IN MONROVIA.
“The heathen that leap out of the vices and degradation and superstition and the deep darkness of their former lives, into active, working, intelligent Christians, are, I am inclined to think, the product of a facile pen from an overhopeful brain. It is not easy to shake off lifetime habits, customs hoary, and to them venerable, because their ancestors as far back as can be traced, have practiced
them, and at once ascend into the region of a sublime faith, and from visible objects and ceremonies whereby wrath of the great demon power is averted, and his favor propitiated, turn to the King, invisible, immortal.
“The cerements of old superstition enwrap them. Neither can we ‘loose him and let him go’ the moment the new desires are born in him. His efforts are something like a child that is just learning to walk; he takes a step or two, wavers and drops back into some past habit, but like a child he is helped up and put on his feet again. I went down to Krutown last week to school. I heard tom-toms and saw the people on one street out for a gala day—all ‘dressed up,’ The women were painted with different kinds of clay, and had a great quantity of leopard teeth around their wrists and neck, plenty of brass anklets and armlets, and a towel or breakfast shawl thrown loosely and gracefully over one shoulder. Quite a number had on a cloth extending nearly to their feet, but all their bodies were bare to the hips; a great many held silk umbrellas over their heads, and all had a self-conscious air of being ‘well dressed.’ I went on and opened school. One of my Bible scholars was absent, a man of 40 or 45, who had learned to read, and showed such a meek and quiet spirit. I named him Fletcher. I asked where Fletcher was. ‘Him got a new wife, you no see that big play? Well that be him friends making for him.’ Next day he was in his place as usual. I asked why he took another wife. ‘Mammy, the woman done run away from him husband and come to me, and I no fittee send him back; I take him.’ That was all there was, no feeling of having done wrong. Polygamy is the greatest obstacle one meets in this part of Africa. The women are ashamed to belong—yes, belong, for the man buys her—to a man who is so poor he cannot buy more than one or two wives. It is not the patriarchal system some think, for the women are every now and then running away to some other man. Some never say a word, but let the man have his wife, others demand the amount the husband paid for her, others again make a big palaver. A court is called and after several hearings, which sometimes last two and three weeks, the wife is restored or returned to her husband, and both seem satisfied. It is almost impossible to do any teaching or
evangelistic work when one man’s wife runs away to another man—the latter’s friends make merry by beating tom-toms, singing, dancing and drinking rum.
“These are some of the things that a missionary has to meet, and which greatly retard the work. Then time has no value to them. Plenty of chop, and not a desire and not an emotion beyond that. Like the prostrate figure in Peale’s Court of Death, the head and feet touch the waters of oblivion. So with the heathen here; the past and the future are alike impenetrable, incomprehensible.” Mary Sharp.