The heart of Central Africa; mineral wealth and missionary opportunity

Front matter

f

'a^ ,PRINCETON, N. J. ^^

Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund.

Foreword

YOUNG AFRICA READY.

Sitting in the ashes around our kitchen fire, which, by the way, was in the open, with only a piece of canvas fastened over four poles to keep off the rains, was a half-grown, half-clad boy of perhaps thirteen summers. He was dirty — exceptionally dirty is perhaps a truer designation — and his sole garment was a strip of dark-blue cotton cloth two yards in length, which was tied around his loins. The cloth was so dirty that, to the uninitiated, it would have been hard to classify it. But as in the Broken Hill region all cloth is divided into three parts: the blue, the white, and the ginghams, I recognized the class to which this belonged.

He had sat around that fire perhaps a week, when a sudden vacany in our domestic staff required a boy to bring water at once on a Saturday afternoon. Benjamin was sent to ask our male Cinderella if he would do the job. This, apparently, was the opportunity for which he had been waiting, and he thenceforth became a part, an inalienable part, of our household economy. The inanimated, dejected, forsaken-looking figure was transformed as by magic. By degrees the dirt disappeared, and with an increased wardrobe he developed into quite a respectable youth. He made himself incessantly useful (often to our embarrassment) in the culinary department. And he further announced that he would accompany us on the trail.

Although in a week's time incredible changes had been made in the boy, yet, when I saw on the morning that we were to start that all ten of his toes were raw and sore at the ends from jiggers, I felt that I could not take him on the trail. I pointed out to him that evidently he would not be equal to three or four months' steady marching some twenty miles a day, that the country ahead of us was unknown and the people wild and hostile, which would make it unsafe for any one who might need to be left behind. I told him further that I could not afford to take any one along who could not carry a load, and reminded him that he was already three hundred miles from his home, and that he might not see it again if he went along with us.

In vain. He said that he would not be left behind, that his feet would get well, and that he was able to carry a load; but go he must, and go he would, for at the end of the trail was a school, and there he would stay and learn the Book.

So he went the whole fifteen hundred miles, and we left him in the school at Quiongua, in Angola, where he was converted within six months, and the transforming power of the Lord Jesus is working wonders in his heart. That is Songoro, or, as he was known to us, "Kitchen."

There was a big, raw-boned Mutabele, Jacob, whom I found in a camp at Broken Hill, a man of perhaps thirty, who had worked for years on railroad construction as a "linker-in," for which he had received large wages. A day or two before we were to set out he came to me. "Master, I want to go with you," he said. "My heart tells me I want to be a teacher to tell the people about God."

"But, Jacob," I replied, "you have received big money for years. If you go with me to enter school you will get no money at all for two or three years, while you study, and after that as a teacher your wages will be very small. The railroad wants men, why don't you go to them.'' Also, if you go with me you will have to carry a load (this was a class of work far beneath the station he had occupied for years, and was a severe test for him), and there will be but little money in it after all."

"O Master!" he exclaimed, with a pathos and earnestness that stirred me, "if it were money I wanted I would go to the railroad. But it is n't money I want. My heart is troubled," and he placed his hand over his heart, "and God tells me I must be a teacher. I know that the path is long and the road hard. I have half a load of my own things, too. But I '11 carry all I can for you and help you on the road. I must go." And he went.

Word had gone out that I wanted carriers for a long trip, and one quiet boy came all alone and was engaged. He said that his name was "Jim." He, too, like Songoro, was from a tribe, a different tribe, where no missionary resided. He said that he wanted to go the whole four months' journey with us. A week later, when several of the carriers were beginning to grumble and wanted to turn back, Jim came to me and said that he wanted to go to the school at the end of the trail, the school where Songoro and Jacob were going. So he, too, tramped on quietly and patiently, like old Jacob, until he had covered the fifteen hundred miles and reached Quiongua, whence comes recent news of his conversion.

We had gone four hundred miles and came to Kambove, a mining camp in the Copper Belt. We rested there three days. The second day Songoro came to me saying that he had found a brother in the camp, working on the mine, and showed me a lad of eleven or twelve years, named Sondo. He said that Sondo wanted to accompany us and go to school. Now, the word "brother" as used by an African does not necessarily indicate blood relationship. These two boys were from the same tribe and village, and so they called themselves brothers.

