One of the first impressions a traveller receives is that of the vastness of the territory and the comparative sparseness of the population. These facts, together with the want of facilities for rapid travel, constitute serious difficulties in carrying on missionary work.
My colleague and I were the first Deputation from the Society to visit Central Africa. As long ago as 1879 the Directors accepted an offer from the Society’s Foreign Secretary, Dr. Mullens, to visit the Mission. He proceeded to Zanzibar and started on his journey to Lake Tanganyika, but died at Chakombe in July of that year and was buried in the C. M. S. cemetery at Mpwapwa, between Tabora and Dar-es-Salaam. Since that day conditions of travel and of life in Northern Rhodesia (which is the part of Central Africa in which the L. M. S. carries on nearly all its work) have completely changed. No more striking evidence of the change can be afforded than a comparison between the experiences of the early missionaries and of their successors, twenty-five years later. The average term of service for the first ten missionaries who served in Central Africa was well under three years. The ten missionaries at present on the field have already to their credit an average term of service of thirteen years, and the majority of them are still under forty years of age. Moreover, in the first ten years of the Mission eleven missionaries died on the field, and six were invalided home, and (with one exception) did not return. During the last ten years not a single missionary has died on the field, and no missionary has retired on account of ill-health.
It was our good fortune to visit Central Africa during its winter, and our experience of the climate was altogether delightful. Even during the hot season the heat is not so extreme as might be expected from the geographical position of the country. At the Society’s stations the thermometer seldom, if ever, reaches 100° Fahrenheit during the hottest season—a point often exceeded further south. Nevertheless, Central Africa is still a trying place for many people. The liability to malarial fever, dysentery, and cognate diseases is considerable. Nor must it be forgotten that all our stations are necessarily at a high altitude above sea level. The lowest of them—Kafukula—is nearly as high as the top of Snowdon, while all the remaining stations are between 4,700 and 5,600 feet up, except Mbereshi, the altitude of which is 3,900 feet. Life at this altitude is often trying to the nerves and heart, and the strain is all the more severe owing to the impossibility of securing a substantial change of altitude without great expenditure of time and money. The distance to the coast is so great, the travel is so trying, and the cost is so heavy that it is practically impossible for our missionaries and their families to obtain a complete change—either as a mid-term furlough or otherwise.
Perhaps the best indication of the changed conditions of life and the improved health of the Mission in these later days is afforded by the splendid health enjoyed by the missionaries’ children. The picture facing this page speaks for itself.
But there is an aspect of life in Central Africa which must not be over-looked, namely its isolation. At only one of our stations is any other white man in residence. There are less than a dozen white people—officials and a trader—at Kawambwa, the Government station twenty miles from Mbereshi, and about a dozen at Abercorn—the Metropolis, as it is called, of the white people in the Society’s area—ten miles from Kawimbe.
Photo by] [Bernard Turner.
Hilda. Gay. Kenneth. Ethel. Dennis. Sylvia. Hope. Monica. Marjorie. Franklin.
Healthy Missionary Children in Central Africa.
The exercise of a little imagination will enable the reader to realise something of the loneliness of men and women living in a country where there are so few people of their own race. Moreover, the Mission stations are widely separated from each other. Mbereshi is five days’ journey from Mpolokoso, eight days’ journey from Kambole, nine and a-half days’ journey from Kafukula, and eleven days’ journey from Kawimbe.
For the greater part of the three months following our departure from the railway at Ndola we lived in tents, and travelled through the great Central African forest, which in fact extended nearly all the way from Bulawayo, the capital of Southern Rhodesia, to Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of German East Africa, situated on the east coast of the Continent, 80 miles south of Zanzibar. Almost the whole of this country is a plateau from 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. The southern part of this forest is traversed by the Zambesi, and the western portion is bounded by the Congo, there known as the Luapula, while situated on the table-land there are the great lakes of Bangweolo, Mweru and Tanganyika, the two last of which we visited. In travelling through the forest one day’s journey is very like another, although each day abounds with a variety of incidents and new sights and new experiences for one who visits the country for the first time. A general description of the means and conditions of travel will suffice.
We were almost wholly dependent upon native carriers. With the exception of bicycles and single-wheeled bush-cars there is no wheeled traffic in Northern Rhodesia. There are practically no roads in our meaning of that term. The travel-routes are native paths—often very narrow and overgrown. In the long grass, which is a remarkable feature of the country, the path often cannot be seen, but can only be felt by the feet. There are no inns or rest-houses. Tents, bedding, cooking utensils, food, etc., must all be carried everywhere. The minimum number of carriers required by one person on a short journey is about twelve if a bicycle is used, or eighteen to twenty if a machila is the means of conveyance. A machila is a chair slung between two poles and carried by four men. For longer journeys extra men are needed to carry supplies, or in case of sickness among the carriers. Should native food not be easily obtained—as at certain seasons is the case everywhere, and along many of the main travel-routes, more or less constantly all the year round—five more men are needed for each week that food has to be carried. Carriers cost about 1s. 6d. per man per week away from their homes. The general practice is to pay 1s. a week in cash on discharge, and the balance in calico, cash, salt or food, weekly in advance. The speed of travel is, of course, dependent on the ability of the carriers, and the nature of the country traversed, but it may be taken as about seventeen or eighteen miles a day, or three miles an hour, including rests. Sometimes over thirty miles is accomplished with loads, or even more with a letter only. Our average day’s travel from Ndola to Mbereshi was just under twenty miles, but on two days we covered over thirty miles.