THE BLACK APOSTLE OF THE LONELY LAKE
_Shomolekae_
In the garden in Africa where, you remember, David Livingstone
plighted troth with Mary Moffat, as they stood under an almond tree,
there lived years ago a chocolate-skinned, curly-haired boy. His name
was Shomolekae.[56]
His work was to go among the fruit trees, when the peaches and
apricots were growing and to shout and make a noise to scare away the
birds. If he had not done this they would have eaten up all the fruit.
This boy was born in Africa over seventy-five years ago, when Victoria
was a young queen.
In the same garden was a grown-up gardener, also an African, with a
dark face and crisp, curly hair. The grown-up gardener one day stole
some of the fruit off the trees, and he went to the little boy,
Shomolekae, and offered him some apricots.
Now, Shomolekae had learned to love the missionary, Mr. Mackenzie,
who had come to live in the house at Kuruman. He knew that it was very
wrong of the gardener to steal the fruit and throw the blame on the
birds. So he said that he would not touch the fruit. He went to an old
black friend of his named Paul and said to him:
"The gardener has stolen the apples and plums and has asked me to eat
them. He has robbed Mr. Mackenzie. I do not know what to do."
And old Paul went and told John Mackenzie, who took notice of the boy
Shomolekae and learned to trust him.
Many months passed by; and two years later John Mackenzie was going
to a place further north in Africa than Kuruman. The name of this town
was Shoshong, where Mackenzie would live and teach the people about
Jesus Christ. So he went to the father of Shomolekae, whose name was
Sebolai.
"Sebolai," said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Shomolekae,
with me to Shoshong."
Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live with
you, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught his
reading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things."
To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boy
should read.
So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid much
shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of
wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from
Kuruman northward to Shoshong.
Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our last
story, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Shomolekae,
the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the son
of the chief, worshipped in the same little church together. It was
not such a church as you go to in our country--but just a little place
made of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun. There were holes
instead of windows, and there was no door in the open doorway; and on
the top of the little building was a roof of rough, reedy grass.
These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama,
seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on
horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and
beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck.
For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, and
serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.
Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at
the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to
buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with
which to build a better church at Shoshong.
When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was
great excitement in the tribe. Hammers and saws, screw-drivers and
chisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helpers
laid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong church
with windows and a door--a place in which the people went to worship
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away
by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the
garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from
the fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and
oxen.
This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses
is in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteen
oxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of the
wagon.
There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would drag
through the deep sand, or bump over great boulders of rock, or sink
into wet places by the river. But at such times one of the natives
always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that
was fastened to their horns.
So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to
manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight
line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which
were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which
in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging
at one another with their horns.
Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to
eat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frighten
them away or actually shoot them.
So you see Shomolekae was very clever, and was full of good courage.
While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said:
"John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who can
drive his wagon well for him."
The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon to
Shoshong, where John Mackenzie lived.
"Let me go with you," said Shomolekae.
So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after day
northward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was a
boy.
So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong.
At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe at
Shoshong--left Khama and all his people--and travelled southward to
build at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train young
black men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekae
himself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie. He set to work with his own
hands, and he helped to make and lay bricks, to put in the doors and
windows, and to place the roof on the walls, until at last the little
school was built.
And when it was actually built Shomolekae himself went to be a student
there, and Mackenzie began to train him to be a preacher and a teacher
to his own people.
For three years Shomolekae worked hard in the college, learning more
and more about Jesus Christ, preparing himself to go among his own
people to tell them about Him.
At last the time came when he was ready to go; and he started out, and
travelled long, long miles through sandy places, and then by a
river, until at last he reached a town of little thatched huts called
Pitsani, which means "The Town of the Little Hyena."
In that town he gathered the men and women and the boys and girls
together and taught them the things that he knew.
While Shomolekae was at Pitsani there came into that part of Africa a
new missionary, whose name was Mr. Wookey.
It was decided that Mr. Wookey should go a long, long journey and
settle down by the shores of Lake Ngami, which, you remember, David
Livingstone had discovered long years before.
Shomolekae wished to go out with Mr. Wookey into this country and to
help. So he took the wagon and yoked the oxen to it, loaded it up with
food and all the things needed for cooking as they travelled along,
and drove the oxen dragging the wagon over many hundreds of miles of
country in which leopards barked and lions roared, until at last they
came to the land near Lake Ngami.