Accordingly Sondo joined our caravan, took his load of thirty pounds, and made his way westward, where he, too, has been converted. It was Sondo who discovered another "brother" among the "indentured laborers" of a Portuguese plantation near Quiongua. This man had been seized and carried to the west coast, where he had been sold to the Portuguese as a slave. Alas ! we had no power to free him, but the other four boys have escaped a worse slavery.

Thus it is almost everywhere in Africa to-day. Young Africa is waiting, ready, and anxious for something he hardly knows what. And he is ready to work, ready to walk, ready to sacrifice for it. These four instances are but a few of the many. Truly, Ethiopia waits with outstretched hands!

Contents

FA6E

Introductoet Note, . . - 5

I. Beginnings, 19

Chapter I. Beginnings

Verily facts are stranger than fiction. And nowhere is this better illustrated than in the story of the Old Umtali Mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Rhodesia.

In 1896, Dr. Joseph C. Hartzell was elected Bishop for Africa. Immediately after his election there came to him the vision of a large industrial training institution to be installed somewhere in the southern part of the Dark Continent and under the flag of Great Britain.

It was in that very year (though all unknown to him at that time) that the British South Africa (Chartered) Company decided to move the little four-year-old town of Umtali to the other side of a range of mountains, ten miles away. The Chartered Company had decided that it would be cheaper to take the town to the railway than to bring the railway to the town.

Although the town was so new, there were already a dozen or more brick buildings with iron roofs. When the question was put to Cecil Rhodes as to the future use of the old town-site and its buildings, he replied, "Make a mission of it."

This grant was still providentially in the hands of the Chartered Company in 1897, when Bishop Hartzell first arrived in Umtali. Negotiations between him and the administrator, Earl Grey, resulted in the town-site of Old Umtali of 1,000 acres of land, together with twelve brick buildings, and the commonage adjoining it, another 12,000 acres, being turned over to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The company had compensated the owners of these particular buildings to the extent of more than $100,000, and they were worth fully $75,000 to the mission.

In 1899 the buildings were finall}^ vacated by the company and Old Umtali was formally dedicated by Bishop Hartzell for an industrial mission. At this dedication there were present of our missionaries Rev. and Mrs. Morris W. Ehnes (Umtali Academy), Rev. J. Hunter Rcid, Rev. and Mrs. J. L. DeWitt, Mrs. Anna Arndt (later Mrs. E. H. Greeley), and Mr. Herman Heinkel. Mrs. Bishop Hartzell spent some time at the Mission this year, and began work which later developed into that of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society.

The next year Mr. E. H. Greeley joined the forces, and in June, 1901, another party arrived: Rev. R. E. Beetham and Miss H. E. Johnson (now Mrs. Beetham), for the UmtaH Academy; Mr. Geo. M. Odium, Mrs. Helen E. Rasmussen (later Mrs. Springer), and the writer.

In course of time the jail and its cells were converted into schoolrooms; the magistrate's office became the doctor's dispensary ; the court house a hospital, and later the boys' temporary dining-hall. At that time an elimination of letters by the boys made the sign to read "Our House."

The post and telegraph office became the hospital operating-room; the jail compound, the playground ; the library, a residence for the farm overseer ; one store, a residence for the principal of the boys' school ; another store, a stable and smithy ; the bank, a house for strangers ; and sundry office buildings, dormitories.

The two-story Masonic Hotel, having sixteen rooms, became the mission home. Its large billiardroom made a spacious drawing-room, where the District and Annual Conferences were held, and at the invitation of the mission became the gathering place of the surrounding white population for occasional social purposes. Its bar-room was used for a dining-room, and more than one passing guest remarked that this was the first time he had seen tea served there.

The church was continued in its sacred use; services being held for the whites in the morning and for the natives afternoon and evening.

One beautiful bungalow up on the mountain side, a quarter of a mile from the main buildings, was named Hartzell Villa by its first missionary occupant and was deeded over, with thirty acres of land, by Bishop Hartzell to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society for a girls' school.

Another charming bungalow near the compound was used as a residence for the mechanical teacher. This house was named Oleander Cottage, from a very fine oleander tree in front of it.

The grounds, too, underwent many changes. The straight, unshaded streets gave way to curved roads and walks and park-like arrangement, and was set out with shrubbery, in keeping with the character of the institution.

In 1905, by mutual arrangement with the government, an adjustment regarding the land was made, whereby a large part of the commonage which we had found we could not use in the work of this particular mission, was exchanged for various tracts of land elsewhere, as desired, and of an equal number of acres ; the mission at old Umtali retaining in all 3,000 acres of land, to which the Church holds final titles.

