Tambu was immediately nominated to become a deacon. She was also part of a group that helped to welcome and settle a new immigrant family from Kazakhstan. This involved driving members of the immigrant family to different places and events to help their integration into American life. She volunteered to be part of a team that went to rural West Virginia to help renovate homes for poor families. One day, one of the members of the team fell and the team was amazed how Tambu went into action as if she had medical training.

Tambu’s qualities as a caring leader were on full display on two mission trips that some members of Second Presbyterian Church made to Malawi in 2007 and 2010. When in Malawi, Tambu was the organizer, safety expert, street shopping bargainer, and plain and simple somebody every team member was listening to and depended on. The only youth member of the team on the 2007 was Emily Downing. Tambu taught Emily the Malawi traditions of greeting and socializing with other youth. It was an amazing sight to see!

Most of the members of the 2010 Second Presbyterian Church mission trip were youth. But there were six accompanying adults. One of the adults members of the team was Margaret Seiffert. Margaret and Tambu formed a sisterhood bond on the trip. Further, while in Malawi the team was hosted for dinner by Catherine, Tambu’s sister, in Blantyre. Catherine and Margaret formed a sisterhood bond as well.

Bread Winner

The children reached teenage years where they were now driving and able to be left home alone. They did not need Tambu’s attention 24 hours of the day. Tambu was helped by Julia Thorne to transition her immigration status to where she could work. Julia Thorne was a longtime friend who was trained as an immigration lawyer. Julia and her husband John exchanged dinner invitations with Tambu’s family. With the help of Julia, Tambu returned to paid work in 2006. She was employed by Aramark who were contracted to provide catering services at Blackburn Prison in Lexington, Kentucky. Blackburn is a minimum security prison owned and operated by the government of the state of Kentucky. She received training on how to safely work in a prison environment.

In 2008, three of the team members were transferred to the Aramark group that provided catering services at Fayette County jail also in Lexington, Kentucky. Fayette County is the geographical district that contains the city of Lexington. Fayette County jail has a larger prison population and more tightly secured than Blackburn. Such an environment created more conflicts between in-mates, prison staff, and contract workers such as those for Aramark. This was a more challenging work environment where even Aramark team members turned against each other. Tambu was stressed out working at Aramark.

Tambu was promoted to the position of Assistant Manager. Some of the Aramark team members had problems with a woman that had a foreign accent being their boss. But Tambu was very hard working and never called in sick. This meant they could not find a weakness in her work and professional conduct to use to undermine her.

Meanwhile, Ulalo went to college at Vanderbilt University in 2009 to study Chemical Engineering. And Kabelo went to Bellarmine University in 2011 to study Music. The home had become an empty nest. This together with how toxic Aramark at Fayette County jail had become, we (the family) urged Tambu to resign and go to college.

 

Tambu Chirwa - Wife and Mother

As a girl with hands-on knack

The system attempted your back to crack

But you walked the steady track

Until the world saw you had its back

Tambu at Peat Marwick, 1986

 

The Comeback

For most Malawian girls, a teenage pregnancy would mark the end of professional and personal improvement and development. Tambu was not an ordinary girl. For she was just getting started.

The rebound started with enrollment at a Speed Typing School in Area 25, Lilongwe City in 1984. After about one year she obtained the Elementary and Intermediate Speed Typing Certificates. This meant she could type on the keyboard at 60 words per minute. In 1985, Tambu was employed as a Typist at the Malawi government’s Department of Lands and Valuation whose offices were located at the Lilongwe City Center. She moved to live near her workplace with her sister Catherine Chitedze in Area 15. This residential area is about 3 miles west of the City Center.

The house in which Catherine and Jack lived had three bedrooms and an outside self-contained room. They had two sons and were expecting a soon-to-be-born third son. Jack’s brother who had just graduated from University of Malawi was already living with them. This is the house in which Tambu and Robreen were accommodated.

About one year later, Tambu changed jobs and became a Receptionist/Clerk/Typist at KPMG Peat Marwick, an American auditing company. Around the same time, I changed jobs from programmer at Commercial Bank in Blantyre to systems analyst at Reserve Bank in Lilongwe. The Reserve Bank building is just across the road from Aquarius House where KPMG Peat Marwick offices were. My rented house was in the eastern part of the city.

And so it was that at the end of each work say I would stand at the bus stop by Reserve Bank waiting for the bus going east. Across the road stood this impeccably dressed beautiful girl waiting for the bus going west. I asked somebody, “who is this girl that waits for the bus across the road?” The person gave me the name of Tambu Manondo and where she worked. In those days, knowing where a person worked meant you knew their phone number. So, I called her and asked her out for a date in April 1987. Three months later we were engaged and one year later we were married.

The dating/fiancée period of one year revealed to me Tambu’s positive attributes that reaffirmed to me that she was going to make a wonderful partner. She had a full cute girly giggle and liked to laugh at my silly jokes. Most importantly, she valued and loved children. She would go out of her way to check on the well-being of children even on occasions that were “her days”. Case in point, her family was meeting my family on what is considered an important occasion for my people to see the future bride. Tambu left her place and went where the children were to check if they had been given food to eat. And I just said, “wow!” 

Let’s Start a Family

 Tambu and Robert Chirwa Wedding

Our beautiful wedding was on April 30, 1988. One year later, in April 1989, Tambu went to Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America to join me as I was awarded an African Graduate Fellowship to study for a master’s in computer science. Eight months earlier, I had met the family of Ken and Karen Berry after I had been in Lexington for only one week. Due to not making prior housing arrangements, the family of Jerry and Charlene Leach hosted me for one week. On the Sunday of that week, they took me to their church named Covenant Church. The church was forming a soccer team and Ken Berry went ahead and recruited me.  Ken and Karen Berry became close friends.

