Letters and Articles 33–46

My dear Miss Crawford.

Miss Adam has been asking me to write a report to you, & has asked so earnestly that I cant refuse to try. Though the very word ’Report’ dries up any thing at once, & makes me stand quite foolishly wondering how it can be done. I’m afraid my mind is not a trained or methodical machine. It only works as it chooses, & then I have not an elaborate system or method of work. It is just any & every thing as it comes. Of course the school & church services are the same always, but they don’t fill up the time, & the other things are not classifyable.

You know that early last year I got an over strain & had to go under Dr’s orders, so more or less, I had to do things in a silly soft sort of way, which would not let one feel satisfied. The service in church seemed unreal almost, when sitting on a table all the time, & school work never seemed thorough when done on a sofa. But my Use people are very kind, & all meetings except the evening public worship meeting, were brought to my verandah, so that I had no walking. Even our Coronation service was held at the House. Then too, they always carried me to, & from Church. Surely never had worker kinder people than mine. The winds last Tornado season were very high, & we are situated high up, & get the full sweep of it since the Government Road took away the high trees. So the damage done in our village & Church & my house, was very considerable, & the people insisted on making almost a new house instead of patching up. It was then I got that strain, but the house is so well done that I do not grudge it. When the Dr would allow me to come up here, It was November, very nearly a year from when I had left & things had gone slack a bit, & there was a decided set back in the school, but I myself was so thankful to be able to grip on again, & the lads were so grateful for our coming, that things soon righted themselves, & I think I have never had boys work better, or to better purpose in the school, nor have I ever been so surprised at the progress made in General Scriptural Knowledge, & in steadiness of purpose than among the lads & men, Taught as they have mostly been by any & every body who knew as little as them selves, & reading so imperfectly, as they did, I sometimes wondered if pure ignorance was not less dangerous & harmful, than the silly things they talked. Yet God kept them together, & since I came up, I should say a score of them can read well, & intelligibly, & can now be trusted to take the lessons, & also to teach in the Sabbath School. They knew nothing at all about the Old Testament, except the little I gave them during the preceeding stay, when we went through Genesis, but they did not seem to value the Copy of the Old Testament I left with them. Now it is all very different, & there is an effort being made by each & all to become the possessors of a “Big Bible”, & so the whole Sabbath school have learned to go over in order, the names of the Books & have thus got a general idea of the plan of the Old Testament, & its general divisions. The Services have widened out immensely in interest, for them & for me. Even the schoolboys take a pride in their new found knowledge, & the Readers in “The Pilgrims Progress” go over every text quoted by Bunyan, as glibly as a White teacher could. As a rule the Sabbath school comprises the whole company of the Xtian(Note 1) section. It is always well attended & only mothers with babies & elderly men come after the Church bell at the close. The Church is always quite full before school is over. One section of boys, about 60 of them, who cant read in the Bible, have been going thoroughly through the Catechisms, & they get Marks, & a small Prize to the 2 best on the 1st Sabbath of the month. A crowded Class of boys & lads who can read the New Testament have been committing John 14 to memory & for the last 3 months they too have been getting a Prize & Marks for memorizing. A girls & young womens class taught by Alice have been learning Psalm 103, & a Hymn from the Hymn Book in use at service. While the old & staid men learn from the Old Testament. They have learned Isaiah 53rd & etc. etc. & the tinies(Note 2) get a Hymn. The Native never gets a service or a chance to speak, but he can yarn & yarn for as long as any one will listen. The rest is very generally composed of singing(?)(Note 3). The wildest stretch of imagination can hardly call it harmony! & any thing that will lessen this outpour of the crudest & most wonderful Christian (rhetoric)(Note 4) this is wrongly spelt, you know what I mean! seems to me a boon & discipline. Since they have begun to learn how very little they know, there have not been the forwardness to take the “Chair” & the “Prayers” that there used to be. Instead there have been many questions on many subjects, & quiet knowing looks at one another when answers were received. Names of Catechumens(Note 5) came in steadily, the greater number with the pathetic announcement that they saw no hope of full membership in view, as the wives betrothed to them by their parents, were either not willing to become Christians & go into Christian Marriage, or their parents were not favourable to their giving up girls thus betrothed to them, telling them they must stick to their bargain, church or no church. However things are bit by bit coming round, & several young girls are willing, & several wives are willing to be one wife in Christian marriage, where a number are already in the Yard. Some parents are very obstinate, so are some husbands where wives wish to leave the Harem & be Baptised & in these cases the young people can do nothing as they cannot pay back the dowry, so must hold to the wife, or to the husband, in