During the first two years the missionaries at Old Umtali necessarily gave much of their attention to clearing up the grounds and carting off the loads of tin cans, broken bricks, whisky bottles, and quantities of debris, with which the place was strewn. And they also put about forty acres of land under cultivation and began school and religious services.

In the latter work there were serious handicaps. There was almost nothing in print in or concerning the native language of Mashonaland. The natives generally were unwilling to help the missionaries to learn their language and were equally indifferent to the school. On the whole, they were inclined to stand apart and view the white man with suspicion, trying in vain to fathom the motives which had brought him into their country.

There were no interpreters, no native teachers, no evangelists, nor native Christians to help. None of the Gospels had been translated, and there were but a few hymns and the Lord's Prayer in the vernacular.

It was a beginning at the very beginning, and at great odds.

The ancient rule is, "First catch your hare." Now, the nearest native village, or kraal (pronounced very significantly, crawl), was six miles away from Old Umtali. The natives wanted nothing of th'" white man except money or its equivalent. They did not speak nor understand English, and none of us spoke or understood their language.

An important phase of the work was the visitation of the people in their villages, and in this work the writer took particular interest after his appointment as superintendent of the Old Umtali Mission, in 1901.

Taking a small tent along, I went first to the nearest kraal. There was a chieftainess here by the name of Shikanga; the shi is from Ishi, Lord, and kanga, a guinea fowl.

This kraal consisted of fifteen huts just at the base of a steep, rugged hill. These huts might easily have been mistaken for round haj^-stacks. They had been placed anywhere, there being no regularity in any ]\Iashona kraal. Men, women, children, dogs, goats, sheep, and chickens often occupy the one small hut at night, while hoards of rats run riot over everything.

I pitched my tent in the midst of the jumble of houses, for I had much to learn. I soon found that added to the rats were swarms of fleas, numerous ticks, and several varieties of other vermin. After that one season's experience I ceased to camp inside a kraal unless I had to.

But the worst was at meal time, when some twenty or more naked, dirty — O, so dirty ! — youngsters all gathered round me to watch with open-mouthed astonishment and hungry eyes every mouthful I devoured. I often felt a sudden loss of appetite as I beheld them, and frequently a goodly portion of my food went down their very willing throats. And not infrequently what had gone down my own throat refused to stay when the smells and sights got worse than usual.

Shikanga gave her consent to our building a hut in her kraal for the use of the mission people who might want to come for a day or a week; but she clearly stipulated that they were not on any account to preach against the sin of getting drunk. She was a little body, not weighing more than ninety pounds, but she was the daughter of the king, and she knew it and made every one else know it. Her word was law in that kraal.

I engaged about a dozen men to work on the hut; but I was new in the country, and most of them had not been used to working on contract or, in fact, much at all, and so I got the worst of the bargain. They played up on me, and I was unable to tell them just what I thought of them.

If there were a threshing bee or the breaking of a new garden in the neighborhood, they simply disappeared, only to return at night full of beer and very boisterous. And Shikanga never missed any occasion that promised a drink. You could hear her a mile or more away as she came back from one of these social events. My tent was just a little distance back of her hut, and one night she kept me awake nearly the whole night singing and yelling at the top of her voice. The charm of novelty of living in a native kraal soon wears off.

Early in the morning while it was yet dark I would hear the women grinding their millet for the day's rations. I tried to get used to eating the thick, chocolate-colored mush they made of tliis meal, but it was too gummy and contained too much grit to suit me for a regular diet. The natives take off little bits of it, which they roll into a ball, dip it into some kind of gravy, clotted milk, or greens, and then throw the ball into their mouths and swallow without chewing. And this is the proper way to eat the sticky stuff, but I did not get the art.

Shortly after sunrise all the girls and women would have left the kraal to go to their gardens — for it was in May, their harvest time — and I would be left with (or without) the men who were putting up the hut.

Towards evening they all began to return, the women and girls with heavy bags of grain or bundles of firewood on their heads, and possibly a baby on their backs, the small boys with the sheep, goats, or cattle they had been herding, and the men from visiting, or sometimes from threshing, where plenty of beer had been promised.

The women then cooked the evening meal, each wife a separate dish for her husband.

Now and then a dilatory wife would get a beating, but when they were sober the men were rather inclined to be peaceable, and before eight o'clock all would be quiet, each woolly head covered with a cloth or blanket, on account of the rats.

