Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The college is divided into three departments. The first, which is for the sons of sheiks, is devoted to the training of teachers for the Mohammedan schools and of judges and other officials for the Mohammedan courts. Following their usual colonial policy, the British are governing the Sudan as far as possible through the natives. They respect the native religions and the native language, therefore the instruction in this part of the college is altogether in Arabic. The students write all their exercises in Arabic and take their dictation in that tongue. Along with other subjects the students are taught the Koran and the Koranic law—and they are well grounded in the Mohammedan religion, especially as it bears upon the government of the people. The students of this department are fine-looking fellows, dressed almost uniformly in turbans and gowns, and have the aristocratic bearing which shows them to be the sons of chiefs.

The second department of the college is filled by those who hope to get minor appointments under the government or who want a general education to fit themselves for business and citizenship. In this department both English and Arabic are taught. Many of the boys are young. In one classroom I found a score of brown- and black-faced pupils, none of them over twelve years of age, learning to write English. They stood up as I entered in company with the president of the college, and rose to their feet again as we left. In this college surveying is taught. I was shown some excellent mechanical drawings, and some plans worked up from field notes. These were, of course, in the higher classes. The education is thorough and a boy can get a training that will fit him for almost any branch of life and for any profession which can be followed in the Sudan.

I was especially interested in the manual-training school, which is well equipped, with blacksmith and carpenter shops. I found a score or so of young Arabs making various things of wrought iron. They were turning out fences and ornamental iron gates. In the carpenter shops they were making library cases and other furniture and learning about house building and finishing. There are also machine shops where the students work at lathes. Every workshop is under the charge of an English professor who is a practical mechanic, and the boys are given such instruction that as soon as they are graduated they can find places on the plantations of the Sudan. Indeed, the demand for such workers is far in excess of the supply.

The natives of the Sudan are illiterate. The Mahdi and the Khalifa discouraged learning of all kinds, because they knew that the educated people would repudiate the doctrines upon which their government was founded. During his rule over the Sudan the Khalifa ordered that all books should be destroyed. He had no schools worthy of the name, and as a result not one Sudanese in a hundred can read and write. The officials say it is useless to post up government proclamations unless they station a man beside each one to read it out to the passers-by. At the same time the natives respect learning. They think that anything written must be true, so that swindlers sometimes go about and extort money by showing documents which they claim are orders to pay issued by the government.

The British are doing all they can to change these conditions. They are trying to educate the people, and are gradually establishing higher primary schools. Most of the schools are connected with the mosques and teach little more than reading and writing. The others give the rudiments of an education along western lines, while the higher primary schools teach English, mathematics, drawing, and other branches as well.

I went through a higher primary school with the Egyptian governor of Omdurman. It consisted of many one-story structures built around a walled inclosure. Each building is a schoolroom. The boys study at desks just like those used by our schoolboys at home, and have the same kind of modern classroom equipment. The students are of all ages, from boys of six learning to read to young men of eighteen or twenty ready to graduate. I heard some of the latter recite in English, and they seemed to me quite as bright as our boys at home. In one room I heard the recitation of the scene from “William Tell,” in which Gessler makes the Swiss hero shoot the apple from his boy’s head. Four black boys took part in the dialogue. They declaimed in English, and although they had an Arabic accent they recited with wonderful feeling and with a full appreciation of the sentiment of the story. In another building I met some of the sons of the sheiks and photographed them out in the open. The pupils of all the schools are polite, and their natural ability is much above that of the African natives who live farther south.

But to return to the Wellcome Laboratory. Mr. Henry S. Wellcome is a rich Philadelphian, a member of the famous firm of Burroughs & Wellcome, manufacturing chemists and druggists of London. This firm makes a special study of tropical diseases and tropical medicines. A part of its business is outfitting missionaries and exploring parties. It furnished to Henry M. Stanley and others their medical supplies for travel throughout the world. It was probably through the study of such matters that Mr. Wellcome became interested in the Sudan and was induced to furnish, equip, and sustain this great laboratory. The objects of the institution are to promote the study of tropical disorders, especially those of man and beast peculiar to the Sudan, as well as to render assistance to the health officers and the civil and military hospitals. The laboratory experts are carrying on investigations regarding the poisons used by the natives and the chemical and bacteriological condition of the waters. They are also making studies of foodstuffs and sanitary improvements. They are testing and assaying the various minerals and are looking up all matters relating to the industrial development of the country.

The main offices of the laboratory are in the college, but its explorers are sent out in every direction to make all sorts of researches. They are studying the mosquitoes of the country and are investigating the tsetse fly and other pests. Among other evils they are fighting the sleeping sickness, that horrible disease communicated by the tsetse fly which has killed its thousands throughout Central Africa. They are trying to rout the boll weevil and other insects which ruin the crops, and they are aiding the Cancer Research Fund and the Carnegie Institute in their inquiries. I have met a number of the scientists connected with this institution and I find them able men. They tell me that the Sudan has almost every noxious insect and pest known to man. It has worms and weevils which affect the cotton crop, and it has mosquitoes which carry malaria and which would carry yellow-fever if they were once inoculated by feeding upon a yellow-fever patient. Indeed, the stegomyia, or yellow-fever mosquito, swarms here, and if one of them should be impregnated with these disease germs it might start an endless chain of the scourge which could hardly be broken.

The chemists here tell me that one of the principal money crops of this part of the world is gum arabic. We know this gum chiefly in connection with mucilage, but it is also widely used in the arts. It is employed for making water colours and certain kinds of inks as well as in dyeing and finishing silks and other fabrics. Some of the better grades are used in confectionery, and the pearly teeth of many an American girl have done their work in the chewing of this exudation of the trees of the Sudan. The gum, which comes from the acacia tree, is said to be due to a microbe which feeds upon the sap and causes the gum to ooze out on the bark in the form of tears when the bark is cut or partially stripped. It is collected by the native women and packed up and shipped to Omdurman for sale and export. During my visit to the markets of that city I saw great piles of it which had been brought in to be sent down the Nile or over the railroad to the Red Sea. There were hundreds of tons of it lying out in the open, and I was told that within a few weeks it would all be on its way to Europe or the United States.