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 day 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 years 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, Doris, became very ill due to HIV-AIDS. Doris 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.

 

Tambu Chirwa - Girl Child in Malawi

Tambu Chirwa (then Manondo) around 1980

Birth

The beautiful jacaranda bloom season of Pretoria, South Africa had just ended. The year 1963 was about to be closed. Lessa Manondo was in the third trimester of a pregnancy as the seasons transitioned from Spring, that runs September to November, to Summer. And the Summer rains had started. Lessa’s older sister, Lizinet Thembachako, came to be with her during this joyous pregnancy. At about 40 years of age, Lessa thought she was past the childbearing age. And then this pregnancy happened.

“It’s a girl”, said the midwife on Monday December 9, 1963 as Lessa delivered [1].

“I am naming this one Tambudzai after myself”, pronounced Lessa’s older sister.

“The name of this baby is Mauawawa”, chimed in Dickson, Lessa’s husband.

Hello world! Receive your newest addition in the form of a girl given the most uncommon collection of names. For Tambudzai is a word in the Shona language that means troublemaker. While Mauawawa means “words hurt” in the Chichewa language.

Within the same time period, Lessa’s older sister Lizinet gave birth to a daughter whom she named Maria. Tambu and Maria were raised as twins from childhood. At three years old, Tambu moved to Wanyemba Village in Ntcheu, Malawi together with her mother and siblings. So did Lizinet and Maria and their family.

Early Years

Tambu was a rambunctious child. Everyone in Wanyemba Village considered Tambu a tomboy. She liked to play with boys and she got into many fights. At age 6 she was enrolled in standard one at Kapalamula Primary School in Wanyemba. Tambu’s student life was off to a rocky start. She was not doing well in school. She narrated the following experience to me:

“One day, the teacher was teaching us names of different parts of the body. To check if we were paying attention, the teacher asked me the name of the bulging lines on the arm. I proudly answered, ‘muscles’. But the teacher said, “No, it is veins!” I told the teacher that he was wrong. There is no way those lines can have such a silly name”.

Outside the classroom, Tambu’s life was that of an ordinary village girl. She helped her mother with cleaning, fetching water from the borehole, washing clothes by hand, and cooking. She was trained in the Ngoni manners. The elders taught her how to be a respectable and responsible female in the community. Other than the fighting and playing with boys, she was receiving the usual village girl training. The Manondo family had more wealth compared to most in the village. They were able to pay for some labor such as farm work. This enabled Tambu to be exempt from farm work. But she enjoyed the authentic flavors of newly harvested fresh farm products such as green maize (corn), raw groundnuts (peanuts), pumpkins, mustard greens, okra, and tomatoes. And she enjoyed going to the market to bargain for cheaper prices of produce. Tambu also learned early on that her father loved tea. She made tea for her father three times a day: morning, afternoon, and night.

The family belonged to the Presbyterian Church. As such, Tambu attended church regularly. She completed all the baptismal and confirmation requirements of the church. The Malawi Presbyterian Church has always experienced a shortage of trained clergy. Prayer houses that may have upwards of 1000 members may not have a dedicated pastor. Pastors tend to be assigned to mission stations whose catchment areas have many prayer houses. Therefore, pastors tend to carefully plan visits to the prayer houses in their “parishes”. It is not uncommon for a prayer house to have only two to three pastor visits per year. The prayer house at Wanyemba was no exception. Due to this clergy shortage, lay members fill in the preaching schedule. The quality of preaching by lay members was sometimes hilarious. Tambu shared a story with me of a lay member who was asked to preach. The member kept repeating:

“Jesus said hoho!”.

This went on for 15 minutes. The congregation kept wondering if there was more to come. But alas! While the preaching sometimes left little to be desired, the singing was usually good. The pure unaccompanied voices of church members was usually uplifting.

Of all the Christian church traditions, Tambu enjoyed Christmas [2] the most. Lessa Manondo and Lizinet Thembachako would coordinate tailoring new dresses for Tambu and Maria. These would be presented to the girls on Christmas day. The girls would proudly wear their new Christmas presents to church. Later in the day, they would indulge in eating rice with chicken and wash it down with Fanta orange soda.

Preteens

Tambu was in junior primary school in the late 1960s to early 1970s. From a nation-building point of view, this was an exciting period in Malawi. The country seemed to be developing in leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, the political environment started to deteriorate as undemocratic laws were passed so that the ruling party and its president would have a grip on political power.

