January 25, 1907.
UNDOUBTEDLY the finest houses in the Congo are those at missions. The
grade of living in these mission stations is also of the best. This has
led to strange criticism by many travelers. One of the latest to visit
the Congo State speaks with surprise, and apparently disapproval, of the
English missionaries “living like lords.”
Yet it is certain that the missionaries, if any one, should live well.
The state official and the company’s agent go to the Congo with the
expectation of staying but a single term. The English missionary goes
there with the purpose, more or less definitely fixed, of spending the
remainder of his life in his field of labor. No matter how well he is
housed or how good his food, he must meet with plenty of inconvenience
and privation. If he is to accomplish anything for those who send him,
he should be as comfortable as the circumstances will allow. More than
that, the English missionary regularly takes with him his wife, and any
white woman is entitled to the best that can be had; it is a poor return
for what she must necessarily undergo.
There was, of course, mission work in the kingdom of Congo more than 400
years ago. It had an interesting history, it had its periods of
brilliant promise, and apparent great achievement. The work was spent,
its effect had almost disappeared, when recent explorations reintroduced
the Congo to the world. Stanley’s expedition aroused the interest of the
whole world.
The missionaries were prompt to see the importance of the new field open
for their labors. In 1878 three important events in mission history took
place. In February of that year Henry Craven of the Livingstone Inland
Mission reached Banana; in the same month, the Catholic church decreed
the establishment of the Catholic mission of Central Africa, with what
is practically the Congo State as its field of operations. In the same
year Bentley, Comber, Crudington, and Hartland, representatives of the
Baptist Missionary Society, made a settlement at San Salvador, a little
south of the Congo River, which became the center from which extended
the most widely developed and influential mission work of all the
country.
Since that time the representatives of many other missions have
undertaken work within the Congo State—which, of course, in 1878 had
not yet been established. Some of these flourished for but a brief time;
others have continued. At present there are within the Congo limits
missionaries of at least eight different Protestant
societies—representing England, America, and Sweden—and Catholic
missionaries representing five different organizations.
By far the greatest number of the Protestant missionaries are English,
even though they may in some cases be representatives of American
boards. They naturally carry with them into their stations the English
mode of life, traditions, atmosphere. Though the currency of the Congo
Free State is reckoned in francs and centimes, they talk all business
and quote all prices in shillings and pence; in making out an account
everything is calculated in English money, and it is with a certain air
of gentle remonstrance that they will convert the total, at the request
of the debtor, into Belgian or Congo currency. Their importations all
are English; they take their afternoon tea; they look with mild but sure
superiority upon all differing methods around them. Few of them really
talk French, the official language of the country; still fewer write it
with any ease or correctness.
It would seem as if one of the first requirements of a society sending
missionaries into a country where the official language is French and
where the vast majority of the officials, with whom the missionary must
deal and come into relation, know no English, would be that every
candidate for mission work should be a competent French scholar.
Otherwise there is danger of constant misunderstanding and difficulty
between the mission and the government. No such requirement seems to be
made.
Unfortunately, there is a strained relation amounting at times to
bitterness between the state officials and the English-speaking
missionaries. This feeling is general, and there are curiously many
specific exceptions. Thus, there are certain missionaries who, by their
immediate neighbors among officials, are highly spoken of; for example,
the manner, the ingenuity in devising and planning work, the promptness
and energy, of Mr. Joseph Clark at Ikoko, are constant themes of
admiring conversation on the part of officers at the Irebu camp, and
Mrs. Clark’s dress, linguistic ability, and cookery are quoted as models
to be attained if possible.
At first I thought these officials were poking fun, but soon became
convinced that they were speaking in serious earnest, and that it was
not done for effect upon myself was evident from the minute details into
which the praisers entered. I found an almost precisely similar
condition of things at Lisala camp, near the mission of Upoto, where Mr.
Forfeitt’s wisdom and knowledge of the natives and Mrs. Forfeitt’s grace
and charm were frequently referred to. At Stanleyville, also, one heard
constant praises of Mr. Millman’s scholarship and Mr. Smith’s skill in
photography.
In all three of these stations, the officials would talk dreadfully of
British missionaries in general, but for the local missionary they
seemed to feel an actual regard. To a less degree, and tinged, of
course, with English condescension, there was frequently expressed a
feeling of reciprocal regard from the missionary’s side. While the
representative of the state on the whole was a frightful creature,
merely to be condemned, there were usually some local officers, known
personally to the missionary, who presented streaks of excellence.
While it is true that a well-built house, and as good meals as can be
prepared within the Congo, operate to keep the missionary in better
health of mind and body and morals, yet even he feels the disintegration
due to the environment. He lives a fairly normal life. The presence of a
wife and woman of culture and refinement in the household is a great
blessing. Children, of course, are sent home for education and to escape
disease. The result is there are no little ones in the mission homes,
but, apart from this serious lack, the influence is helpful and
healthful.