As if to announce that Lexington will no longer be the same with the arrival of Tambu, there was snow on Derby Day 1989 in Kentucky. The Kentucky Derby is a big horse race that takes place on the first Saturday of May each year in Louisville, Kentucky. There are three big horse races in America that are called the Triple Crown. The first of these is the Kentucky Derby. Although the actual race is only 2 minutes, people in Kentucky treat the Derby the way soccer loving countries treat the world cup final. Winter is supposed to have ended by Derby Day which means snow is unlikely. But 1989 was different!

Life is usually lonely for a spouse of a graduate student in America especially students from outside the United States. It was not any different for Tambu. To fill time, Tambu attended classes to prepare for the General Education Diploma (GED) high school equivalency test. She also started working at Western Steer Restaurant. Tambu befriended a wife of another graduate student from Rwanda who was in a similar situation. The new friend’s name was Jean Munyabagisha. Ken and Karen Berry were instrumental in helping Tambu settle. They invited Tambu and I to spend Christmas Eve 1989 in their house with their three sons. We all woke up in the morning in their house and opened presents. They also lent us their old Buick.

Tambu and I started attending Trinity Baptist Church off Winchester Road in eastern part of Lexington, Kentucky. The wife of a prominent former pastor of the church, Helen Brown, immediately took Tambu as a daughter. Helen invited Tambu and I to every important gathering, especially Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners. Helen’s daughter, Amy, became Tambu’s new sister. Amy’s Sunday School Class at Trinity Baptist for newly married couples provided a strong social bond that alleviated some of Tambu’s loneliness. Tambu was the first member of the Sunday school class to get pregnant. She gave birth to her second son Ulalo on March 7, 1991. Ulalo became the son of the whole Sunday school class.

Tambu with Trinity Baptist Church Sunday School Class 1991

Tambu and I returned to Malawi in May 1991. Back in Lilongwe, Tambu started working at National Bank of Malawi. Two years later, in 1993, Tambu gave birth to her third and last son, named Kabelo Ufulu by Tambu’s parents. Tambu and I moved to the university town of Zomba a few months after Kabelo’s birth as I changed jobs leaving the software development profession for academics. I became lecturer of computer science in the University of Malawi.

New Town, Friends, and Happiness

Tambu’s next employer was a bank named New Building Society located in downtown Zomba. She also studied and passed the high school Malawi Junior Certificate of Education examinations that are equivalent to successfully completing American 10th grade. It was amazing to watch her navigate the different roles of professional woman, mother, student, as well as wife and friend to many.

Two friends warrant mentioning both of whom are American. One was a music professor named Mitch Strumpf. He had come to teach at the University of Malawi in 1982. Mitch loved to cook and host dinners. He also loved to be invited to dinners. Tambu and Mitch exchanged many dinner invitations. The other friend was Dana Reitman. Dana came to Zomba with her family as her husband was a Fulbright Scholar lecturing in sociology at the University of Malawi. They have two young sons. Tambu and Dana went for walks, did workouts, went shopping, and invited each other to many dinners. It was at these dinners that Tambu’s planning and cooking shined.

Social circles in Zomba included membership in two Christian organizations. One was a local branch of Gideons International, an American nondenominal group that distributes free bibles, especially in hotels, schools, and hospitals. The other was a multidenominational ad-hoc bible study group. The latter helped Tambu reflect on her life and helped her become an even better person.

Political Transition in Malawi

The period of 1992 to 1994 was important in the politics of Malawi. The Malawi Congress Party (MCP) headed by Hastings Banda had been the sole ruling party since independence in 1994. The party was initially popular due to its leadership in fighting to end British colonialism. In 1964, there were opposing political parties, but MCP won elections by landslides. A few year later, however, Banda’s government banned opposing political parties and MCP voted to make Banda life president. Malawi became a one-party country with an unelected president. Every citizen was forced to be a member of MCP and women and children were forced to go to political rallies and dance. Political opponents were detained without trial.

The political winds changed starting in 1992 when some brave Malawians started to openly challenge the one-party system. The opposition gathered momentum when Catholic Bishops wrote a letter that was read in all churches. The letter criticized the government. Due to the pressure, the law was changed to allow multiple political parties to exist and multi-party general elections were held in June 1994. Banda and MCP lost.

Tambu did not like the MCP. She particularly detested being forced to go and dance at political rallies. She was all too eager to cast her vote for any opposition party.

Pan-African

Two important events happened while in Zomba. First, Jean Munyabagisha and her husband who had returned to their home country of Rwanda fled the genocide there and ended up in a refugee camp in Malawi. Both passed away later in the refugee camp due to very bad and unhygienic conditions. Second, Tambu’s second sister became very ill due to HIV-AIDS. She spent some of her last days in our home for the peace and quiet of Zomba to get away from the hustle-and-bustle and noise of Blantyre. She passed away in 1995. These two events opened Tambu’s eyes to immigration and HIV-AIDS as important causes to support. She worked hard to bring awareness of the plight of immigrants and the devastating effect of HIV-AIDS. More especially, she told people how these two scourges were affecting Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tambu and her sons Ulalo and Kabelo returned to Lexington, Kentucky, USA in May 1997. They came to join me as I had come back to pursue a doctoral degree in computer science as required by my employment in the University of Malawi.