After a few days’ stay at Tiger Kloof, the first place I visited was Vryburg, where the Rev. A. J. Wookey, the missionary in charge of the numerous scattered Churches of the Baralong tribe, resides. Vryburg is not in a true sense a station of the Society, but the headquarters for an extensive out-station work. After a stay of two days there, I journeyed with Mr. Wookey in a Cape cart drawn by four horses to Ganyesa, forty miles to the north-west. The growth of the work in the lifetime of a single missionary is well illustrated by what has happened at this place. When Mr. Wookey first visited it, forty-three years ago, two or three people met with him for worship in a hut there. A man read the Scriptures, and a woman led in prayer and preached. Now there is a good stone Church with 120 Church members, and an Anglo-vernacular school with seventy children. Connected with it are three branch churches and schools.
A short description of the visit to Ganyesa will serve to illustrate one’s experience at many a country out-station in Bechuanaland and Matebeleland. I started from Vryburg at 7.10 and reached Ganyesa at 4.30, after out-spanning twice. We camped for the night on an open common, in the middle of a large Native Reserve, close to an ox-waggon which had brought two other missionaries, Mr. Helm and Mr. Haydon Lewis, to the place. On all sides stretched the illimitable veldt. There were very few trees, but almost all around the sky-line was broken by the conical thatched roofs of the Native huts. Close at hand were to be seen emaciated oxen returning from the almost dry watering-places in charge of little black herd-boys, who were nearly naked, their bodies glistening like polished ebony, and having an appearance which suggested that they had recently been black-leaded, and presenting a great contrast with the white of their eyes and of their perfect teeth. After my arrival I was visited by the schoolmaster and the deacons, and afterwards attended a concert in the Church, organised to raise funds to help to send a teacher to Tiger Kloof. The price of a ticket for the concert was 6d. The night was hot, and the Church was packed. In spite of the almost overpowering heat the doors and windows were kept closed, in order that the crowd outside should not enjoy the music for which they had not paid! The atmosphere within was beyond description. Evening meetings are almost unknown in Bechuanaland. Some antique lamps had been requisitioned, and the air was laden with the pungent smell of the lamp oil. The “Bouquet d’Afrique” was also strongly in evidence. The audience afforded a picturesque scene in the dim lamp light. Most of the women wore highly coloured head-dresses, and with their numerous babies sat on the floor, which was made of a mixture of sand and cow-dung. The rest of their dress was remarkable for its colour and variety. Many of the boys and men were in dilapidated European costume. There were 100 items on the programme, and the concert continued until the small hours of Sunday morning. I left before midnight, and slept on the ground underneath the bright penetrating stars. The darkness of the night was illuminated by flashes of summer lightning on the eastern horizon.
The following day, Sunday, will live in my memory. The service was announced to begin at eleven o’clock, but at ten o’clock the evangelist came to say that the chapel was already full, and forthwith the service commenced. The building was crowded to its utmost capacity, and there were large numbers of men, women and children sitting in the shade on the ground outside. I spoke to the people from a side-door in order that my words might be heard by the crowd inside and out. After the service I was visited by a large number of deacons and workers from the Churches for many miles round. Afterwards I went to see an old woman named Dipepeng in her kraal near by. She is over eighty years of age, and for a long time has not had the use of her legs. She sat in the entrance to her hut in the shadow of the over-hanging eaves, reading her Sechuana Bible. She told me she had been a servant to Dr. and Mrs. Moffat at Kuruman, and remembered David Livingstone courting Mary Moffat under the historic almond tree, and was present at their wedding. She described them, and spoke of an arbour in the garden where they used to sit. The old woman has been a Christian for sixty years, and is deeply interested in the Church at Ganyesa.
I visited the only European in the place, he being a store-keeper. In the afternoon there was a baptismal service, Sunday School, a sermon, and a crowded Communion Service conducted with great reverence. At the close the people all rose and sang, “God be with you till we meet again.” At day-break on the following morning there was a prayer meeting. This was followed by the wedding of five couples, and a visit to the school. Later in the morning Mr. Wookey and I started on our return journey to Vryburg in the Cape cart.
