THE AFRICAN IN SICKNESS
When the children of Africa are well and strong, their lives are
carelessly happy, so long as they are not hungry. When they are ill,
all the happiness departs, and they become very miserable. You may have
thought that because black children can eat almost anything that they
are never ill. But that is not so. They suffer, I believe, a good deal
more than white children do. For simple troubles they get no treatment
at all. They are just ill, they say, and lie on their mats near the
fire or sit huddled up over it until they are better. These little
complaints are mostly all of the stomachache kind, caused by reckless
eating of anything the children can pick up. I have seen black children
eat fruit that was quite green and hard--such as would kill little
whites--and still live. And when you try to explain that these things
can hurt they just smile to themselves and go on swallowing them, for
they don’t believe you. Headaches are treated by binding the head
round the temples tightly with a piece of string. Sometimes, if the
headache is very painful, the sufferer is bled. Little cuts are made on
the throbbing temples with a sharp knife and the blood allowed to flow.
It is the mothers who are the doctors and nurses of the children. Very
often the sick child is attended by his grandmother. These old ladies
are supposed to know a great deal about medicine; and they do know many
plants and roots that are useful in simple illnesses. For mumps, which
many black children call “masigwidi,” no medicine is given. The mothers
tell the children to go to the mortar, put their heads in and call
“Mooo!” I don’t know whether this simple remedy is a certain cure or
not.
The following method of getting rid of the disease is considered to be
very effective. “The person sick with ‘masigwidi’ goes in the evening
to the house of another person and claps his hands in salutation. When
the inmates reply the owner of the house takes mumps, and the former
sick one runs off cured.”
When a child is seriously ill the doctor is called in, as is the case
with white children. The disease has gone beyond the skill of the
mothers and grandmothers, so better advice must be got. The doctor,
when he comes, is first of all paid a fee. A few fowls are caught and
handed over to him. Then he begins to treat the sufferer. He keeps his
medicine in horns, not having any bottles. And in these horns are many
weird mixtures. Like the grandmothers’, most of his medicine is made
from plants and roots, yet it is wonderful how well they get on with
these simple things. When the patient recovers, another fee is charged
by the doctor. But if the child dies, unless if be from some well-known
disease like smallpox, death may be attributed to witchcraft. Someone
has used bad magic against the patient and nothing could save him.
In the presence of serious trouble, however, these doctors are very
helpless, and when accidents have happened and bones are broken, and
internal injuries are inflicted, the sufferers are beyond their aid.
Here then is the opportunity for the medical missionary from the home
land. He is able again and again to help the people when they are most
helpless. Thus he gains their confidence, and a way to their hearts for
the Gospel of Christ. His work is a daily putting into practice of the
teaching of Our Saviour, and the lesson learned from it is not lost on
the African.
African children suffer a great deal from ulcers, especially on their
legs. These are painful sores that break out on them, and if neglected,
as they are, alas! too often, there is grave danger to the limb. Sores
on the toes are common. You may see in almost any village, children
running about with some of their toes half eaten away. These sores are
caused by an insect--the penetrating flea or jigger which bores its
way under the skin and seeks in the warm flesh a cosy place to bring
forth its young. It generally selects a place under the toe nail as
most suitable. When it enters first, the jigger is very small. But in a
few days it grows big and may become the size of a small pea. If these
pests are not promptly removed, sores break out on the toes and the
toes crumble away. Now little children are unable to take them out, and
if their mothers neglect to do so, the children lose their toes. I have
often seen boys armed with stout thorns picking the jiggers out of
one another’s feet. The process I know, from experience, is sometimes
painful, for the toe under the nail is very tender, yet the black
children seldom wince when the jiggers are being taken out. They are
brave little things in the presence of physical pain, but they really
do not feel so keenly as you children do. Their feelings are a good
deal blunter than yours, and so they do not dread pain as much as you
do, for they suffer less.
There are some diseases found among African children that are not found
among white children. Of these leprosy, the most dreadful, used long
ago to afflict white children too. It is the terrible disease from
which our tender-hearted Saviour freed some poor sufferers when He was
on earth. Alas! one comes across it now and again among the black races
of Africa.
I remember once meeting a leper. He was a bright lad and was attending
a class for Bible instruction. Some of the joints of his fingers were
gone at the time I saw him, but he had been a leper for some years
then. He told me that his father had been a leper, and that he himself
began to suffer from leprosy when he was a boy of some twelve years of
age. The beginning was like this. One morning he awoke and felt his
hands and arms sore as if they had been burned in spots here and there
during the night. So he blamed the other boys who slept in the hut for
playing tricks on him with a burning stick. But they all denied it. It
was the beginning of the fatal disease.
The Africans have no treatment for the leper. He simply lives his life
in the village so long as he looks after himself or can get anyone
to care for him. But when his disease has gone on year after year,
and he is no longer able to walk or do anything for himself, or has
no friend to care for him, the people used to have, and still have in
many places, a savage way of dealing with him. Back from the village
a bit in the bush a little hut was built, and one day the leper was
carried out, taken to the hut, shut into it with a supply of food, and
left to his fate. Either he perished from hunger or was devoured by a
wild beast, or was burned to death by a bush-fire. The natives firmly
believe that such lepers are transformed into wild animals.
I once heard how a poor sufferer was otherwise dealt with. He had
been ill for years with an ulcer on one of his legs. The sore had
been neglected at first and then it got too bad for treatment. But as
native doctors cannot cut off limbs as white doctors can, the poor
fellow could now do nothing but lie about his village, and depend on
his friends to help him. As he got worse and worse, and less able to
help himself, his friends became fewer and fewer. At last he became
such a source of trouble to the people that the men decided to put an
end to it. Accordingly they went up the hillside near and dug a grave
with a small niche to one side at the bottom. Then they returned to
the village and carried off the helpless sufferer. He guessed at their
intention and piteously implored them to desist. “Where are you going
with me?” he said. “Do not leave me alone on the cold hillside.” But
they were deaf to his appeals. When they reached the grave they quickly
lowered the miserable wretch down, placed him in the niche at the side,
shut him in with a mat, drove in a few stakes, filled up the grave,
and left him.
Not long ago I passed through a village where some years ago I had made
the acquaintance of the head man. He was then a hale and hearty old
fellow, fond of his joke and his snuff-box. But now what a change. I
found his people mostly gone and he himself but the wreck of what he
had been. Everything round about had a neglected look. Some disease or
other had laid him low and friends had gone. I found him sitting on a
mat close to a fire. His poor skeleton legs were firmly bound at knees
and ankles with cords made of bark. He had tried many doctors, he said,
and had paid for much medicine, and now he had nothing to do but sit
and wait for the end. He was too old to visit a white doctor; he was
accustomed to the medicine of his own people and would not try that of
strangers.
There is a great deal of suffering in African villages silently and
patiently borne; and the white doctor can do a great deal to alleviate
it. I can assure you children that your pennies put into the missionary
box to help to support hospitals in heathen lands are not given in
vain; and there is no part of missionary work that more deserves your
help. Remember what our Lord said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”