Born sighted like any other person, she grew in a good health until 1955 when she lost her sight in a way that she branded as a ‘mysterious termite bite’ while sleeping in her aunt’s house.
Estere Chunga Malula, 72, is an inspirer and a mentor of many. She challenges all obstacles to her success, proving humankind wrong on thinking that the visually impaired cannot execute household chores or engage in other manual work.
“Blindness is not a block to prosperity; it is wrong to think in that way. The visually impaired have the capacity to carry out any duties as the sighted can do,” she says.
Although she is visually impaired for 60 years now, she works to the surprise of many sighted women and men who cannot manage to work like her. She is an exceptionally talented woman admired by many; a living example in her community.
“I knit different products and some of these products are used by prominent people in society. I have been in this business for decades now,” she says.
She recalls that from 1997, she managed to pay her children’s school fees from the proceeds of her knitting trade.
“Now I train people in knitting and this brings me food on the table. This talent has helped me ably support my children with daily needs,” she explains.
Malula says currently over 27 learners meet every Saturday at M’buka CCAP Church at Area 36 in Lilongwe to learn knitting.
“I have taught knitting to a lot of women and of course a few men. This is one of the lucrative businesses people should venture into,” she says.
According to Malula, the church members are friendly and she applauds them for not being discriminatory over her disability.
“I find total happiness in preaching to women at my church.”
Apart from knitting, she teaches women house decorating using a mixture of soil, charcoal, porridge, cow dung and eggs. She says it is a unique way of decorating traditional houses.
“If women followed this way of decorating homes, they would be happy, the floor lasts long before smearing it again. It also shines and glitters, something that wins the hearts of men,” she says.
Malula also teaches women clothes ironing and standard cooking.
“Men admired my late husband for neat ironing of his clothes, I’m happy he always attributed his smartness to me,” she says.
According to her, she lost her sight when she was in Standard Three. Malula was taken to Nkhoma Mission Hospital for an eye surgery in 1956, where German eye specialists were to restore her sight.
“I was excited at hearing the news that my seven fellows who had undergone the eye surgery had their sight restored and I imagined myself in the normal sight again,” she says.
It never occurred to Malula.
She says in September 1958, the specialists surrendered offering further efforts on assisting her, after several attempts but to no avail.
“They were seeing tadpoles swimming in my eyes,” she says.
“I broke into tears after the doctors told me that there was no hope to restore my sight. Next morning, I was discharged from hospital,” she recalls.
Following this confirmation of her blindness, the Dowa district commissioner then wrote a recommendation letter introducing her to Chilunga School of the blind.
Since the school did not have Standard Seven classes, she applied for a place at Magwero School of the blind in Chipata, Zambia and she was admitted into the school.
“My academic journey became doomed when the only teacher we had impregnated a student, a development that made funders cut aid, learning was not as usual, and this made me not return to school in the next term in 1962,” she recounts.
She then got married to a Mr Chunga, sighted and a teacher by profession. They had eight children together till death separated them in 1997, at a time their children needed Chunga’s financial assistant most than before.
Malula revamped her skills in knitting which she learnt at school. She later found the work enjoyable with the sewing machine she received from government in 1984.
But things turned round and worsened when her machine got stolen as she was attending prayers at Msonkhamanja CCAP Church.
“I need a sewing machine that can re-estate my dwindling economic status, I’m worried.
“This theft drastically scaled down my income from the products and heavily affected my support to the children as a single–headed family, life became hard,” she says.
She was born in 1944 as Estere Malula at Moya Village, Traditional Authority Msakambewa in Dowa.
Facebook comments