By then, some of Tambu’s older siblings were employed and married. Anna, in particular, was employed by the Coca-Cola subsidiary in Malawi and was married to Felix Mwasinga. They were living in Blantyre in the south of Malawi.

The parents and older siblings were worried about Tambu’s development because she was not doing well in school. An intervention was worked out. Tambu was going to live with one of the siblings who would impose more discipline on her. The first sibling chosen to take up this responsibility was Anna.

Felix Mwasinga was very abusive. He used to abuse both his wife Anna and all the children. The abuse was both physical and verbal. He had affairs and sometimes was away from home for days, spending those days at other women’s homes. Upon returning home, he was irascible and would find fault with anything or anybody of his choice. And he would beat whoever he thought was at fault. He was particularly angrier when he was drunk. Tambu took a larger proportion of the abuse because she usually answered back. Her sister Anna advised her not to answer back but to just take the abuse silently. Tambu did not understand this type of advice. For this reason, Tambu was labeled “wamwano” which means the disrespectful one. The Mwasinga’s had four children all of whom lived in the house. The names of the children were Mike, Ronnie, Solomon, and Maureen. There were also some relatives living in the house. Tambu took up the role of protector of the children. She sought to protect the children from their father’s abuse.

The abuse that Tambu experienced in the Mwasinga home made her take a vow of never getting married in her life.

In 1975, Malawi moved its government headquarters from Zomba in the south to Lilongwe in the center [3]. The government was encouraging businesses to have a presence in Lilongwe to legitimize the move. The Coca-Cola affiliate where Anna worked built a bottling plant in Lilongwe. Anna Mwasinga was transferred to Lilongwe to work in the new factory. The Mwasinga’s moved to Lilongwe and Tambu moved with them. She was enrolled in a new model primary school that was built next to the new teacher’s training college. It was appropriately named Lilongwe Demonstration Primary School. However, living with the Mwasinga’s just did not work.

Teenager

Tambu was sent back to Blantyre to live with older brother Anthony. Anthony was working for a British company’s subsidiary in Malawi named Brown & Clapperton (B&C) also in Blantyre. He was married to Anne Chibwana who worked at Air Malawi, the country’s official airline. B&C was a heavy metal equipment manufacturing company. One of their products was maize (corn) mills. In the later part of the 1970s, Anthony bought a maize mill from B&C that was installed in Wanyemba Village for his parents. People from neighboring villages brought maize and paid a fee to have it ground into flour. This served as a source of income for the Manondo family.

Tambu (bottom) with some of her siblings. Standing to the reader's left is Doris. Standing to the reader's right is Catherine. Seated to the reader's left is Anna. Seated in the middle is Anthony. Seated to the reader's right is Anthony's wife Anne. Wiskot and Dave are not in the picture. 

For Tambu, life in the Anthony Manondo family was much better. The Anthony Manondo’s had four children as well namely Martha, Faith, Titani, and Chimango. Only Chimango is male, the others are female. Tambu helped with any house chores and childcare. Tambu became good at both cooking and housekeeping due to the expectations of doing chores. Later in her married life, she would put these experiences to effective use to the extent that there was clear consensus that Tambu’s food was scrumptious.

However, there was not much improvement in school performance. Now in her teens and approaching the senior classes of primary school, Tambu was sent back to Wanyemba. Again, she was a student at Kapalamula Primary School. In narrating stories about her final enrolment at this school, she often mentioned a teacher named Mr. Chigadula. This teacher had a positive influence on her life.

Malawi education has a very narrow bottleneck between primary school and secondary school. This bottleneck is even narrower for girls. At the end of primary school in standard 8, all students sit for a national examination. Less than 10 percent of those who pass the examination are selected to go to secondary school.  Very few secondary school places were reserved for girls at the time when Tambu sat for the examinations around 1979. Some schools such as Kapalamula went through a drought of several years without having even a single student selected to go to Secondary School. Tambu was not selected for secondary school.

One more intervention solution was conceived. Boarding school! The parents and older siblings agreed to send Tambu to Dzenza Girls Boarding School located in the northern part of the city of Lilongwe not too far from where Anna Mwasinga lived. This school belongs to the Presbyterian Church. (As an aside, my grandfather taught at this girls’ school when I was young. I lived there from the age of 2 to the age of 6.)

At Dzenza, Tambu made friends with Joyce Thole. Joyce’s older sister was the wife of a prominent Malawian named Katengeza. As such, she enjoyed some niceties and luxuries that were not common to most boarders at Dzenza. Some of the niceties included nutritious foods, personal care products, and extra clothes. And occasionally, she was spoiled with cookies and candies. Joyce shared most of these niceties with Tambu.