Later in the week I journeyed by rail and cart to Taungs where Mr. McGee is the resident missionary. The Society has carried on work there for forty-five years, and although the Church membership in connection with Taungs and its out-stations is the largest (1,184) connected with any L. M. S. Church in South Africa, the place was described quite recently by an experienced missionary as “a back-water of heathenism.” The signs of heathenism are certainly very apparent. The Native Chief is a bad specimen of a Bechuana. Some of his headmen make themselves particularly hideous by a plentiful application of the contents of the blue-bag to their faces and heads. There are many evidences of superstition and heathenism, and yet there is another side to the picture. On the Sunday the spacious Church—which has recently been built by the tribe, heathen and Christian alike contributing—was crowded both morning and afternoon. Twenty infants and thirty adults were baptised. The scene from the platform was extremely picturesque. About half the congregation consisted of women, most of whom wore brilliantly coloured head-dresses, vivid yellows and startling pinks predominating. Many were clad in gaudy shawls. In the afternoon a solemn Communion Service was held, at which individual communion cups were used. The service was rendered the more impressive by the fact that a great thunderstorm broke before it closed. Looking through the great west doors of the Church at the beginning of the service one could see the wide-spreading veldt stretching away into the distance as far as the eye could reach, and looking dry and thirsty in the pitiless blaze of the afternoon sun. Then a kind of mist appeared on the horizon. It was a dust-storm approaching. The natives have a proverb which says that “God sweeps His land before He waters it.” The clouds of dust came nearer, until at last all the doors had to be shut. The Church became dark. Then came claps of thunder, which made speaking difficult, while the dim interior was from time to time lit up with brilliant flashes of lightning. Then followed a downpour of heavy rain upon the galvanised iron roof, making a terrific noise. The storm increased in intensity until there was a perfect artillery of thunder, while the lightning was continuous and most vivid. In spite of the storm the service was continued in an orderly fashion, and the crowded congregation seemed perfectly oblivious to the hurricane raging outside. The service concluded with thanksgiving for the rain, for which the people had long been praying.
Taungs is the centre of a widespread district, in which there are twenty-three outstations regularly visited by the missionary. I visited one of them, called Manthe, nine miles away. That visit was impressed upon my memory by one of the appalling contrasts which are so common in heathen lands. Under an extemporised roof at the back of the evangelist’s house I saw and talked with a bright Christian boy, the eldest son of the evangelist, by name Golekynie, who had been for seven years at Tiger Kloof. He was on the point of passing his third and final examination as a pupil-teacher, when, a month before, he had been compelled to return home in an advanced stage of consumption. He was lying on his bed in the open air. He spoke excellent English and had a refined face and manner, and was evidently an earnest Christian youth. He realised that he could not live long, and spoke with high appreciation of the happiness that had come into his life at Tiger Kloof. He told me that he was not afraid to die.
An hour afterwards I paid a visit to the Chief of the village, who was slowly dying of a loathsome disease in a wretched, evil-smelling native house. He lay on a dirty mattress with a coloured blanket over him. He was a heathen of a low type. Two of his wives and several children were on the verandah outside the open window. After Mr. McGee and I had left he sent to us to ask us to return to pray for him, the first time he had ever made a request for spiritual help.
From Taungs I proceeded to the historic station of Kuruman, accomplishing the journey of 143 miles by cart, rail, motor-car and ox-waggon. The contrast in the modes of travel is illustrated by the fact that the first seventy-seven miles occupied five hours, and the remaining sixty-six miles—which were travelled by ox-waggon—occupied three nights and two days. This journey helped to bring home the sparseness of the population. On Christmas Eve I travelled from early morning till late at night in the ox-waggon without seeing a single human habitation, or a single human being, except those who were accompanying me, and this not in the recesses of Central Africa but in British Bechuanaland, which is part of the Cape Province. I travelled in a new waggon recently made by the boys at Lovedale for the Kuruman station. It was drawn by fourteen oxen, kindly provided by the Church at Kuruman, with two supernumeraries in reserve in case of accidents. As travelling by ox-waggon is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, it is worth while attempting a short description of the journey. The waggon in which I travelled, although a new one, had no springs. The road was of a most primitive description, although the main thoroughfare between two important centres of population. The jolting and bumping defy description. The speed is nearly two miles an hour if all goes well. The discomfort of travelling is somewhat mitigated by the “cartel”—a wooden frame hung within the waggon by very short chains of three links. Across the frame are stretched “rims” or strips of undressed ox-hide about a quarter of an inch broad. When the waggon is at rest this makes a very comfortable bed, far more so than some of the beds of my experience in China, such as the boards of a Chinese chapel vestry, or the planks of a Chinese boat.
Photo by] [Mrs. Hawkins.
Kuruman Mission House, built by Moffat and Hamilton.