Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

Much preaching and teaching was done during this visit. We attended many gatherings of the pastors, local preachers, and deacons, and a great number of questions of all kinds were answered. Some of the questions put to us were of a somewhat curious nature. For example, I was asked: ‘Who was the Queen of Sheba, and where did she come from?’ ‘How was it that Melchisedec had neither father nor mother?’ ‘Who were the brethren of the Lord?’ ‘How was it that Satan was allowed to fight in heaven?’ That seemed to be a great difficulty with them, since they thought all fighting was finished here on earth, and how there could be fighting again in heaven was a great mystery to them. And then we were asked a very strange question, but one which showed more than all the others the stage in religious knowledge reached by the people at the time of our settlement among them. The question was: ‘Whether the late Mr. Pool (the Society’s architect and builder for Madagascar, whose name is pronounced by the Malagasy Powlie), and the Apostle Paul (also pronounced Powlie), who wrote the Epistles, were one and the same person!’

We found that one of the local preachers had been electrifying the district by a sermon, which consisted mainly of a dialogue purporting to have taken place in heaven between God the Father and God the Son, when the Son, prompted by love, wished to leave heaven and come amongst men to seek and to save the lost. The Father was represented as remonstrating with the Son, and warning Him that mankind were intensely wicked; that they would treat Him very badly, and finally murder Him: and the Son as replying, that He knew all that very well; but such was His love for men, that although they were so very wicked, and although He was well aware they would put Him to death, and indeed just because they were so bad, He was determined to come and save them. And consequently, in spite of His Father’s remonstrances, He left heaven, came to earth, suffered from privation and poverty, and finally was crucified by the very men He came to redeem. Nevertheless, by that same death the salvation of men had been made possible; for such was the Father’s love for the Son, that He had agreed that all who believed on Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and accepted Him as their guide and friend for the future, should be saved with an everlasting salvation.

We also found, or rather were told, of an instance in which church discipline had been exercised after a new, and rather a drastic fashion, a few weeks before our arrival in the district. The Malagasy knew of no discipline except military discipline, which they had introduced into the church, and would have employed still, had we not arrived on the scene. The special case was this: A worthless character from the capital had been going through the district teaching hymn-singing. He taught so many hymns and tunes for so many dollars. He posed as one of the aides de camp of the prime minister, and this gave him a status in the eyes of the people which he otherwise would never have had. At the same time it ensured the prompt payment of his fees. At one of the villages he met with one as worthless as himself in the person of the wife of one of the deacons, and together they eloped. When this was discovered, a church meeting was called and the husband laid his case before the meeting. He said: ‘Here is a servant of the church at large, whom you brought here. He has run away with my wife, and I think it is your duty to help me to recover her.’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘that is quite right,’ and they thereupon appointed another deacon to accompany the husband and assist him in his search for his lost wife. They found out the direction the runaways had taken, followed, and found them sitting sunning themselves on a rock overhanging the river Ikòpa. They caught the man, bound him, rolled him up in his cotton plaid, tied the ends, and flung him from the top of the rock into the river. Then taking the woman with them, they returned and reported the church business finished[28]!

Our visit to Vònizòngo in 1871 was most memorable. I then met for the first time many of the early disciples, men and women who had fought a good fight and kept the faith all through ‘the killing times,’ and who had hazarded their lives for the Gospel, and suffered the loss of their little all for their loyalty to the New Religion. Some had been sold into slavery, while others had been put in chains, and others again had to flee for safety to the forest, or other parts of the island, or, like Razàka, had to hide for years in caves, or rice-pits, or dens of the earth. It was a joy to see such noble men and women, headed by the noblest of them all, Razàka. I also met for the first time the widow and children—a son and daughter—of the martyr Ràmitràha, and the son of Àndrìampanìry and his wife, who were burned along with Ràmitràha at Fàravòhitra.

We visited the famous small-pox hospital, the cave, in which the Bible was hidden for over twenty years, and Razàka for two. We also saw the small space inside the circle of immense boulders on the hill-side, where during lulls in the persecution from ten to twenty-five of the persecuted Christians met on the Sabbath mornings for worship. It thrilled one to see these truly sacred places, and to hear what the faithful band had to tell us of the sufferings of those times of strain and trial. We were given portions of the Scriptures, even leaves of the Bible, or of the Pilgrim’s Progress, leaves of the hymn-book, tracts, portions of sermons, and catechisms, which had been kept all through the darkest days, and handed on from one to the other, and so had helped to support the faith of those suffering saints.

My friend and I had some memorable experiences during that visit to Vònizòngo. Of course, preachings, catechizings, interrogations, and deputations were abundant. Our experiences in the science of entomology were rather trying; but one of our greatest troubles was that our food was so badly cooked, and so smoked that we could hardly eat it. This was intentional on the part of the cook and his assistants, whose perquisite what food we left was; so we had to take measures to stop such practices.

We were not able to visit the Ankàzobè district, at the north end of the province, as malarial fever was raging there that season. All our porters were not vìtatàzo, i. e. fever proof, so for their sakes and our own we were advised not to go, and returned to Fìhàonana. The Malagasy have the idea that if once you have malarial fever severely and recover, you will never have so severe an attack again, and so will be vìtatàzo. I have known a porter on a journey to the coast abstain from taking quinine, although he had it at hand, and deliberately run the risk of a severe attack of fever, since if he got over it he would be vìtatàzo, and so fit to go anywhere.

There is no doubt something in this idea, as I have proved in my own person during the past twenty years; for after suffering greatly from malarial fever during the last five years of our first period of service, having been prostrated with it ten times, I have only had four mild attacks of fever since. It is necessary to state, however, that we have not lived in such a malarious district during the last twenty years as we did during the first ten. By exercising greater care, by taking quinine and a certain form of iron, and by other precautions, such as good food, wearing flannel, or lamb’s wool underclothing, &c., we have been able to keep ourselves as near normal health as possible. Once you get below par in the tropics, it usually means fever or something worse. Dr. Livingstone says that ‘living in a malarious district, the whole tone is so lowered through the blood being poisoned, that you are not only liable to all the ills that flesh is heir to; but that if you do get any of them, you have it ten times worse.’

Having settled that Fìhàonana was the right place for our work, we sought out a hut in which we could live until I built a house. We found a large mud hut, some twenty feet by twelve, in the centre of the village of Fìhàonana. Although it was far from what we would have liked in the way of a dwelling, it was the best to be had; so we took it, had it cleaned out, and the walls whitewashed. It was the ordinary mud hut of Central Madagascar, an oblong structure with mud walls, earthen floor, and a pillar in the centre for the support of the thatched roof. There was no ceiling, of course, and as the thatch was thin we suffered from the bitter east winds during the nights of the cold season. There were three small apertures in the walls, one at each side and one in the end, which served the purpose of windows, or rather wind-holes, for they let very little light into the hut. I had frames filled with glass fitted into these apertures, and this helped to keep the dust out of the hut, but did not increase the scanty supply of light.

As we were in the middle of a Malagasy village, our surroundings were not of the sweetest, especially as in those days the villages of Vònizòngo swarmed with pigs. Whenever we opened the door these creatures came into the hut. Of course I helped them out, to the astonishment of the natives, with whom the pigs were great favourites. People and porkers lived and slept in the same hut; and to my remonstrances the people replied: ‘The pigs help to keep the hut warm on the cold nights, sir.’