South and South Central Africa / A record of fifteen years' missionary labors among primitive peoples

by Hannah Frances Davidson

The second day eight more were enrolled, and the third day fourteen, and by the end of the month there were forty in all. Sister Heise and I were kept busy during school hours as the pupils were taught to sew as well as to read and write. Cleanliness is a rare virtue with them, so they were told to wash before coming to school. As new ones entered the school the admonition was repeated, with the statement that we wash every morning. Mapita's little daughter, Sibongamanzi, with shining black face, which showed that she had been heeding the command, looked up brightly and said, "Yes, but you are white and we are black." She evidently had thought that, if she washed every morning, she too would become white, but she had concluded it to be a hopeless task. Mr. Anderson said that some of their children thought that if they ate the food of white people, they too would become white.

This, our first schoolroom, was very primitive. It consisted of a tent 16 x 16 feet. In front there was a box which served as a teachers' desk and as a receptacle for slates, pencils, paper, books, and sewing. Other boxes served for teachers' chairs. There were two easels made of poles; one supported the blackboard and the other the charts. The blackboard consisted of a few small boards nailed together and painted black, and the charts were of cardboard, 18 x 24 inches in size. There were ten of them printed on both sides with syllables, and Tebele words and sentences. These had been printed by homemade stencils and pen, and had occupied our leisure time while we were hut-building. The floor of the tent was covered with straw, and the pupils sat on this without seats or desks. They knew nothing of the comforts of the schoolroom in civilized lands and thought they were well supplied.

Since we had no primer at the time, the Gospel of St. John was given to them as a textbook when they had finished the charts. To enable them to read and understand the Word of God was the aim of the school work and the Bible the Textbook throughout. After they had learned to write the letters of the alphabet, their copy usually was a verse from the Scriptures. They were also taught to memorize certain portions in connection with the daily worship, and hymn singing.

The pupils compare very favorably with white children in their ability to learn, but few of them come regularly to school. To most of them school is just a side issue, some place to go when there is nothing else to be done. Some have an idea that they can learn to read in about a month, and when they find that it requires months of weary, patient effort at meaningless characters, they give up in despair. Others are ridiculed by the older people for throwing away their time at such useless work; "There is no money, no beer, no food in it and they are dunces to go."

Again, some are grown, and being past the age when mental effort is easy, they soon become discouraged. One big fellow stumbled along until he had mastered the chart after a fashion. Then, to his delight, he was given the Gospel of St. John to read. Day after day he struggled along over the, to him, meaningless syllables and words. Still he persevered until it gradually dawned upon him that the printed page meant something. He looked up one day with a most delighted expression on his face and exclaimed, "This book is talking to me!"

The native cannot be said to be very persevering, owing to the fact that all his life, in his untaught state, he goes on the principle that the world owes him a living. His needs are few and often they are supplied by nature. When he comes up against a difficult problem of any sort, his usual answer is, "It will not consent." For this reason arithmetic is always difficult for him and his progress in it is very slow. One day I was endeavoring to show a girl how to make the letter b. After a vain effort to make it properly, she exclaimed, "My pencil will not consent to slide that way."

The sewing hour probably was the most interesting time to all. They expected to receive the garments after they had finished sewing them and had worked for the cloth with which they were made. The dearest wish of their hearts was to have a garment to put on. And that is not strange, for in the cool morning air they come shivering, and at noon the hot sun burns their bodies. We might have made the garments and donated them; but that would not teach them to work and would have done them more harm than good. A native always appreciates most that upon which he has bestowed labor or money; so both boys and girls learned to sew. It was rather amusing to see them, in the absence of other garments to which they might pin their sewing, place it between their toes. It was also interesting to watch the different expressions when at last the garments were finished and they could clothe themselves.

Matshuba put on his suit; then, folding his hands, said in a quiet and contented manner, "Now I am not cold any more." Amuzeze, when he had finished his garments, put them on, and taking a good look at himself stepped off as proudly as if he owned a large estate. Sibongamanzi kept her dress for Sunday. At home she would carefully fold it, and putting it in an earthen jar cover it up for safe keeping.

In the meantime services on Sunday had not been neglected. At the opening of the work none of the missionaries could speak the language, but they could read it after a fashion. So, from the very first Sunday after the work opened, endeavors were made to instill into the minds of the natives that one day out of seven was a day of rest and worship. To them all days were alike—workdays, rest days, or carousal days, as they chose to spend them. Sad to say that even the few that went to work for the white man saw little or no difference between the days of the week. It falls to the lot of the missionary to teach the significance of the fourth commandment as well as the rest of the decalogue. On Sunday the people were invited to assemble under the shade of a friendly tree, and a portion of the Scriptures was read to them and hymns sung. They are great lovers of music, so that in itself was an attraction. The first congregation was very small. Sometimes there would be only Mapita and his family, five or six in number. As the nature of the meetings began to dawn on the native mind, others would assemble with us, but in the first few months, or until the opening of school in October, not more than twenty-five congregated at one time.

Acquiring the language is always a tedious, though important, part of foreign missionary work. The missionary sees the natives about him, day by day, and longs to tell them something of Jesus and His love, but is unable to do so, especially if he be a pioneer in the work and without an interpreter as we were. We had been endeavoring to study the language from the Zulu books on hand, but on coming face to face with the natives it was discovered that the set phrases we had acquired seemed as unintelligible to them as their words were to us. There were several reasons for this. One was that we had not learned the proper pronunciation and accent, and another was that their dialect differed somewhat from the Zulu, which we had been endeavoring to learn. Another, and far weightier reason, and one which, to our sorrow, we did not discover until some time afterwards, was that some natives did not speak the correct language to us. Those who had been accustomed to speaking to the Europeans had invented a jargon of their own, which they seemed to think especially adapted to the mental capacity of white people. This medium of communication is known as "kitchen Kafir."