Up among the huge boulders, where the big baboons used to come daily and give all sorts of impudence to the people whose gardens they delighted to rob, was the village smithy. It consisted of a circular roof of poles and grass, under which three or four people might, by crowding, sit. The blacksmith had a bellows made of a goatskin which had been drawn off over the animal's neck. Three of the legs were tied up and the fourth hind leg used for the nozzle, the neck being so arranged that it would let in the air during an upward motion and the operator would hold it closed while pressing the air out through the nozzle.

He made his own charcoal, and by means of two of these goatskins, one in each hand, he was able to get up a blast sufficient for all purposes of working the native smelted iron into axes, knives, hoes, spears, bracelets, anklets, hammers, and rings.

One day I heard musical sounds as of a flute in the distance. They drew nearer, and soon a peculiar figure dressed in a very scant loin-cloth and a heavy black coat swung into the kraal. He was playing on a reed flute of his own manufacture, while he held a rattle ornamented with an antelope tail in the other hand. He came up to me, and for about a half hour tooted and rattled and danced. At first I did not know whether he were a lunatic, a witch doctor, or what, but found out that he was only a wandering minstrel and was doing this performance for something to eat.

It took two weeks to get the hut finished, plastered inside and out with black mud, the mud floor pounded down by the women and ready for occupation. This was the first hut erected by our mission in a native village in Rhodesia and it was dedicated with a "crowded house," which gazed in wonder and admiration at the stereopticon views of the Life of Christ. This hut was used considerably during the next four years, until Shikanga moved away to obtain fresh garden lands.

Leaving one of the missionaries at Shikanga's, I next went to Guta, the capital of the Manika, twelve miles north of Old Umtali.

The king of this tribe always bears the name of Mtasa.* Each successive sovereign builds his town on a new site, in order that the spirit of the former chief may roam undisturbed around the place of his burial and where he has reigned.

This Mtasa had selected a natural fortress for his capital near the top of the mountain Bingahuru. This defense was necessary, for the pastoral Manika were ever the prey of the bloodthirsty Matebele and the warlike Shangani.

There were troubles within the tribe as well. When this Mtasa as a young man should have succeeded to the kingship, one of the strong men usurped the place. Young Ufambasiku (the-onewho- walks-by-night) was obliged to live among another tribe and could only make nocturnal visits to the capital. Finally, aided by the treachery of one of the usurper's wives, he was able one night to lure

* The m in this name, as In many words In the language, has the half-suppressed sound of u before it; a has the value of the long Italian a, as In arm. Mta-sa.

his enemy outside his hut, cut his throat, and secure the throne.

Until the advent of the white man, Mtasa had reigned an absolute and despotic monarch of the country. "Whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept alive ; and whom he would he raised up, and whom he would he put down."

However, he readily entered into treaties with the British when they came and, to his credit, kept those treaties, though later on he chafed sorely under his curtailed power whereby he could not even give one of his subjects a well-merited beating without being liable to be called to account. So he clung the closer to all his old traditions and positively opposed all mission work. And, though he welcomed me to his kraal because he was sick unto death and wanted me to cure him, he would not let me build, but set aside huts for my use.

It was not my first visit to this paramount chief. On a former occasion I had had a rather amusing experience.

As it was customary for all of Mtasa's white visitors (and he had many, particularly the kodak fiends) to take his royal highness a present, they usually gave him a blanket. What he did with them all, I 'm sure I do n't know, unless he bestowed them on his favorites, as I never saw but the one cheap, cotton, foully-dirty blanket which covered him while he was sick. But, whether he used them or not, blankets he wanted and blankets he got. Knowing all this, I once essayed to develop his education along industrial lines and do a service to humanity by presenting him a fine shovel. It was a nice, new, shiney, attractive shovel, and I had hopes that it might prove good and suggestive seed. Perhaps it did; in which case, I am sure, they planted it deep, for I never saw it again.

But the king was far from being timid about preferring his wants, and while he received the shovel with as much dignity as he could muster while hilariously drunk, he literally fell on my neck and failed to find words to tell me how delighted he was to see me and that the vest I had on would simply complete his earthly happiness. Of course, he got the vest, which was a black and white check, belonging to a suit which I had no love for and was quite willing should adorn the royal back.

Having disposed of the vest, the next time I took him the coat, thinking that, as every other gift so mysteriously disappeared, I would get rid of that obnoxious suit for good. But alas ! I was destined to meet that vest and coat all through the next five years of my stay there in Southern Rhodesia. They appeared at the most unexpected times and places, worn by different members of the family.

