Page 21 - Number 2 2021 Volume 74

Ida Z. Chilembwe – Pioneer Nyasa Feminist 9

an opportunity to grow, learn to know themselves, develop as women and gain an
education.

Ida Chilembwe demonstrating her skill with a sewing machine in
class assisted by fellow teacher Morris Chilembwe, John Chilembwe’s
nephew, who was shot during the 1915 Rising.

An educated woman, Ida advocated, could surely demonstrate her ability
to share equality in life with her husband as well as use her newly acquired
knowledge to contribute materially to the family’s success and betterment.
Despite Ida’s clarion call for pragmatism and common sense to prevail in such
matters, surely reflecting the views of many European women in the Shire
Highlands and beyond, and likely as not some fellow Nyasa women as well, Ida
was shunned by what should have been her European ‘Sisterhood-in-God’ and
received neither encouragement nor assistance; an unconscionable situation which
surely smacks of more than a little of racism. That said, in an unquestionably male-
dominated society, precious few if any European women would have enjoyed, or
perhaps some even wanted, such equality in their own households. Surely,
therefore, an opportunity for a meeting of minds and common purpose in pursuit
of the general good of both European and Nyasa societies was needlessly rejected
- for reasons as much due to their societal similarities as their innate differences?
Ida’s social pilgrimage was developed and emphasised by her husband
John in a letter to the American National Baptist Convention Board in 1912, from
which it is worth quoting, if selectively:
“We believe there is an urgent need for special work to be done among
the wives of the people, whom you are privileged by God’s grace to bring