Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

I have heard of men telling of sleeping in huts in Madagascar, with scorpions crawling over them, snakes hanging from the roof hissing in their faces, and of being taken out in the morning, set up to be speared, and only waiting to hear the ‘Klick’ (which does not exist in Madagascar) as the signal for being speared! All such are but ‘travellers’ tales,’ the product of disordered livers or diseased imaginations. The scorpions were only cockroaches or rats; the snakes, long festoons of soot, such as hang from the roof of most Malagasy huts, which have no chimneys; the being taken out and set up to be speared, only a dream, probably the effect of too hearty a supper after a long exhausting day’s journey! There were discomforts and difficulties in those days; but they were hardly worth mentioning, when compared with what have to be faced in some mission fields, such as New Guinea, the Congo, and Central Africa. Hotel accommodation cannot be expected in the mission field, and those who look for it ought to remain at home.

The Quarterly Meetings grew to be sources of great strength and usefulness. They were the means of uniting all in the common work. I declined to decide cases of dispute, church discipline, or other serious business as an individual. I laid the graver matters before the Quarterly Meeting, and settled them by the vote of the majority. By means of these meetings, pastors, local preachers, deacons, and church members were trained in habits of self-reliance in dealing with the difficulties that were always cropping up in newly formed churches, as well as with general church business. We had, as a rule, good meetings, and not a little to do. I was ex officio chairman, and by the exercise of a little tact, generally got them to vote as I wanted.

We had a fine station school at Fìhàonana. The girls, one hundred and fifteen in number, were taught in the small school-house in the manse yard, to be near my wife; and the boys, one hundred and twenty-five in number—instead of twenty-five as formerly—in the church in the village. Here, as elsewhere, the great change in the number of the schools and the scholars was mainly brought about (apart from the royal proclamation with regard to education) by interesting the local authorities in the education of the children, by making them members of the village school-boards, and leading them to induce the parents to send their children to school.

I give here an illustration of the good done by Bible teaching, especially among the young. A little Malagasy girl was brought to Antanànarìvo from the north-west province of Madagascar, and placed in the Friends’ High School for Girls, at that time under the charge of Miss Helen Gilpin. Miss Gilpin made the imparting of Bible knowledge a very special feature of her teaching. The girl was quick at learning, as most Malagasy children are, and was very diligent; she made extraordinary progress in all subjects, but in no subject more than in Scripture knowledge.

The stories of the Bible threw a spell over her; she was fascinated with them as she had never been before by any stories, so she was never weary of listening to the Bible being read to her, until she could read it for herself. The story of the Flood; of Noah and his family in the ark; of Joseph and his brethren; of the wonders at the Red Sea; of the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness; of the death of Moses on the mount; of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace; of Daniel in the lions’ den—were there ever such stories as these?

Those of the New Testament were no less captivating. There was the visit of the Wise Men from the East, led by the star, seeking for the infant Saviour; the flight into Egypt; the murder of the children of Bethlehem; the calling of the Apostles; the conversions on the Day of Pentecost; the conversion of St. Paul, and his travels, &c.

Then the parables and the miracles. But most wonderful and heart-stirring of all, there was the death of the Saviour on the Cross! These filled the mind and memory of that little girl by day and her dreams by night, and were as real as anything that happened to her in her own life.

After being ten months at school, her mother came up from the west to take her home for the holidays, which lasted two months. The journey took two days to accomplish. At the end of the first day, they entered a village to spend the night there, intending to continue their journey the following morning. While the rice for supper was being boiled, they all sat (teo amòrom-pàtana) round the hearth and chatted, and the little girl and her mother were asked many questions—where they had come from, where they were going, why they had been in the capital, &c. The little girl told how she had been at school in the capital, and what she had learned there, and began relating some of the Bible stories, as samples of the knowledge she had gained.

After supper, at the request of the people, she continued to tell more of those wonderful stories, and also what she knew about the ‘New Religion,’ and its Author Jesus Christ (Ny Zànak’ Andrìamànitra Andrìanànahàry, ‘the Son of God the Creator’). It was very late before they lay down on their mats to sleep, and hence it was late before the little girl and her mother rose the following morning.

They at once prepared to continue their journey home. To their astonishment, however, the people would not hear of this; they said they wanted to hear more of those delightful stories, and also more about the book from which they were taken, and the ‘New Religion.’ They advised the girl and her mother to rest for the day, and promised to provide food and lodging free, if they would remain another night with them. This they did, and the evening and up to midnight was spent as the previous one had been. A number of the neighbours, who had heard about the wonderful stories, came in to hear for themselves, and they also were enthralled by what the little girl told of the ‘New Religion’ and by the hymns she sang. On the following morning, before the girl and her mother could start on their journey home, they were waited upon by a deputation of the villagers to ask them to stay another night, that they might hear still more of the wonderful tales. They said they would provide rice and ‘laoka’ (kitchie) for them, give them a larger and cleaner hut in which to stay, and into which the people could come together in greater numbers to listen. Once more they consented to remain another night.