Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

At the examination at the beginning of the year, I had picked out forty of the most advanced lads from the various schools in the district, got them freed from government service, and brought to Fìhàonana to be prepared for the entrance examination of the Normal school. Fourteen of these passed. At the spring examination I picked out other fourteen for preparation, so that I had sixty lads under training to be teachers, forty at Fìhàonana, and twenty at the Normal school.

THE MISSION HOSPITAL.

MISS BYAM, THE MATRON.

A GROUP OF NURSES.

Our station school at Fìhàonana had kept up well during the year. Till June we had a daily attendance of from two hundred to two hundred and twenty, exclusive of the forty lads under special preparation; but the stupid excitement on the subject of slavery led to many of the slave children being removed, so that the school fell for a time to one hundred and eighty. We soon got it up to former numbers, however, by an influx of new scholars. Our school cost us £1 17s. 0d., equivalent to £9 5s. 0d., a month, which was a large sum for even a station school; but it was the largest station school in the island then. By the examination returns we found that we had 80 who could read, 67 from the Gospels; 96 had slates, 65 could write on them, and 57 could do some arithmetic, while two years before there was only a school of 30, not 20 of whom could read, or write, or had Bibles, Testaments, or slates; so that considerable progress had been made, an earnest of what was afterwards to be. The false reports set in circulation by the old heathen party, that there was to be no more praying allowed, affected the sale of books very much; still, we sold 300 Testaments, 50 Bibles, 600 catechisms, 1,000 school slates, and many hundred lesson-books, hymn-books, and arithmetics, &c., besides 300 Good Words monthly.

I was very deeply disappointed with the reception that my two trained nurses met with for some months after their return from the hospital at the capital. No one would have them, because ‘they followed the white people’s mode of treatment’; and when some cases turned out badly under the insane old heathen methods, and our nurses were sent for I declined to let them go. This brought a good many to their senses. Unless our nurses were called in at first, they were not permitted to attend. This brought the more sensible to see things in a proper light. The tide soon turned in the nurses’ favour, and their services were appreciated, paid for, and greatly in request. The old heathen ideas as to medicine, nursing, and general treatment of the sick rapidly died out in the neighbourhood, while ours as rapidly gained ground.

With the exception of superintending the girls’ school and taking the sewing-classes for two hours a week, my wife had neither time nor strength for doing more that year; but her labours in that direction were much appreciated, and there was always a larger attendance at school on the days of the sewing-class. We had a very handsome subscription to the building fund of the new church from the sale of the work of the girls at the sewing-classes.

That year marked, very decidedly, the rapid passing away of old things, external and internal. Old heathen ways of doing and looking at things changed. The leaven had been put into the meal, and was rapidly working its way to the surface, affecting everything and everybody, and all the ways and walks of life.

The damp floor of our new church, and the day-school being taught in it, soon destroyed the fine set of mats prepared by the women for the opening services. They had rotted away and were soon in shreds. As the women could not be expected to provide new mats every few months, or the congregation to buy them, something had to be done, and I was greatly exercised in mind to know what to do to get a dry floor. I could not lay down a wooden floor, that would have cost £100. As I had no £100, and was weary of begging, I had to set my wits to work to find out how a dry floor could be secured. After some time I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to macadamize it.