From the late 1970s to the 1980s, women and school children in Malawi were forced to attend political rallies and dance for politicians [4]. This was done for propaganda to give the impression that the politicians were loved by large crowds. The girls at Tambu’s boarding school were not spared of this forced attendance. Tambu hated every minute of those political attendances and dances. This was during the One-Party Rule in Malawi. The Malawi Congress Party was by law the only permitted political party. Its leader was the dictator, Hastings Banda. By extension, Tambu hated Hastings Banda and Malawi Congress Party. This hatred lasted the entirety of her life.

For the second time, Tambu was not selected for secondary school after taking the national exam at Dzenza Girls Boarding Primary School.

Malawi Correspondence Centers (MCC) were started as an alternative to secondary schools. The purpose was to give some of the students who had not been selected for secondary school a detour. The hope was that this would broaden the primary-to-secondary school pipeline. Students at MCCs were supposed to study on their own to acquire secondary school education. Students who enrolled in MCCs were given preprinted material to prepare them for the national examinations that were given to secondary school students. At MCCs, there was minimal instruction. Even in cases where there was instruction, the teachers were untrained.

Tambu enrolled at Gowa MCC in Ntcheu District in 1981. There, she befriended Sophie Kachoka. During our 33 years of marriage, this phase of Tambu’s life was not discussed. The blackout was by mutual agreement. All I know is that she became pregnant and could not continue at the MCC. In those days, pregnancy was a death nail in a girl’s educational journey. Tambu’s mother took her pregnant daughter back into her home in Wanyemba Village. Tambu always told me that a mother’s love is unconditional. She gave the example of her mother taking her back after what was considered a mess-up as an example that mother is the last refuge.

A healthy son was delivered on 26th February 1983 to Tambu. She named him Robreen. Tambu was 19 years old when she gave birth to her first son.

What became of the other siblings? Dave became a businessman who supplied stationery to organizations. He married Ida from Blantyre District who also was a businesswoman owning a tailoring shop. The two had four children named Memory, Eggley, Florence, and Dave Junior. They lived in the Machinjiri neighborhood of Blantyre. Doris finished secondary school at Lilongwe Girls Secondary School and worked for the Unilever subsidiary in Malawi that manufactures chemical products such as soaps and oils. She was married to Leonard Ganizani of Zomba. They had three children named Obed, Harry, and Jessie. They lived in the New Ndirande neighborhood of Blantyre. Catherine went to Ntcheu Secondary School and later worked for People’s Trading Centre shops in Blantyre. There she met and married Jack Chitedze who hailed from Mchinji in the Central Region of Malawi. Later, Jack Chitedze was transferred to Lilongwe and Catherine changed jobs. She joined the civil service and worked for the Ministry of Health. Jack was transferred back to Blantyre. Both Jack and Catherine retired and live in the Chilimba neighborhood of Blantyre. They have four children named Brian, Eric, Jack Junior, and Clive. Wiskot married from the Chisale family near Wanyemba village. They had 11 children that included three sets of twins. I will not name the children but Tambu and I adopted one of the children after Wiskot passed away in 1990. The girl we adopted is named Brenda.

Commentary

The early part of Tambu’s life had some dark aspects. These experiences imparted resilience, passion, honesty, perceptiveness, emphasis on education, and her complex view of men (including me). She was very partial when it came to children. She respected men but her antenna went up as soon as she detected any indications of abuse. She noted that in her experience, people got ahead based on social status and political connections. To her, education is the only vehicle that gives the rest of the people a chance to compete with the privileged. And so, she valued education. She loved cooking and hosting parties. She overcame the limitations imposed on girls by society and went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree and complete master’s degree coursework. And she was always there to help those in need. The next blog will describe Tambu’s journey towards bouncing back.

Footnotes

[1] All official documents say Tambu was born on December 9, 1964 in Ntcheu, Malawi. However, Lessa Manondo took contemporaneous note of the birth of each one of her children by recording day of week, date, and place of birth. The notebook in which these births were recorded was passed to Tambu and is currently in my possession. The details recorded at Tambu’s birth have Monday December 9, 1963 in Pretoria, South Africa. Apparently, the 1964 date in Malawi might have been given to school and government officials to avoid scrutiny of Malawi citizenship and other school related eligibilities.

