I have come as far away
as means and mind will take me
trying to forget you. — Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, by Rod McKuen
I was just five years old when Albert came to live with us in Ndirande. However, before I tell you how this came about, I need to tell you about two related things that turned my cousin into an elder brother, replacing the elder brother we had lost previously.
Robert was our very tall and very handsome elder brother, the firstborn in our mom and dad’s family. He had a problem; he was what these days is referred to as “a person living with multiple disabilities.” He could not speak, he could not hear, and he could not walk properly. I later learned that he could not learn either; he was mentally challenged, and the white Scottish missionary teachers refused to register him into the missionary school at the Henry Henderson Institute (called, in short, the HHI).
The missionary teachers told my parents they had no time to “waste on him; he has no future…” and that they would rather spend their time on children they saw had a future than on students like Robert. Therefore, Robert never went to school the way Miriam and I (later George and Joyce). He spent his days walking around the garden; he had a nanny (aNabanda) who looked after him while Miriam and I went to school.
One day, boys from across the Nasolo River came to our house that was next to Malata House, took Robert and put him in a wheelbarrow; they wheeled him around the rose bushes. After some time, they tipped the wheelbarrow over, causing Robert to fall and hit his head on a stone. Miriam and I saw that blood was coming out of his mouth and his head. He had also stopped making the noise he was making when the boys were wheeling him around. The boys ran away.
This was 1959. Our father was in Rhodesia in detention (along with Kamuzu Banda and other Nyasaland dissidents). Our mom was working at McConnell and Company in downtown Blantyre. There was a man, a friend of Uncle Jasper called Grayson Tsamwa, who operated a taxi, so aNabanda went and called him. He took Robert to our mom’s office, and they took Robert to the hospital. Later, our grandmother came and took Robert to Thondwe so she could care for him. However, Robert died three months later.
In 1960, our father, along with other Malawians, secured their release from detention; fortunately for him and the family, he secured a job as Kandodo shop manager in Mzuzu. Our mom was expecting a child, and her sister-in-law (Aunt Christina Ntaba) asked our father to bring our mom to Dowa, where she and her husband lived. She told our father that she wanted to care for her as our mom was in the delivery room.
That done, our last-born brother Lumumba was born.
Some time later, we moved back to Blantyre because our dad went to study at the London School of Economics (1961-1963) – ku Ulaya (another name for Mangalande). During this time, aNabanda rushed into the house to tell Mom that her in-law was weeping behind the outside bathroom. It turned out that our Uncle Jarvis, recently returned from South Africa, had chased all my cousins who had come to stay with Grandpa Mbekeani away from the big Malata House – the first house in Blantyre owned by an African with iron sheets.
While other aunties had come to take their children, Aunt Christina worried her first-born son, Albert, would not get a good education where she was in Dowa, like the one offered in Blantyre.
I watched as our mom told her sister-in-law not to worry. She invited Albert to stay with us. A funny twist in the conversation was that we heard our mother tell Aunt Christina that the house servant who looks after Lumumba was getting fat around his arms.
She told her in-law that every day she buys a head of fish which Lumumba eats with his nsima; along with that, there was always a big cup of milk (thanks to our grandaunt Doris, who sends milk every week for us to drink). Mom told Aunt Christina that there was plenty of food for Albert to eat; he could also look after Lumumba and go to his evening classes at the HHI.
Thereafter, Albert came to stay with us, and in a sense, replaced our big brother Robert who had tragically passed away a few years earlier. He looked after us and told us what was proper to do and what was not proper. We went to school during the day, and Albert went to school in the evening (although it was called Night School).
Sadly, for the family, our dad was appointed high commissioner in the UK (that was good), and we separated from Albert (that was sad). But on the good side for Albert, despite the bad, our mom made connections with the education department and got Albert enrolled at Blantyre Secondary School (BSS) – as a boarder and attending school during the day! We did not get to see much of Albert, although we visited Malawi twice in 1967 and 1971. Also in 1967, our family went to the USA, where our father was posted as ambassador to the US and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York.
