In the middle of the front row stands Amvama. Behind him, on his
right, is Ndong Koni. The tall young man is Robert Boardman, the
blind catechist.
]
When I left Africa I felt that I was leaving many friends behind me;
humble friends but true, and I cherish the memory of their devotion.
Some of them I loved because they were lovable, and others for the
labour and anxiety expended upon them—the sweat of the brow, and the
brain and the heart. But there were none whom I loved more, and there
are none whom I more often long to see, than Amvama and Ndong Koni.
I cannot close these sketches without some reference to another who was
an invaluable helper in the work among the Fang. He was totally blind.
He bore an English name, _Robert Boardman_, and had no African name. The
natives called him _Bobbie_. He was not a Fang but an Mpongwe, and his
mother was an American Negress. His father was educated at Baraka away
back in the early days when the missionaries were allowed to use
English, and he spoke English well. When he was a young man he came to
America. In those days Africa, to Americans, was a romance rather than a
reality. Any chief of a village or head of his own family coming here
was called a _prince_. So young Boardman (Robert’s father) passed
himself off as a prince, and probably without any intentional deception.
He married a Negress of the South, who supposed that by her marriage she
became a princess. She left family and friends all behind and went to
Africa. The disillusionment was very hard and very bitter; and at last,
inevitably, she sought relief in drink. She was evidently a woman of
superior mind, if one might judge by her children, of whom there were
five. One of these was poor Augustus Boardman, of whom I have written in
another chapter, and whom drink brought to an early grave.
Robert was the youngest child. He was a very interesting boy, and
intellectually far above the average. As a young man he lived the
dissolute life that was general among the Mpongwe of Gaboon. His
blindness was the last result of his dissipation, and was also the cure.
He never walked alone again; a little boy led him by the hand. Blindness
is a more terrible affliction in Africa, where the helpless are
neglected, and where roads are rough and often infested with ants or
snakes.
He was extremely unhappy after his blindness. There were times when it
seemed that it would drive him mad. In his misery he made others
miserable around him. Poor material, one would surely say, for the grace
of God or any other moral influence to work upon—this physical and moral
wreck. But, as I once heard a reclaimed outcast say, “Jesus loves to
walk by the seashore where the wrecks come in.”
When I went to Gaboon I engaged Robert as my interpreter; for he knew
Fang as well as he knew Mpongwe. Then, when I could speak Fang without
him, I undertook the Mpongwe work and I used him as my interpreter to
the Mpongwe; so he continued in my service. The first year, when I was
itinerating among the Fang and travelling in the _Evangeline_, he went
everywhere with me. I recall one evening when we were setting out from
the beach in a very heavy sea and had got beyond the surf we saw
Robert’s little attendant on the beach very much excited and waving to
us to come back. He was yelling something to us which we could not hear
distinctly across the roaring surf, but I thought he was trying to tell
us something about “Bobbie’s wife.” Very reluctantly I told the crew to
go back. We were already in the surf and were going ashore as if pulled
by wild horses when at last we made out what the boy was saying, namely:
“Bobbie has forgotten his pipe.”
The African has no mental perspective, according to our ideas; things
great and small, the most momentous and the most trivial, appear upon a
flat surface of equality. But it would scandalize an African to hear one
speak of a pipe in this disrespectful way.
Robert had an unusual mind and was athirst for knowledge. His
interpreting was a kind of education for him and he made the most of it.
He was always alert for new words and their exact meaning, and he had an
excellent memory. There was also a vein of poetry in him. I once heard
him, in offering an evening prayer, ask God that Satan might not sow the
tares of bad dreams in our sleep—the more appropriate because of the
native regard for dreams and the habit of vivid dreaming.