the choosing of whom they had no share. The dowry is much higher here than lower down river. but parents *must* come round as the years march with their progresses, & God is for them, so that is the great point. I have found their fathers fighting shy of me, because they have not the courage to say to me that they will not do God’s way, but some of them laugh & say, wait a little Ma, till the work time is over, & we have proved the lads & women & we shall see. They are afraid lest this upset the very roots of their life, by allowing the old ground work of all their existence to be taken away. And there are dangers too, that unworthy women & men may make Church membership a mere excuse for breaking Home ties & giving licence to vice. So I am not in a hurry to give into the lads, or to blame the Chiefs & parents, even if it keep the Communion Roll low in numbers. For this very reason of conserving Home relations, as they know them, I have met girls privately, & do not call their names at class. I am pleased to see always 3 or 4 girls & women at the Catechumen Class, & I find that one of them at least belongs to the Chief who is 2nd in place in the town, Also that he has given his consent to the choice of a young daughter, who is wife to one of the nicest lads, & who has a wee baby, & who is anxious to stay & enter the Church, with him as his Xtian wife. The Head Chief has given a daughter to a husband also on the same terms, provided he gives the sacrificial cow on her marriage day, & pays up his dowry of nearly £20. The cow will be pushed out of the way, sure, if I am here in the body, & the lassie herself seems to be in real earnest. Her 2 brothers are never absent from school & church, & can read & write fairly well. Indeed each of the four head Chiefs are well represented at Church & school by their children. One of the big heart breaks is, that *not* *a* *single* *girl* has yet come to school. Not even a baby! It will be absolutely necessary to make a school apart, for them, & it is also certain that I cannot take on two schools, & the lads *must* be kept on so that they may supply their own town, & the villages round. There are 5 or 6 boys, who are far on, Reading almost perfectly, & in English they have got over the beginnings. Two of them are in the 2nd English book, & read & translate & write better far than any who have ever taught them, but they are too young to take schools, except here at home, for the bairns are as heathen, & undisciplined, & wild as it is possible to conceive, & they need a strong hand. But after the work season is over, & the big lads get time to go in for 3 months hard work, a score of them may be available. I should like the Reader in Church to be as perfect as possible, as the half taught are the down drag & the big danger of these infant Congregations, & I shall insist on the Reading of Gods Word, with miles less of exhortation than they are accustomed to from the native itinerant. Indeed, I have already told them that whether I am absent or not, the Native Itinerant ceases to enter our pulpit. The Theology is Wonderful! The Horizons are wide beyond the ken of such laymen as myself, & the ranting & noise are not conducive to reverence or dignity or the building up of Xtian man - or womanhood. So that the Congregation, as that of Use will be put into the hands of the most Capable, & with rules for the carrying on of the services in the way to which they have become habituated. We had a visit last month from the Chief of our Akani Obio Town, who expected to see a bush congregation. When he saw every person turning up the Hymns & places in Old & New Testaments, & taking the dignified & intelligent part in the services that they take in the Town Churches, He was surprised beyond measure, & said he had no idea that the congregation had progressed like this. I told the Catechumens at our last meeting, that I thought it was time our “Public Worship” in the evenings in the Church ceased, & every household began “ Family Worship” as there were few Xtians now who could not read. The first stages have to begin thus, but tho’ in the bustle of the family life in the morning, it may be well to keep on the Early Worship till the lads have control in their homes, & it is a witness to the town of the claims of God on us. A Family Circle may be a means of deepening the life of the disciples, & also of influencing the children. Over one 3rd of the Church seats are as a rule filled with girls & women on Sabbath morning. The afternoon is thinner, during this work season. As the water carrying makes a big demand on them, & the place swarms with babies. Except Aro Chuku, I never saw a place swarm with children like this place, & the bairns need heaps of water in this awful heat & drought. I cant say any thing. Again & again the women of the town, who do not make any pretence of caring for the Church, have given us proof of their care for us. Every section of the town sends now & then a deputation with food, & salt & pepper & oil, lest the children be hungry. Every now & then, they are there of their own accord clearing our roads & grounds, before we are out in the morning, & I have not yet had a woman patient in the Dispensary who has not brought oil & pepper & firewood & food to us. The smile is always ready, & all that we need, is the Xtian lady to go in & band them into a simple informal meeting at such hours as they have a little leisure, & to move in & out of their homes taking an interest in their homely tasks, & speaking Word in Season. I feel overwhelmed at the privilege of being with them once more, but alas! The school, the dispensary & the services, with my own home duties leaves me not a vestige of strength for going about among them.