Now the king was sick, and while he was drunk most of the time, that did not keep from him the knowledge that probably his days were numbered, and with that fear hanging over him even alcohol could not make him hilarious. So he was, for once, genuinely glad to see a missionary. He announced at once that he wanted medicine for himself. Fortunately I was able to procure for him the needed treatment, which proved very effective so long as he was willing to take it. But with the return of his strength and some degree of health, he sunk back into his old ways and habits and relapsed into a state where death was inevitable.

It certainly is an advantage to any missionary to have some primary knowledge of medicine and dentistry. My lack along these lines was a constant regret. The man who can efficiently extract aching teeth will win the gratitude of the most savage cannibal. A Wesleyan minister told me that he had frequently, when on his rounds as superintendent, extracted as many as thirty teeth after a preaching service.

If Shikanga's kraal impressed one with its wickedness, what could be said of Mtasa's? It was a kraal of about 150 huts around and among the huge boulders. At the back of the kraal there arose from 700 to 800 feet of sheer, precipitous rock, the top of the mountain being not unlike an inverted, round pudding-mold. The kraal itself was situated on a sort of shelf two-thirds up the mountain side.

It was indescribably filthy in all parts of the kraal and as void of moral principles as of sanitary conditions. It was notoriously bad, and I do not think its reputation for evil was at all exaggerated.

Every night the sound of the drum proclaimed a dance in one part of the kraal or another; and a dance meant drunkenness and vice. All of the people were drunk some of the time, a part of them were drunk most of the time, and some of them were drunk all of the time.

Coupled with the tattoo of the drum came the weird shrieks of the women's "Yaie-yaie-yaie," the noise of strife, a drunken brawl, or the sound of wrangling and discord. There were often sounds of hilarity, but seldom any of true mirth.

One day the noise and discord, the shrieks and yells, were more numerous and exaggerated than usual, and I went to see what was the matter. Every one was running past my hut and the wails increased in volume and violence. 8

Hurrying to the place nearby where the people were congregating, I learned that a young man, a son of the king, Avas dead. I had known the young man well and, indeed, he had been at the last Sunday service, where he had shown more interest than any of the others. What did he die of.'' No one could tell me; but after he was buried, my native helper (Charlie Potter) said that there was a rumor that he had been killed in a row at the dance the night before.

The news spread rapidly, and fresh relays of friends kept coming to the bereaved hut, each one adding to the fearful wails and lamentations of the women folk. The men began to make preparations to bury him at once. I first went into the hut, as did the others, to see the corpse; but, to my horror, saw only an ungainly bundle completely swathed in white unbleached muslin. The Makaranga* bring the knees and chin of the body together and then securely bind it in that position, and in that sitting position bury it.

Following the men, I found they had selected a place under an enomious boulder which closely

*The native people of southeastern Rhodesia are called Mashonas by the white men. This is an opprobrious term given them by the Matebeli. They should be called, correctly, Makaranga, as they are the descendants of that ancient Makaranga nation, the Children of the Sun.

resembled a ship. They dug under what might have been the stern until the hole was about four feet deep and diagonal in shape.

In three hours from the time the first wailing began, the body was borne out of the house on a hastily constructed litter of poles and bark rope, accompanied by a frantic mob of screaming women, who threw themselves down into the dust and leaped into the air, shrieking in a blood-curdling manner in a perfect frenzy. This continued until the body was shoved into its place and the hole neatly walled up with stone. Then they subsided into a stolid apathy, the mother and wives of the dead man in particular being the personification of hopelessness, and his sister wailing out over and over: "O, Benzi, Benzi, thou wert a lion!" (The lion is the totem of the reigning family.)

That evening comparative quiet reigned, but the next night life was going on as ever.

The dry season was near its close and other duties at Old Umtali were now demanding my attention, and as the king's return to his drink had brought on a relapse and he had fallen into a stupor from which it was impossible to rouse him, so that his death was only a matter of a few days, I packed up my belongings and returned to the mission.

But in the three months among the people we had not only attended the king, held continual services, got acquainted with the natives, and advanced in the language, but we had also been able to get the first group of bo^^s to go directly from the kraal to the school. They were mostly grandsons of the king — a dirty, almost naked, impudent lot of youngsters ; but they were bright and quick to learn. They were numbered among our first converts, and some of them have developed into excellent teachers and evangelists.