The war went on more desperately and it became unsafe for Amvama; so I went after him and brought him back to Baraka. But he returned from the field of his labours bringing his sheaves with him, in men and women rescued from degradation and sin, and in the love of many.
FANG CHRISTIANS.
In the middle of the front row stands Amvama. Behind him, on his right, is Ndong Koni. The tall young man is Robert Boardman, the blind catechist.
When I left Africa I felt that I was leaving many friends behind me; humble friends but true, and I cherish the memory of their devotion. Some of them I loved because they were lovable, and others for the labour and anxiety expended upon them—the sweat of the brow, and the brain and the heart. But there were none whom I loved more, and there are none whom I more often long to see, than Amvama and Ndong Koni.
I cannot close these sketches without some reference to another who was an invaluable helper in the work among the Fang. He was totally blind. He bore an English name, Robert Boardman, and had no African name. The natives called him Bobbie. He was not a Fang but an Mpongwe, and his mother was an American Negress. His father was educated at Baraka away back in the early days when the missionaries were allowed to use English, and he spoke English well. When he was a young man he came to America. In those days Africa, to Americans, was a romance rather than a reality. Any chief of a village or head of his own family coming here was called a prince. So young Boardman (Robert’s father) passed himself off as a prince, and probably without any intentional deception. He married a Negress of the South, who supposed that by her marriage she became a princess. She left family and friends all behind and went to Africa. The disillusionment was very hard and very bitter; and at last, inevitably, she sought relief in drink. She was evidently a woman of superior mind, if one might judge by her children, of whom there were five. One of these was poor Augustus Boardman, of whom I have written in another chapter, and whom drink brought to an early grave.
Robert was the youngest child. He was a very interesting boy, and intellectually far above the average. As a young man he lived the dissolute life that was general among the Mpongwe of Gaboon. His blindness was the last result of his dissipation, and was also the cure. He never walked alone again; a little boy led him by the hand. Blindness is a more terrible affliction in Africa, where the helpless are neglected, and where roads are rough and often infested with ants or snakes.
He was extremely unhappy after his blindness. There were times when it seemed that it would drive him mad. In his misery he made others miserable around him. Poor material, one would surely say, for the grace of God or any other moral influence to work upon—this physical and moral wreck. But, as I once heard a reclaimed outcast say, “Jesus loves to walk by the seashore where the wrecks come in.”
When I went to Gaboon I engaged Robert as my interpreter; for he knew Fang as well as he knew Mpongwe. Then, when I could speak Fang without him, I undertook the Mpongwe work and I used him as my interpreter to the Mpongwe; so he continued in my service. The first year, when I was itinerating among the Fang and travelling in the Evangeline, he went everywhere with me. I recall one evening when we were setting out from the beach in a very heavy sea and had got beyond the surf we saw Robert’s little attendant on the beach very much excited and waving to us to come back. He was yelling something to us which we could not hear distinctly across the roaring surf, but I thought he was trying to tell us something about “Bobbie’s wife.” Very reluctantly I told the crew to go back. We were already in the surf and were going ashore as if pulled by wild horses when at last we made out what the boy was saying, namely: “Bobbie has forgotten his pipe.”
The African has no mental perspective, according to our ideas; things great and small, the most momentous and the most trivial, appear upon a flat surface of equality. But it would scandalize an African to hear one speak of a pipe in this disrespectful way.
Robert had an unusual mind and was athirst for knowledge. His interpreting was a kind of education for him and he made the most of it. He was always alert for new words and their exact meaning, and he had an excellent memory. There was also a vein of poetry in him. I once heard him, in offering an evening prayer, ask God that Satan might not sow the tares of bad dreams in our sleep—the more appropriate because of the native regard for dreams and the habit of vivid dreaming.