[2] The Christmas season in Malawi is a joyful time for families. Gifts exchange are exchanged and church services are held. Carols are sung acapella, with the iconic African gift of harmonization filling the air with beautiful sounds celebrating the birth of Christ. https://www.iexplore.com/articles/travel-guides/africa/malawi/festivals-and-events

[3] Malawi moved its capital city from Zomba in the south to Lilongwe in the center. https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA19376812_202

[4] Malawi Congress Party forced women and children to attend political rallies and dance at the rallies. “Kamuzu Banda of Malawi: A Study in Promise, Power, and Paralysis (1961 to 1993)” by John Lwanda, 1993.

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Tambu Chirwa - Princess

 

Dickson and Lessa Manondo with Anna (standing) and Anthony (on Lessa’s lap), Pretoria South Africa 1950

Dickson Manondo Phiri was born in 1914 in the headman’s family of Manondo Village [1] in Dowa District of Malawi. The Lilongwe International Airport is less than five miles south of Manondo Village. The village is near the boundary between Lilongwe and Dowa. The boundary is Lingadzi River. Some employees who work at the airport in Lilongwe cross the district boundary every day as they live in Dowa including in Manondo Village. Dickson was born a prince and heir to the Manondo throne. He grew into a tall skinny handsome boy (he was a 6 feet 3 inches man by the time I met him as my father-in-law). If you were drawing his picture and wanted to color his skin using Microsoft Word, you would probably choose Gold-Accent4 (light brown). His upbringing included being apprenticed to become a village headman. The Manondo people are part of the larger Chewa group. The village leadership training included how to become a guardian of the Chewa traditions.

Let’s take a digression to look at the Chewa. The Chewa came to present day Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia from Congo in the 15th Century. They formed the Maravi Empire that covered from Lake Malawi on the East to near Lusaka, Zambia (Luanga River) on the West and to the Indian Ocean at Quelimane, Mozambique in the South. The empire existed from 1480 to 1891. The overall leader of the empire was called the Karonga. The provinces of the empire were governed by chiefs. Each province was divided into villages whose leaders were village headmen (yes, they were always men). Villages ranged in population from hundreds to thousands of people. The Chewas were mostly farmers with occasional stints as hunters.

One important tradition of the Chewa is the Gulewamkulu (“Big Dance”) tradition. The Gulewamkulu tradition spans many aspects of the Chewa society. It encompasses training of boys and girls in social living, work, role in family and society, morality, spirituality, and organization of festivals. The Gulewamkulu tradition teaches “umunthu” (popularized to the world as Ubuntu by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu) to every individual of the community. Gulewamkulu glues the Chewa people. The early European colonizers did not know what to make of Gulewamkulu. They considered this tradition a threat to their governing structures. More especially, the Christian religion they were bringing could not figure out how to incorporate the ancestral spirits part of the tradition into the Gospel message. They decided that people had to choose between European education/Christianity and continuing with their Gulewamkulu tradition. With a few exceptions [2], most Chewa chiefs and village headmen chose the Gulewamkulu tradition.

Dickson Manondo found European education attractive. He found himself at the crossroads of either continuing with his headman training or abandoning it for the new way of life. Being destined to be headman, he felt trapped and unable to take his preferred path. He fled the village and travelled to Gatooma, Southern Rhodesia (now Kadoma, Zimbabwe) in his late teens or early twenties (1930s). There, he joined the Presbyterian church through which he pursued training in the European way of life and christianity.

The parents of Lessa Jessie Khomba relocated to Salisbury, Rhodesia long before Dickson travelled there. They hailed from Wanyemba Village, Ntcheu District, Malawi. Lessa was born in 1924. She was 10 years younger than Dickson. The Khombas belonged to the village headman’s family. Lessa was the youngest of three sisters. The oldest sister was Margaret Khomba and the middle sister was Lizinet Tambudzai Khomba. The Khomba family joined christianity through the Presbyterian Church. The Khomba family belongs to the Ngoni.

The Ngoni came from South Africa. They fled the raids of Shaka Zulu in the mid-1800s and migrated north. Some settled in northern Malawi, some in Zimbabwe around Bulawayo, and others in Zambia and Mozambique. The Maseko group of the Ngoni settled in the central part of Malawi in Ntcheu. Their chief is known as Gomani who sits on his throne to this day from his headquarters at Lizulu in Ntcheu, Malawi. The Ngoni were warriors and hunters. Their food came from plundering the spoils of war after conquering the Chewas and other people who had already settled there.