Later, while in New York, our dad secured a scholarship for Albert in Florida to undertake a course in piloting. Miriam and I were left in the US when Dad and the rest of the family moved to Ethiopia. Albert’s booming voice became the voice of reason to me. Any time Miriam saw that I was not listening to her guidance or that I did or said something that she thought was not good, she called on Albert.
When I look back on these times (in a foreign country without parents), Albert was the parent. He would say guilt-inducing statements like “We don’t do that in Malawi,” or “You must respect the program Miriam is putting for you to follow. Please do not challenge her. She is your elder sister.”
And of course, he was the elder relative, elder brother, almost like a parent. Of the three Mthundu wa a Mayombo people living in America, I was the youngest. When Albert spoke to me, I not only listened; I obeyed.
Fast forward to the year Albert and Nellie Jumbe married in1974. Dad was general manager at Malawi Housing, Mom was running the fruit farm in Neno, and a vegetable garden in front and back of our BCA Hill house. Albert was at this time working at the Young Pioneer Air Wing as a pilot. Nellie was at first a nurse, but later moved into banking at the New Building Society Bank, now simply known as NBS Bank.
When Aunt Christina came to inform Dad and Mom of our cousin’s intentions to marry a Ndirande girl from the Jumbe family, she came crawling on her knees and rolling over and over, all the while crying and seeking mercy from her brother and sister-in-law. I asked Dad why she was doing what she did; his response shocked us: “That is a Ngoni tradition.”
“But Dad, she’s your elder sister!” I chipped in.
This is the day I learned that, in our Ngoni culture, the boys, no matter how young or small they are, are the heads of the family.
Back to Albert’s wedding, our mom and dad took over and made many of the arrangements, assisted by the Mayombo brothers, uncles Jarvis, Ronald, and Jasper.
The officiation was at the Catholic Cathedral in Limbe and the reception at Central High School. The family has four children (Tinyade Lois, Franco, and the twins Mercy & Pwerele).
At the dissolution of the MYP and the air wing, Albert secured a job at Air Malawi, where he rose to the rank of Captain. In our lives, Albert continued to his passing on September 29, 2026, to play a big brother role in our family’s lives.
An example is that he was the overseer and the to-go-to person at important events such as weddings and funerals. He and cousin Smile Phombeya were the eldest grandchildren of the Malata House Grandparents.
I proudly recall that when my late husband Adam Karim Sr. and I got married, he and Nellie were the male-side aNkhoswes.
At all the weddings of my children, Albert and Nellie were not only present, but they were usually among the first to be informed of the coming nuptials. The last times I saw Albert and Nellie were at three Mbekeani Maoni Mayombo events: the first was at Walinase Mbekeani and Hugh Andrews’ engagement in Maoni. The second was at my late sister Miriam Nseula’s entombment ceremony in Neno. The last family event Albert attended was my Karim family’s 20th anniversary commemoration in Mpemba of the passing of my husband, Adam Karim Sr. Albert was there with us, as were others – a departed cherished friend (Alice Konyani Johnson) and a cherished departed family member (Rogers Zamachecha Mbekeani).
A keen social media elder like me, Albert often reached out to me on WhatsApp to tell me what was happening in Malawi. He knew of my keen interest in following current events in Malawi such as elections and other development news, so he reached out often to pull me in the loop of things.
Of course, he informed me about his ailment, and we exchanged prayers and other things. That is all I can say about that.
Albert, your passing, like Roberts’s and Miriam’s, has sparked a wound that will be hard to heal.
Captain Albert Ntaba is survived by his wife, Nellie, five children (Tinyade Lois, Franco, and twins Mercy & Pwerele), and a truckload of grandchildren.
Rest in Jehovah God’s Eternal Loving Peace (RIJGELP).
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord…they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.” Revelation 14:13
Namayombo – Janet Mbekeani Karim
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