Born in 1928, Melrin was raised in Usisya, Nkhata Bay District, the last-born of 6 daughters. Her father was a fisherman and as the youngest daughter “she was the darling of the family.” Throughout her childhood, Melrin “was just in the village”, helping out round the family home.
The family rented a 3-bedroom brick house and lived with other cousins and relatives, Melrin cooking for the whole family. In turn, family and the broader Usisya community in Daveyton provided a safety net for Melrin – supporting her financially and during illness. For most of her time in South Africa Melrin “was just a housewife raising her kids.”
In late 1952, Nkhunda returned to Malawi late but the family remained in the same house - Daih paying for the rent both in Cape Town and Daveyton – “I guess it must have been very cheap at that time...there were other cousins there at the time.”
“She has fond memories of her time in South Africa, how things were better here, how good the life was, how advanced they were.” Gilead recollected that Daveyton was “a normal township - you'd play in the streets.” Whilst in South Africa, Melrin came to speak Afrikaans well and also picked up local traditional cuisine – “she's a very good cook...and a good baker (I would often go in the night and steal the cakes she would bake for the morning).”
Melrin would nevertheless still see Daih, travelling across South Africa by train – “occasionally she would go to Cape Town to see my dad, but not to stay there just to visit. She was mostly based here.” The couple's third and fourth children, Gilead and Jegger were born in Daveyton, in 1955 and 1958 respectively.
In 1958, Melrin joined the Jehovah's Witnesses - converted by Daih. “Funnily enough in the end she became more of a Jehovah's Witness than my dad was...she's more of a believer than my dad was. My dad was strict, but you know he wasn't very strict, he liked to do some social stuff. Not my mother.”
Melrin and their children returned to Malawi in 1959, to attain a good education and avoid the crime that was associated with urban living. “If we had stayed here, I wouldn't have learnt anything for sure.” With Daih training as a Jehovah's Witness missionary in Cape Town, the church funded the children’s school fees and their clothes. The young family lived with Daih’s mother and grandmother in Usisya – and it was the women “who kept the family”.
On Daih’s return to Malawi in 1960, the family moved to Blantyre. The children however were sent to boarding primary schools, as “those were the best resourced schools and they could afford it.” “The only church that had schools was the CCAP - the Presbyterians, and the Roman Catholics...and ironically all of us went to Roman Catholic school.”
Within the Malawian Jehovah's Witness community, Melrin became a prominent member in the Women's Guild. The guild had about 20 members – “Jehovah's Witness was not a very popular church because of the restrictions, so many people do not like it.”
Post-independence Malawi however was an increasingly inhospitable place for Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1966, Melrin left Malawi with Daih, who by this time was head of the church for the Central Province of Malawi. Jehovah's Witnesseswould be beaten up, killed - it was bad. They had what you call the Youth League, so they had people persecuting people. That time in Malawi it was pretty bad - it required you to be an automatic member of the party...Jehovah's Witnesses don't allow you to associate with politics, so they were seen to be anti-party, so that's why they were persecuted.”
“They first went to Zambia and then Mozambique. There was actually a whole nation of Jehovah's Witnesses, so they ran into Zambia and stayed in some camps, refugee camps... Later they came back to Malawi, in 1969 for about a year or so, and then the persecution started again and then they went to Mozambique - again they stayed in refugee camps.”
Within the refugee camps, Melrin took on a leading role among the women - both Melrin and Daih “took it as a duty - they were duty bound as they were leaders.” “In the Jehovah's Witness they don't ordain women...” but “they were all refugees, so there had to be some strong leadership in the camp, so she played quite a big part in that looking after the women, looking after the social issues of the women, the hygiene of the place, that kind of stuff, made sure everyone had enough to eat, if people had problems counselling them, some people would be traumatised by those moves, staying in the campsite it wasn't always easy.”
At this time all the children were in boarding schools staying with relatives in the holidays - Gilead noting that the extended family was “very strong.” The children nevertheless did not see a lot of their parents, Daih reflecting “you get detached, but we still kept in touch - at that time there was no Skype.”
Melrin and Daih returned to Malawi in 1980 - having been in Mozambique for a decade. Throughout this period they had been staying in camps, supported by Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States. Today Melrin is a well-known matriarch, living in Blantyre, “people look up to her as a custodian of the tribe, if people are looking for help with decision making they will go to her.”
