Moving over to the projector he cleared his throat and, in an informal conversational manner, went on:
“First of all, how did we get there? It wasn’t so easy, twenty years ago. Usually missionaries go out from our headquarters in Melopo two or three together, but that wasn’t possible in this instance. All that could be spared me was a native catechist, but he was a fine man, baptised Daniel—I’ll show you his photograph presently. Well, off we started, bound for the Kwibu district in the extreme north-east, one of the wildest parts of the borderland between Angola and the Congo. Since we wanted to take cattle with us and as the country was so rough and rocky, we had decided to use an old ox-waggon for transport instead of a truck. It was a blessing we did so, otherwise we should never have got there. I had made a few short trips around Melopo while gathering experience and learning the dialects, but this beat anything I’d ever seen. Let me give you some idea of the country we went through. It’s not the sort of country you associate with the tropics, swamps and steaming jungles and such-like, but it had a few problems of its own. Of course these photographs, and many of the others, were taken at a later date.”
In succession he showed a number of slides on the screen: deep, dried-up river beds choked with boulders, precipitous slopes of sharp-edged black rocks in tangles, of yellow scrub, thickets of thornbush so dense as to evoke a murmur from his audience.
“How on earth did you get through those, dear boy?” Archie voiced the general feeling. “Didn’t they tear you to shreds?”
“We lost a little skin.” Willie smiled. “But we averaged at least fifty yards an hour. Yet that wasn’t the worst. Just after we got through that last bit I showed you, because of my stupidity we lost our compass and wandered off the high northern tableland into the Cazar desert. It was a bad mistake—sand, deep sand, everywhere, and low scrubby bush, a waterless waste land. In the heat and blinding dust storms we ran out of water and would have fared rather badly if we hadn’t come on three Bushmen who led us to a sucking hole—a muddy pit they had dug in the sand.”
“Aren’t the Bushmen dreadful little aboriginals, with hair all over their faces?” asked Leonora, intelligently.
“These were not large, only four feet in height,” Willie answered gently. “But they were certainly not dreadful, for if they had not humanely shared their scanty supply of water, neither my companion nor I would have survived. In fact we very nearly didn’t, for presently my good catechist went down with dysentery, three of the oxen sickened and died, and I—well, by this time we were both covered with sores from tick and mosquito bites, so I got a touch of malaria. As if this wasn’t enough, the waggon chains broke and it was really a miracle that we did at last reach our destination, Kwibu, the chief village of the district and tribal headquarters of the Abatu. I have an old photograph which I took shortly after arrival.” He projected another slide on the screen. “As you see, it’s just a scattered collection of conical mud hovels roofed with palm thatch, no cultivation whatsoever, and in the background you can make out a few skeleton cattle, poor starved creatures, always covered with flies, wandering miserably around on the parched ground.
“Well, we had arrived, and were feeling pleased with ourselves, when we received a nasty shock. The chief of the Abatu wouldn’t let me enter the village. Here he is, all painted up for the occasion, and I think you’ll agree that I was not wise to press him too hard.”
“Oh dear,” Leonora thrilled with sympathy. “What a fearful old sinner.”
“Sometimes the biggest of sinners make the best of saints,” Willie smiled. “And old Tshosa hasn’t done so badly, as you’ll see. However, at that time he wasn’t too full of brotherly love, so we were obliged to up stakes and move off some distance, to higher ground above the village where there was a small clump of tacula trees and a spring. Here, first of all, we set to and built a little hut. It was hot work. I wasn’t used yet to the sweltering temperature, and the tacula wood was so tough it blunted my axe. We didn’t have any roofing material, and by now we were running very short of food supplies.”
“I was going to ask you that,” interposed Madame Ludin. “How did you live? Catering is my business and I’d be interested to know.”
“Our only food was a kind of porridge. I would boil my kettle and pour the boiling water into a bowl containing a handful of oatmeal. It sounds little enough, but it’s good solid Scotch fare and stood by us well.”
“It wouldn’t me,” exclaimed Archie. “I’m all for the liquid Scotch.”
“Anyway,” said Willie, joining in the laugh, “we had already started to make a garden and to dig ditches to carry the spring to irrigate the land. Properly watered, the grass grew amazingly quickly, we raised mealies, potatoes and Indian corn, and our remaining oxen began to thrive. All this time none of the tribe came near me; our only visitors were lions, cheetahs and an occasional rhinoceros.”
“Oh dear. Did you shoot them?” said Leonora. She was fascinated by Willie, his oddness, his tic, that marvellous sweet expression. A thought flashed through her giddy brain: if there was game, why not take Herman on safari, drop in on the Mission, like a Hemingway heroine? But he was answering her question.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “We’ve never had a gun. They came close too, but I scared them away by throwing pebbles at them.”
“Good heavens, weren’t you afraid?”
He shook his head.
“I think we didn’t fear them because we were both terribly weak and our spirits were at a low ebb, especially when the rainy season began, continuous thunderstorms followed by a plague of white ants. Daniel and I were both ill with fever. He was so weak he had to be fed with a spoon. I didn’t seem to be doing any good; it looked as though our Heavenly Father had no use for us at all. But just when I felt ready to give up, Tshosa, the chief; suddenly appeared, at the head of a long line of his best warriors, all carrying spears. It was an alarming sight and I was very frightened, for of course I thought it was all up with us. But no, he had come bearing an offering.” Willie paused with a faint smile. “Would you like to guess what it was?”
No one seemed able to advance a suggestion but they were all listening intently.
“Well,” Willie said, “it was a bowl of blood and milk, the Abatu token of friendship. So I drank this awful brew, though it was a struggle, and communications were established between us. It appeared that they had been closely watching my gardening efforts, and now they wanted me to show them how to cultivate their dried-up land. Well, we began to work their fields for them and presently, in return, got some of the tribe—mostly women, for they did all the hard labour, poor things—to build a little church of sun-dried mud bricks. This is it.” A poor little shanty with a palmetto roof and sacking over the window and door appeared on the screen. “Here I began my first services, trying to plant the seeds of the gospel in the minds of those poor savages. Then I went often to the cattle posts to try to explain Christian principles to the men, and especially to teach the children. It wasn’t easy, we had to face primitive ignorance and ingrained superstition. And there was always the danger of a sudden mass uprising incited by those who feared the word of God because it might undermine their prestige and destroy the pagan fetishism that’s the basis of many tribal customs. For instance, I had some little trouble with this fellow.” Another slide came on the screen.
“Oh, what a horrible old man,” exclaimed Leonora. “He’s worse than the chief.”