Page 20 - Number 2 2021 Volume 74

8 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

John Chilembwe and John Chorley on the steps of the PIM church on the
th
day of its inauguration, 24 January 1913.
It is the last known photograph of John Chilembwe.

forlorn mission to establish mutual respect and an egalitarian status quo between
Africans and Europeans.
The well-known photograph reproduced on p.9 of Ida Chilembwe
demonstrating her sewing machine skills in a class at Mbombwe shows a
determined, confident woman, a fact in part borne out in the letters she wrote to
the National Baptist Convention (NBC) in concert with John in which she
appealed to NBC members ‘to devote their prayers and resources to the
impoverished state of African women and girls’. However, I believe one can detect
more than a little of the influence of John Chilembwe’s prose within that plea.
Ida Zuoa Chilembwe openly defied local conventions of the time. Bible
ever in hand, in addition to her teaching and other PIM responsibilities she visited
surrounding villages to preach the word of God and to encourage her less fortunate
sisters to pursue an equality of status with their husbands – surely a very brave, if
perhaps sometimes foolhardy and even at times dangerous position to espouse –
and to abandon the cultural norm of early marriage for young girls so that rather
than commence a constant cycle of reproduction from puberty, they instead had