When they came into this land, and found a place in which to settle
down, clever Shomolekae mixed earth into mud just as boys and girls
do in order to make mud-pies, but he made the mud into the shape of
bricks, and then placed the bricks of mud out into the sun to dry.
The sunshine was very, very hot indeed--so hot that the bricks became
hard and dry and strong. Day after day Shomolekae worked until he had
made a big heap of bricks. With these he built a little house for Mr.
Wookey to live in. But these sun-dried bricks soon spoil if they get
wet, so he had to build a verandah to keep the rain from the walls.
When the house was built and Mr. Wookey was settled in it, they
travelled still further up the river to learn what people were living
there.
After a while it was decided that Shomolekae should go and live in a
small village by the river, and there again begin his work of telling
the men and women of Jesus Christ, and teaching the boys and girls to
read.
In his satchel, which was made of odd bits of calico print of
different patterns, Shomolekae had a hymn-book with music. The
hymn-book was written in the language of the people--the Sechuana
language--and Shomolekae taught them from the book to sing hymns. The
music was the sol-fa notation.
This is one of the hymns:
1. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,
Leha ke le mo dibin;
A re yalo mo kwalon,
A re yalo mo pedun.
E, Yesu oa me,
E, Yesu oa me,
E, Yesu oa me,
Oa me, mo loraton.
2. "Yesu oa me oa nthata,
O ntehetse molato;
O mpusitse timelon,
O ntlhapisa mo pedun.
"E, Yesu oa me," etc.
This is what these words mean in English. I expect you know them very
well.
1. "Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.
"Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me--
The Bible tells me so.
2. "Jesus loves me, He who died
Heaven's gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.
"Yes, Jesus loves me," etc.
But, you see, the missionary had to alter the words sometimes so as to
make the Sechuana lines come right for the music; and the second verse
really means:
"My Jesus loves me;
He has paid my debt;
He has brought me back from where I strayed;
He has washed my heart.
Yes, my Jesus, Yes, my Jesus.
Yes, my Jesus. Mine in love."
They would learn the words off by heart because there was only the
one hymn-book, and they would sing them together, Shomolekae's voice
leading.
They learned them so well that sometimes when the mothers were out
hoeing in the fields, or the little boys were paddling in their canoes
and fishing in the marshy waters, you would hear them singing the
hymns that they learned in Shomolekae's little school hut.
Then on Sunday they would have Sunday-school, and when that was over
Shomolekae would gather the chocolate-faced men and women and boys and
girls together--all who would come--and he would teach them to kneel
down and pray to the one God, Who is our Father, and they would sing
the hymns that they had learned, and then he would speak to them a
simple little address, telling them of the Lord Jesus.
But Shomolekae desired always to go further and further, even though
it was dangerous and difficult. So he got a canoe and launched it
in the river by the village and paddled further and further up the
stream, under the overhanging trees, and sometimes across the deep
pools in which the big and fierce hippopotami and crocodiles lived.
He paddled up the River Okanvango, though many times he was in danger
of his life. The river was not like rivers in our own country, deep
and with strong banks; it was often filled all over with reeds, and
as shallow as a swamp, and poor Shomolekae had to push his way
with difficulty through these reeds. Always at night the poisonous
mosquitoes came buzzing and humming around him. The evil-tempered
hippopotamus would suddenly come up from the bottom of the river with
his wicked beady eyes, and great cavernous mouth, with its enormous
teeth, yawning at Shomolekae as though he quite meant to swallow him
whole.
On the banks at night the lions would roar, and then the hyenas would
howl; but Shomolekae's brave heart held on, and he pushed on up the
river to preach and teach the people in the villages near the river.
So through many years, with high courage and simple faith, Shomolekae
worked.
A good many boys and girls in England before they are ten years old
own many more books than Shomolekae ever had and have read more than
he. They also have better homes than he, for he pushed on from one
mud hut to another along the rivers and lakes, and all the possessions
that he had in the world could be put into the bottom of his canoe.
But our Heavenly Father, Who loves you and me, went with him every
step of the way. When Shomolekae taught the boys and girls to sing
hymns in praise of Jesus, even in a little mud hut, He was there, just
as He is in the most beautiful church when we worship Him. Now God has
taken Shomolekae across the last river to be with Himself.
Shomolekae was a negro with dark skin and curly hair. We are white
children with fair faces and light hair. But God is his Father as well
as ours and loves us all alike and wishes to gather us together round
Him--loving Him and one another.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 56: Pronounce Shoh-moh-leh-kei.]