The Chiefs do not profess to be Xtians, nor do they pretend more than their good will & help in the work of the Gospel. But they too watch when the market falls on Sabbath, that the children are not allowed to be hungry, & my wish in any thing is met as soon as expressed. They are undoubtedly changed. One who knew them - say 2 years ago, would hardly beleive them to be the same men. Even in looks they are as men clothed & in their right mind. Our head man is invariably “Tight”(Note 6) as are most of the elderly males before market day is half done, but there is no brawling, & the town is usually cleared of strangers & stragglers & women by *early* Afternoon. Everything is quiet & decorous, & the town is cleaner & trees cut down & fences mended, & the young men who congregate by the score & the score in the afternoons in the Towns Place, are clothed & quiet & altogether changed. So the Gospel wins its *indirect* Triumphs, & *shall* win till it Conquers.

A new & bigger & airier church in a quieter & better site was to have been built last year. The work was divided to the men, & the site cleared & etc, but my illness put a stop to it all, & it cannot be begun now till the planting is over. It will be a native building, but will be on a good scale for the size of the town, when we hope to get the Chiefs & elders of the town suitable seats, & thus have the means of giving them room, & place worthy of their position. We have had the first twins saved here. Fine babies but what a sulky heathen of a mother. “You can take a horse to the water, but you cant make him drink.” & this mother simply *would* *not* have the children, & after a fortnight of fighting with her night & day, the last one died from sheer starvation. I had no teats or bottles but what the other babies were using, else I might have broken my own resolution never again to take children from their mothers. It is not only bad in principle for all concerned, but I am not able physically for this now. However several persons have seen twins, & have *not* died.

The little congregation at Use has been left a longer time than ever before, but I hear from time to time & so far there is no word of defection. The school is in the hands of 2 lads, & the services in the hands of the members. We will, D.V.(Note 7) go down next week, as the Communion will be coming on in a few weeks, & I must make enquiries into things & also see & help to prepare any new candidates for Baptism.

For all I have written I don’t seem to have told you any thing of any consequence, but as I said, I don’t know how to write a Report. If you can pick out any thing that will suit you, I shall be glad, tho’ I much doubt it. I hope by another year to have a few of the villages on the list of schools & meeting places, as it is, the only place we work is Nkana where Janie has been for more than 4 months.

Now dear Miss Crawford I shall close, with every possible wish & desire for your wellbeing, & for your home, & your work. May God bless & INDWELL(Note 8) you more & more for His glory. I am ever your loving friend

Mary M Slessor

This has been done just in snippets as I could get at it. It is the 30^th now, & therefore it is rather disconnected & perhaps I have repeated myself? Our dear Miss Adam has had a sad time. Eh?

You will be a comfort to her I know.

MMS.