Dickson and Lessa met in Gatooma, Sothern Rhodesia and got married. They moved to Pretoria, South Africa in the late 1940s where Dickson learned bricklaying. He then worked for a renown Caucasian architect named Norman Eaton [3].

The first-born child to Dickson and Lessa was a boy born in Gatooma, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) named Wiskot. Mr. Wiskot Manondo grew to look just like his father. He was light-skinned, skinny, and tall. The second-born child was a girl also born in Gatooma, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) whom they named Anna. She was also light-skinned, skinny, and tall. The rest of the children were born after the move to Pretoria, South Africa. In chronological order, the children born after Anna were Anthony, Davie, Doris, Catherine, and Tambu. As the names suggest, Anthony and Davie were male and Doris and Catherine were female.

Dickson Manondo’s employer, Norman Eaton, died in a road accident on 19 July 1966. In his will, he left 1,000 South African Rand (about US$ 100,000 if this was today accounting for inflation) for his beloved employee Dickson Manondo Phiri. The Manondo’s used this money to start relocating back to Malawi. Malawi had just gained independence from Britain and was promising to become a country full of opportunities. The relocation was in phases. First, Mrs. Lessa Manondo took all her children and returned to Wanyemba Village in 1967. Being a brick-layer, Dickson momentarily came to Wanyemba Village and built a house for the family at the edge of the village. Lessa’s sisters also returned to Wanyemba village from Zimbabwe and built their homes next to Lessa’s. After building the house, Dickson returned to Pretoria, South Africa. The relocation was completed in 1978 when Dickson returned to Malawi and settled in his wife’s village of Wanyemba. Both of Tambu’s parents were in Wanyemba Village when I met her in 1987.

The Chewa are matrilineal. One of the children of the sisters of the chief or village headman is chosen to become the new chief or village headman. Elder women of the village choose the new leader. Because Dickson did not have sisters, some of his daughters’ sons would have become village headmen after him had he returned to his village of Manondo. Sorry my children Robreen, Ulalo, and Kabelo – it is too late now!

Of all these members of the family, Tambu is survived only by Catherine at the time of this writing. Catherine has been married to Jack Chitedze for over 42 years. They have four sons. Dickson Manondo passed away in 2012 at the age of 98. Lessa Jessie followed a year later. Wiskot passed away in 1990. Doris passed away in 1994. Anthony passed away in 1997. Anna passed away in 1999. Davie passed away in 2011.

In the next post, I will write about the birth and early childhood of Tambudzai Chirwa. She was three or four years old when her mother brought the family to Malawi from South Africa. I will explain the discrepancy in age at the time of return. You will also read about the type of child she was.

[1] Location of Manondo Village. https://trip-suggest.com/malawi/central-region/manondo

[2] Headman Msymboza of Dowa was converted to Christianity. https://mwnation.com/msyamboza-to-be-honoured-this-sunday/

[3] Bio of Norman Eaton. https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/archframes.php?archid=450

 

Tambudzai Manondo Chirwa - A Beautiful Woman of Substance

 

Tambudzai Chirwa (1994)

Tambudzai Mauawawa Manondo Chirwa passed away on 20th January 2021 in Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America. The epitaph says “Loving Wife, Mother, Aunt, Sister”. The obituary says she is survived by husband Robert Chirwa, sons Robreen, Ulalo, and Kabelo, sisters Catherine Chitedze and Amy Brown (husband Matt), nieces Martha Tambala (Husband Alex), Hannah Thomas, and Sadie Thomas, grandnephews Alexander and Zachary Tambala, and many other nephews as well as nieces. Five words on an epitaph and one thousand words of an obituary cannot do justice to painting a picture of this amazing woman. Many called her sister, aunt, or granny because that is how anyone she cared about felt. Omitted from the list of sisters are names such as Dana Reitman, Margaret Seiffert, Sophie Kachoka, Joyce Mponela, Karen Berry, Julia Thorne, and Joyce Mponela just to mention a few. And she treated her nieces and nephews as her own children.

This is a story of a unique woman. A woman who was perfect. She was endowed with a good proportion of every good attribute of a person. And she carried herself very well. I have toyed with the idea of telling this story since her passing away. I hesitated to undertake this project for the past two years because I felt inadequate at the task before me. My insufficient vocabulary and poor word choice limit my ability to accurately depict this wonderful human being. However, I am compelled to write because I became a grandfather recently. A gift of this magnitude requires an act of gratitude of giving a written account of his grandmother. Later, when he grows to the age of asking questions, this account will help his parents (my son and daughter-in-law) to explain the type of woman his grandmother was.