The missionaries, probably all of them, are abstainers. There is no
question that their refraining from wines and liquors is a physical and
mental advantage. In the nature of the case, they are constantly
subjected to moral restraints, which are lacking to the state official
and the company agent. For all these reasons the missionary stands the
country much better than any other group of white men.
A white missionary is rarely if ever the sole representative at a
station. With a definite continued work, in its nature inspiring, with
congenial companions, and the encouragement of others working in the
same cause, his lot is often a happy one. But even the missionary has
fever, dies of hæmaturia, or must hasten back to England with incipient
sleeping-sickness; he, too, becomes anæmic and nerveless; he becomes
irritable and impatient; the slightest provocation upsets him, and he
magnifies every little grievance, as do his white neighbors in other
lines of work.
On the whole, the missionary is the only white man in the country who
seriously learns the language of the natives among whom he works. He
devotes himself with eagerness to its acquisition. A newcomer in the
country, his first desire is to gain sufficient knowledge of the
language to teach and preach to the people in their own tongue. Many of
these missionaries have written extended grammars and dictionaries of
native languages, and the number of translations of portions of the
Bible and of religious teachings into these languages is large.
It is true that the mere stranger is sometimes doubtful as to the
reality and thoroughness of the missionary’s knowledge of his people’s
language. He hears the missionary give a distinct order to the native,
and, behold, the boy does the precise opposite. This has happened too
often for one to be mistaken. The missionary shrugs his shoulders and
says in explanation that the blacks are stupid or cuffs the boy for
inattention. The fact probably is that the missionary gave a different
order from what he thought. The black is really shrewd and quick to
grasp the idea which the white man is trying to convey to him.
Whether it is true that the white man often gains sufficient control of
the language to make himself completely understood by the natives or
not, it is absolutely certain that much of the reading of translations
into his own language by the native is pure fiction. At one mission
which we visited, it was the custom after breakfast for the houseboys of
the mission to come in to family prayers. Each was supplied with a
translation to be read in the morning’s exercise. The boys, seated on
the floor, read brief passages in turn. They might, through mistake,
skip a whole line or completely mispronounce a word, indicating a total
lack of understanding of the passage read, and yet it was done with the
same air of satisfaction that would accompany a task well done. My own
boy, Manoeli, used to cover whole sheets of paper with meaningless
scrawls in pencil, and with an air of wisdom, which he unquestionably
thought deceived me, he would at my request proceed to read line after
line, and even page after page, of stuff that had no meaning. And even
if I stopped him and turned him back to some earlier point, he would
begin and go on as if it really meant something. I was constantly
reminded by these boys at prayers of Manoeli’s pretended reading of fake
writing.
On the Kasai River steamer many of the Baluba boys and girls had books
from the Luebo mission. These were mostly elementary reading books.
Nothing pleased them better, especially if any one seemed to be paying
attention to what they were doing, than for a group of them to gather
about one who played the teacher. With an open book before him and a
cluster of six or eight about him, looking carefully at the syllables to
which he pointed, they would call out in unison the sounds represented.
It was done with gusto, with rhythm, almost with dancing. It seemed to
show remarkable quickness in recognizing the printed syllables.
After I had seen the thing three or four times I myself took the book in
hand and centering the attention of the group upon one syllable to which
I pointed, I would start them by pronouncing a syllable several lines
below; once started, though distinctly looking at the thing to which I
pointed, they would call out the complete list, one after another, in
proper order, but never the ones, of course, to which my finger pointed
and which they pretended to be reading. In other words, these Baluba
boys and girls knew their primer by heart and repeated it like parrots,
with no reference to the actual text. I must confess that I have little
confidence in the ability of most Congo mission boys and girls to read
understandingly the simplest of the books with which they deal.
There are different types of Protestant missions. At Leopoldville there
would probably be no mission but for the fact that it is the terminus of
the railroad and the place from which the river steamers start. The
natives directly reached by its work live for the most part on the
mission property, in quarters much like those upon the old plantations
of the South. They receive their rations weekly and are paid a monthly
wage. Early in the morning the rising bell is sounded and morning
prayers take place. Work begins and all are kept busily employed upon
the grounds and buildings. Noon hours of rest are given, and at evening
work for the day stops. There are various religious services and classes
meeting after supper on different evenings of the week. The presence of
great numbers of workmen and soldiers of the state at Leopoldville
introduces conditions not helpful to mission labor. It is necessary,
however, to have a force at hand able to help missionaries going up or
coming down the river, transporting their baggage and freight, and doing
other service constantly called for at a point of receipt and shipping
like Leopoldville.
The mission’s work is not confined, however, to the town, and teachers
are sent to neighboring villages to teach and conduct classes.