The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The men and women sit on different sides of the church and I believe that in their stage of civilization it is best that they should thus be separated, though sometimes it is attended with inconvenience. For instance, a father may have charge of a baby that wants its mother; and if so it may be passed from one to another across the entire church, as I have seen, dangling by one little arm, and with no covering but that which nature has provided in its black skin. The large majority are dressed and there is nothing grotesque or foolish in their costumes. Most of the men wear a white undershirt and a large square robe of cotton, usually of bright colours, bound around the waist and falling almost to the feet. This is the most becoming male dress in Africa; and the black man in his own climate always looks best in bright colours. A few of the men, in too great haste to be civilized, wear shirts and trousers, the trousers a manifest misfit and the shirt outside the trousers. This mode of wearing the shirt, however, I would not criticise; it is charmingly naive, and rather sensible when one becomes accustomed to it. The women wear a similar square robe of bright cotton, or better material, bound around immediately below the arms, leaving the shoulders bare, and falling to their feet. But among them are many, both men and women, who wear a smaller cloth, bound around the waist and falling to the knees, with nothing on the upper body. Individuals have different costumes but these are the types; and the types are so established that anything eccentric or much out of style would occasion a smile. People of the bush sometimes straggle into the service so absurdly dressed that the gravity of the entire congregation is upset. It was so one Sunday when the following incident occurred.

While I had fever at Efulen, being obliged to change clothing frequently, I discarded pajamas for nightshirts. They were long ones that reached to my feet. These when taken off were usually hung near the fire to dry, where the smoke stained and discoloured them. When I was well I discarded them. Mr. Kerr, for some reason, presented one to a Bulu man. Soon afterwards the man visited the coast and of course took this wonderful garment with him. What is the use of having fine clothes if one is not to show them off? The Bulu man, looking very grand in my stained nightshirt, attended the service in the Batanga Church, came late, of course, and walked up the long aisle to a front seat, while the large congregation made an agonizing effort to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” But there were a number of missionaries present and they had heard me speak of those garments and their extreme discolouration by the smoke; and when they saw the Bulu enter they immediately recognized the garment.

Some of the Batanga people had begun to wear shoes, though there is no need of them and they look better without them. They have a preference for heavy shoes that will make a noise as they walk up the aisle, otherwise people might not know that they had them. But above all, they must have shoes with “squeaking” soles,—or, as the natives say, shoes that “talk”; and the first question a native asks when he would buy a pair of shoes is: “Do they talk proper loud?” They wear black shoe-strings when they cannot get pink or white. Some of them are so uncomfortable that they remove their shoes during the service.

The collection at the Batanga service was gathered only occasionally and was unique in quality and quantity—chickens, bananas, cassava, sweet potatoes, dried fish, pieces of cloth, shirts, hats, knives, boards, etc.

But I had occasion frequently to review the records of the session of the church, and of realizing the undercurrents of the lives of those people; and there I found nothing amusing. It was a sad, sad story of pathos and dire tragedy. There were confessions of weak failure; but there were other confessions of defeat only after long and brave fighting against temptations which those in Christian lands cannot conceive and which I cannot relate. There were stories of domestic sorrow. A Christian man tells the session that he did not partake of the communion because his heart was full of bitterness against his heathen wife for her unfaithfulness and immorality. A Christian woman declares that she refused to marry a man who had other wives. She was tied hands and feet and carried to his house. Another woman tells the wrongs she endured from a heathen husband. A broken-hearted father tells that he had not lately attended the services because the death of his only son had filled him with doubt of God’s goodness. A widowed mother also confesses doubt because God had taken away her only son. These are the weak Christians who have been called before the session; and these are the men and women at whose weaknesses travellers and other critics would laugh and point the finger of scorn, and because of them condemn the entire congregation of those who profess to be Christians. The majority of white men in Africa judge the native Christians without mercy, and they judge the whole native church by its weakest member. At Las Palmas, on Grand Canary Island, I tasted a fresh fig for the first time in my life and pronounced it “disgusting,” whereupon a native Spaniard, a judge of figs, looking at me, said: “O, sir, you are eating a bad one!” He was right. I was eating a bad fig and judging the whole species by that one. It is thus that many white men judge the native Christians of Africa.

Prominent in the Batanga Church, and always present at the service, was a woman, Bekalida, noted in her tribe for her good looks, but in these latter years smitten with a disease that had horribly disfigured her, and had eaten away her entire nose. When this calamity befell her she was so overwhelmed with grief and shame that for a long time she could not bear to be seen in public. But at last, with her face covered, she appeared in the little prayer-meeting of women conducted by her great friend, Miss Nassau, and there, in pathetic and eloquent words, she poured out her heart while they wept, and told them how that she had been vain and proud until the Lord in His love had smitten her; how that during the long weeks of her affliction faith forsook her. Her heart was hard and rebellious and she felt that she could not bear her shame; but she yearned for that comfort that only God could give; she came to Jesus again in penitence and He received her and her heart was filled with the peace of God; for it was better to be disfigured than to be vain and proud.

In that same congregation there was one Mbula, who afterwards became a minister; a young man of simple manners and godly life. Growing up in the midst of African degradation, he was yet pure, strong and manly. He developed unusual gifts as a preacher, simplicity and force, fluency of speech and a charming grace of manner that many white ministers might envy. There was another young man, Eduma, who also became a minister and is to-day an influential leader among those who are striving to live in a higher and better way than they have hitherto known. Already from that congregation missionaries have gone to the Bulu, whom they formerly despised. At least one of those missionaries, Ndenga, has lived a life, and done a work, of faith and devotion that is fitted to surprise and to convince all those who have seriously doubted whether the African is capable of a high ideal and of patient performance.

Towards the end of our first year among the Bulu it was very plain that a change had taken place in our relations to them. They had become convinced that our persons were not inviolable as they had first thought and that we had no fetishes to serve us as a potent protection; while, on the other hand, though we had steadily gained their regard, it might be doubted whether their friendship was yet sufficient for our security. If there is ever any danger of violence it is in this period of transition. One or two incidents will illustrate the change of feeling.

In a certain town which Dr. Good and I once visited, much farther in the interior and where no white man had ever been before, a young Bulu man came to us at the close of the service and addressing us in English said: “I sabey English mouf.” Imagine our surprise! He gave us some account of himself.