Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

AMBATONAKANGA FROM FARAVOHITRA.

ANTANANARIVO ON A FÊTE DAY.

While on furlough I first met with an agent, and then with the secretary of the Children’s Scripture Union, and undertook to begin a branch in Madagascar, and for many years we have had there 12,000 members.

I found the village schools in a poor condition; for my predecessor had had very little private help for them, almost nothing except the grants made by the Imèrina district committee for elementary education, and so had to be content with a very inferior class of teachers, as the parents could not be persuaded to pay for properly trained teachers. After the first examination of the village schools when we took over the district, the returns were so poor that I determined to make an effort to get the parents to give more in order to secure trained teachers. I knew I would have to catch them by guile, and be able to show them in a striking and impressive way how they were defrauding their children, in not doing their duty by providing properly trained teachers for them.

With this end in view I gathered seventeen village schools at one centre in the largest church in the district to give out the prizes. On the prize-giving day I took three porters with six baskets of books of various kinds with me for prizes, about the quantity I would have required for the same number of schools in Vònizòngo. The church, although an immense place, was crowded in every corner with scholars, parents, teachers, pastors, and deacons, while dozens, not to say hundreds, were at the doors and windows. When I had distributed the prizes to all who had earned them, I found, as I expected I should, that I had only disposed of the contents of two baskets, leaving four untouched.

I called the attention of the parents and all present to this, and told them that, considering the number of scholars present, if even two-thirds of them had earned prizes, as they ought to have done, and would have done in Vònizòngo, all the six baskets would have been empty. I said nothing gave me greater pleasure than to gladden the hearts of the scholars by giving them the prizes they had earned, and that I would have been delighted to have given the contents of all the six baskets to their children; but, as they had seen for themselves, they had not earned them, and therefore had not received them. ‘But why is this the case?’ I asked. ‘Because the children were stupid or had no ability or keenness? By no means,’ I said; ‘but simply because their heartless parents would not pay for proper teachers for them, and so the poor children will have to go home from the prize-giving weeping instead of rejoicing carrying their prizes with them. Look,’ I said, ‘at your children; where would you find brighter-eyed, cleverer children? If they had only had proper teachers they would all have gained prizes.’

The parents went home, followed, as I expected, by their weeping children. They immediately discharged the cheap incapable teachers, applied to me for trained ones, and for the following eighteen years I had no trouble in raising the people’s share of the salaries of the trained teachers. The superiority of the schools of the A-kànga district was noted by both deputations of the Paris Missionary Society. They remarked in particular the ability shown by the children in Bible knowledge. This was due to the number of trained teachers we had. The late Professor Kruger, after being present at one of the poorest examinations in Scripture they ever passed (as the schools had been closed for three months that year on account of the war), said that he could not get a Protestant school in all France which could approach them in Bible knowledge.

We had many visits from our old friends from Vònizòngo, who were looking forward to, and fondly anticipating the time of our return at the end of the two years, when we all expected my predecessor in the capital back from furlough. One after another came to see me, and to tell me of the good they had received from my ministrations during our nine years among them, and of the new life and hopes to which they had been lifted by religion. If they had only come and told us a little, before we left on furlough, how much they would have cheered us, and how much it would have done for us! Still we were glad to hear what they had to tell us even then. It proved that we had not been labouring in vain.

What, however, has been said of the influence of teachers and preachers at home may be affirmed with much greater force of workers in the foreign mission fields, that they ‘are of all influences the most intangible: their thoughts enter the intellectual life of men—such as it is—and shape it, and the moral and religious life of men and fertilize them, but it is as the rain fertilizes the soil, itself disappearing in the process, leaving those benefited often utterly unconscious of the blessings they received.’

After a time I was able to get village school-boards—such as we had in Vònizòngo—established in the A-kànga district, and on the whole they did very good service up to the time of the French invasion in 1895.