The life of one Tambudzai Chirwa, or simply Tambu as we called her, will be documented in the coming pages. I will focus on her biography, her beauty, her loving nature, her intensity, her passion, her honesty, and her sense of humor. Along the way, I will also cover the diverse nature of her careers. Careers that ranged from manual labor to white collar office jobs. And you will read about how she was comfortable helping and befriending people of all ages and all economic classes.

I hope you will smile, laugh, and cry with me as you read these pages. For this is how I grieve her: smile, laugh, and cry. This is the best way of honoring her because she frequently went through all these emotions in short order. Incidentally, her grandson also goes through multiple emotions within a few seconds. He reminds me of Tambu.

Thirty Plus Thirty Equals Sixty: A Call to New Malawi Nationalism

In 2024, Malawi will celebrate 60 years of independence. The country was a British Protectorate in one form or another from 1889 to 1964. For 75 years, the British Union Jack flew over what the modern Malawi was then called, Nyasaland.

There is a striking power symmetry in independent Malawi. The president of Malawi during the first 30 years of independence came from Malawi Congress Party (MCP). The United Democratic Front and its spinoffs of Democratic People’s Party and People’s Party (UDF/DPP) have provided presidents in the second half* of the 60 years.

Although MCP will have been out of power for 30 years in 2024, it has remained a potent political force coming second in every election. It is worth highlighting that the two halves of post-colonial Malawi have had two different political systems. Malawi was a single-party country up to 1993 during which the MCP president was not challenged in elections.  Elections from 1994 onwards are contested by multiple parties. The presidents of UDF/DPP have won all elections during the multiparty era.

Closer analysis of the Malawi political structure shows that each dominating political party matched the sentiments of the population at different points in time. In 1964, politics was driven by nationalism. All Malawians were united against British rule. MCP provided leadership in the fight so all people rallied behind MCP. Once the common enemy was gone, people sought benefits from the government of independence. In competing for a piece of the pie, nepotistic tendencies started to creep in. The MCP president hailed from the Central Region. People from other regions started to feel left out in the share of the spoils of the independence fight.

Malawi has traditionally consisted of three regions: Northern, Central, and Southern. Ironically, most of the founders of MCP were from the Northern and Southern Regions.

The Southern Region is the most populous, followed by the Central Region. The Northern Region is sparsely populated.

The scramble for the meagre resources of the country led to the displeasure with MCP. Subsequent legalization of multiple parties resulted in political units organized on regional lines. The UDF/DPP has a stronghold in the south, MCP still dominates the center, and there was a political party called Alliance for Democracy (AforD) from the north. AforD died a natural death.

There is already widespread discontent with the UDF/DPP rule. It should not come as a shock that a political structure based on regions cannot maintain equilibrium. Southern Region nepotism has been rampant in the multiparty era. The resentment with the political system has reached levels where it is not too farfetched to deduce that it is time for a new political era.

The only solution to the current impasse is a political system where the ruling party has true national representation and genuine commitment to equitable sharing of national resources. Political systems only mirror the sentiments of the population. Therefore, the population needs a new nationalism. When the population will demand this new nationalism, the political system will respond by reforming itself into national structures rather than regional ones.  Here are the reasons for a new nationalism.

First, the regions are artificial. These regions were a creation of the British for administrative purposes and do not mirror distinct boundaries in the origins of the people divided by the lines on the map. Unfortunately, boundaries that were created for administrative purposes have taken a new meaning by giving birth to political identity. Malawians should reject this creation and revert to a national identity that knows no regional boundaries.

Second, even if one were to subscribe to the significance of the regions, there has been so much assimilation of people from the different regions into new regions that region of origin has lost its relevance. The bond that binds a person to the nation is stronger than the bond with a region.

Third, for success and advancement in the new economies people should unshackle themselves from regional ties. Malawi needs to move away from a subsistence economy. People will rely more on employment in the service and manufacturing sectors. This will require relocating more frequently to locations of employment.

The next phase of Malawi political competition will be based on employment. To go with employment is the necessity to build the required infrastructure and developing policies that strategically kick start employment sectors. The new political dispensation will evolve around political parties that are national and whose manifestos present visions of how to bring forth the new environment.

* At the time this article was written, there was a law suit challenging the results of the 2019 presidential elections won by Democratic People’s Party.

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.