But his chief love was music. He was passionately fond of it, and he had
a good tenor voice. Shortly after I first knew him, when he was so
unhappy, I began to give him some instruction on the organ each day
after class. My only intention was to lighten his misery and relieve his
solitude. I had not the least thought of any return in missionary
service. The little organ which I used in itinerating I left with him
between journeys. It was a new and delightful way of spending the hours,
and he became more cheerful. In two years a very great change had taken
place in him. He was both cheerful and devout. When the time of harvest
came in the Fang field and I had need of catechists he was well equipped
for the work and I sent him. He took the organ with him; for he played
the Fang hymns and played them well. When a secretary of the Board of
Foreign Missions afterwards visited Africa he found Robert Boardman
among the Fang, preaching and singing, and he made special mention of
him on his return to America.
Robert, through the agency of my _matrimonial bureau_, married a Fang
woman, Nze, who loved him devotedly. She was a remarkably good-looking
woman—almost beautiful. Poor blind Robert never saw her; and one day,
after he had been married for some time, I delighted him—and saddened
him too—by giving him a minute description of her. For a while after his
marriage I placed him at Ayol, which was Nze’s town. After several
months, when I was at Ayol, I decided to take him to another town. Then
the heathen relations of Nze suddenly discovered that he had not given
sufficient dowry, although he had given all they asked. It was never
half so hard to get my African friends married as to _keep_ them
married.
The family of Nze secured her in a house while they talked the palaver
with Robert, telling him that he had not paid what they had asked. The
street was filled with people and there was the wildest excitement. The
chief of the town was not there, and when I saw that my powers of
persuasion were not adequate for the occasion, I told Robert that as it
was now late in the night we would go without Nze, and that I myself
would afterwards talk the palaver with the chief and would do all that I
possibly could to get Nze back. He yielded, but he was almost
broken-hearted.
We got into our canoe and started for the _Dorothy_, which was anchored
a little below the town. When we came alongside whom should we find in
the launch but Nze! She had broken out of her prison-house when night
came—but I can’t imagine how, unless some Christian woman helped her—and
stealing through the dreadful mangrove swamp, had reached her canoe and
had gone to the launch. At the very moment that I saw her we heard the
wildest yelling behind us. The people of the town had just discovered
her escape; and they, of course, thought that we had stolen her. I
shouted to the crew to “stand by” for their lives. We sprang aboard, and
while weighing the anchor put out all the lights. What if the anchor
should be fouled, as it was last time, when it delayed us half an hour!
Our pursuers were rapidly drawing nearer and were almost upon us. They
included, I presume, every heathen savage in the town, each of them
yelling like ten, and perhaps engaged meanwhile in loading their guns
with such deadly material as broken pots and barbed wire. At last, “All
right,” shouted the mate; and we moved off just as the enemy in a fleet
of canoes came round the last curve of the narrow river. I had made our
party, including Nze, lie down flat in the bottom of the launch; only
Ndong Koni at the wheel and myself at the engine remained standing.
Despite rage and excitement I did not expect that they would fire upon
us. But I very much feared that a stray shot, intended only to
intimidate us, might do us as much damage as the “bow drawn at a
venture” did to a certain king a long time ago. We were soon beyond
their range; and then Robert’s gladness and the unbounded joy of Nze
were a sufficient reward for us all. For my part, I was exceedingly glad
that Nze’s husband was present; otherwise an elopement would have been
credited to me.
A short time before I left Africa I was conducting a prayer-meeting in
an Mpongwe town, at which Robert was present. He rose and told the
people about his work among the Fang and what great changes were taking
place through the preaching of the Gospel, which must surely be the
power of God. Then in closing he told them something of the new joy that
had come into his own life. He said that although at first he had been
bitter and rebellious against the fate that had turned his day into
night, yet he had lived to thank God for sending even this affliction;
for, in his blindness, he had wearied of the “far country,” and like the
prodigal had come home. In Christ he had found pardon and peace; and
finally he had been permitted to go as a missionary to the Fang, whom he
had learned to love, and many of whom, he was sure, loved him.
“I know,” said he, “that I shall never see this world again, nor the
faces of my friends; but I am walking in the light of heaven.”
In a deep undertone, full of wonder, full of sympathy, full of tears,
they all responded: “A-y, Bobbie! A-y, Bobbie!”
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