Courtesy Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions
At the Frank James Industrial School, Elat, Africa
The boys gathered rattan vines, and Fred Hope showed them how to make attractive bush-rope furniture.
So the boys began to gather rattan vines of different sizes and make it into bush-rope furniture which was so beautiful that when foreign officers visited Africa and saw it, they insisted on taking samples home with them.
Next the boys turned their attention to building houses. They practised on houses for themselves; then they built houses for the missionaries. They decorated Mr. Hope's house with beautiful mahogany panels made from the trees that grew right at their door.
When, after a while, the government needed large warehouses the boys from Elat were able to build them.
Their greatest triumph was the Elat church. This is not a little chapel as one might expect in a mission; it is a church that seats four thousand people. Not only did they build the church, but they made all the furniture for it, and the many thousands of mats of dried grass with which the roof was covered. Next they went around the country building other Christian churches as they were needed.
They learned to make small articles as well as large. From the tusks of the elephants, which were not in cages at the Zoo, but at home in the forests all about, they made ivory chessmen.
Of course, Mr. Hope cannot keep forever the many boys and men who come to the school. Most of them must go back to their own homes. He wanted them to know how to farm when they went back, so he laid out a little farm for them to practise on at the schools, and here they learn the best methods of planting and cultivating. They have tried to find new plants which might grow in Africa. Our own American Agricultural Bureau became interested in exchanging plants and seeds, and before long we will see African vegetables in America and American vegetables in Africa.