1.
Branch Continuity—Marriages and Families
Often continuity in local congregations depends upon the
Church’s ability to build around a handful of strong active families. These families are the cornerstone of the
congregations. The husbands and wives
hold critical Church positions. They
get their families to Church on time, their children can be counted on to be in
Primary, Young Men, and Young Women, and their homes often serve as informal
clearinghouses where other members can meet and socialize. They are anxious to have all of the
Church’s auxiliaries functioning, because they need the support to help raise
their children in the gospel. Mission
presidents encourage their missionaries to work with intact families, knowing
this will help strengthen local units, and enhance the likelihood of member
retention. But it is easier to talk
about teaching “families” than to actually do it. For
the most part, new members come into the Church in ones and twos. In Malawi it is common for other members of the
family to join the Church after a father or older son becomes the first member.
An alternative way to build up the family network in a local
congregation is through the marriage of active members. The Blantyre District has cause to be optimistic
in this regard. Currently, the District
has a number of unmarried returned missionaries, who presumably will establish
households within the next few years.
It is not unreasonable to expect that these returned missionaries will marry
in the Church or will marry spouses, who join the Church during courtship or
early in their marriage. In Malawi,
women often follow their husbands’ lead when it comes to church attendance and
membership. Since the majority of the returned
missionaries are men, this augurs favorably for the District. Indeed, this pattern already exists.
Right now there are at least eight returned missionaries
still unmarried, looking to find wives and to establish homes.[1] The branches also have a number of other
young men, not returned missionaries, who are of marriageable age. What may be unexpected is that these young
men, like their counterparts in the United States, are waiting longer to get
married. Many of them are in their
middle 20s to early 30s—certainly of an age when they are looking for
companionship and anxious to have children and set up homes. For them the biggest hurdle is finding
employment to allow them to support a family—jobs are hard to come by and many
of them are still in school, working on certificates, diplomas, and degrees to
increase their prospects. To their
credit they understand the importance of being self-reliant, and are looking
for steady employment. Another
potential snag is the existence of the historical practice of “lobola”—or
bridal price--still practiced by some Malawian tribes. Not able to pay the lobola in full forces many
to defer marriage for months, even years, while the bridegroom works to save money—a
situation the Church leaders find deplorable. But, as
these returned missionaries, and new members of the same age bracket, get
married, the Church should see greater stability. Young men in Malawi may not be as much at
risk with these marriages (some of which may start as part-member families), as
men in the United States, because of the general willingness of women to follow
their husbands’ lead when it comes to Church affiliation.
Several months ago Carole and I felt prompted to start
working with the District’s Young Single Adult Leader, Jonathan Banda, to
jumpstart the YSA program. Jonathan and
President Matale were supportive of this initiative and this month (November
2015) we will see the fourth consecutive monthly activity. The goal is to hold a District-sponsored
activity each month (for continuity purposes, starting at 2:00 p.m., each third
Saturday) throughout the year, except for December, when the normal activity
will be replaced by a New Year’s Eve activity and dance. Prior activities included a fireside,[2]
a panel discussion about keeping Church standards, watching “The Man from Snowy
River,” in several cases followed by a dance, always a local favorite. October’s activity attracted close to 60
young adults, making it the best attended activity to date. Jonathan has assembled a four-person
committee, a representative from each branch, to brainstorm for good ideas and
to help get out the word about District events. The committee meets monthly to plan upcoming
events.
The branches also have many older men and women of
marriageable age. Second and third
marriages are not uncommon in Malawi, due to the high mortality rates among
adults and occasional divorces. I can
think of at least 9 active unmarried men and women in the Zingwangwa Branch,
who might remarry, all with children from prior marriages or relationships.[3] Should they marry in the Church, or marry
spouses who later became members, this will go a long way toward increasing the
branch’s size as well as augmenting its strength. Many of these members, being older than YSA
and carrying some of the baggage that comes with prior marriages, may find it
challenging to find spouses. Given the
widespread poverty in Malawi, unmarried men will likely enjoy better prospects,
than the women, if they have jobs or other resources (including homes),
enabling them to support a second family.
Widows with children, as well as single mothers, are definitely at a
disadvantage. A little to our surprise,
we have found that women, who marry for a second or third time, frequently are
forced to parcel out children from a prior marriage, sending them to live with
grandparents, aunts and uncles, because of the unwillingness of the new husband
to assume responsibility for the children or to have them in the home. While
Malawians are exceptional generous when it comes to taking in nieces and
nephews, even the children of friends, this does not translate into the rearing
of the offspring from a prior marriage.
We can only think of a couple of cases where the new husband was willing
to have the children of a prior marriage stay in the home.[4]
A number of African tribes settled within the lands that
today constitute the boundaries of modern day Malawi. These tribes included the Chewa, Nyanja,
Tumbuka, Yao, Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, and Ngonde. Over time we have learned where these
tribes settled (or at least in which Malawian Districts most of their tribal
members currently live), but otherwise we know little of their customs, rituals
and language. Chichewa, the most
prominent of the local dialects, is the language of the Chewa tribe and is the national
language of Malawi, along with English.
The Yao tribe lives along and close to the shores of Lake Malawi, and
many of them are Muslims. The Ngoni
tribe is known for its fierce warriors and once were thought of as a fierce and
aggressive people. Some of the dialects
are close enough in speech and vocal patterns, syntax and vocabulary, that members
of one tribe can understand the language of another. Today Malawians however pride themselves
with the harmony existing among the tribes and the absence of intertribal
rivalry and conflict. Inter-marriage
between tribes is common, and has been for several generations, so the
genealogies are getting increasingly mixed.
Historically, one distinctive family tradition, however,
distinguished the tribes. Some of the
tribes follow the maternal line, while others the paternal line. The tribes in the northern districts are
paternal in orientation, meaning that the new wife, after marriage, leaves her
family village and goes to stay in the husband’s village, living with or close
to the husband’s family. The pattern is
reversed for the tribes in the southern districts. Following the maternal line, the husband
leaves his village and goes to stay in the wife’s village, living with or close
to the wife’s family. As you can imagine,
it’s tricky to sort out the proper familial relationships, when someone from
the north marries someone from the south.
With the increasing encroachment of the modern world, and the greater
mobility of Malawians, these patterns are slowly being eroded.
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