06 Love and Solitude on the Obowe

Chapter 6 LIFE AND SOLITUDE ON THE OGOWE September 1886— December 1887 ANOTHER side to life on the Ogowe is suggested by Mr. Good’s letters to his absent wife.

" Kangwe, Sabbath evening, 8:30, September 5, 1886. For a long time it has been a fixed rule with me never to write a letter on Sunday; but I do so many worse things on Sabbath than writing to my wife that I will make her case an exception. I am somewhat at a loss how to write. If I could know just how you are feeling I could come nearer the mark. If, when this reaches you, you are perfectly happy with your friends, I don’t want to come in with a clumsy effort at soothing your loneliness, and tell you not to weep overmuch over our long separation. On the other hand, if this letter finds you crying your eyes out over your poor husband far away among cannibal mosquitoes, then my foolishness might seem like trifling with your most sacred feelings.... Hope to start upriver in two days, then down, preparing for communion.... If it were not for making you homesick, I could tell you how lovely the Ogowe is now. The cloudy weather is past, and it is clear, except a little while at noon. Fish is plenty; I have all the grenadillas that I ought to eat, and it is so quiet. Don’t you wish you were here?... When I get lonely you will hear nothing about it.

" October 8. If the sand-flies allow, I will write you a letter this morning, to go by regular Portuguese mail.... I am anxious to know how B [his two-years-old son] takes in civilization. I fancy he would like as well to be back among the goats and butterflies of Africa. He will not find the natives of America as obedient to his commands as those here, and he will probably be a good deal disgusted when grown men and women refuse to come at his call. Tell him that Folaba has one of the prettiest little kids I ever saw.....

" There is a rumor that duties are to be taken off imports and put on exports. Unless they put a duty on sick missionaries going home, this would be a decided gain to our mission; it would save much of this nuisance of receiving goods.... The rains have just begun; no tornadoes yet. Bats are bad. Hope to get cartridges for shot-gun by the Angola; then the war will begin....

" Hope next week to go out to Lake Azyingo and down the small river.... The worst is, I am becoming demoralized mentally, and especially spiritually. Trials seem to make me worse and worse. I am ashamed to go on doing my work with so little heart in it. I feel like running away; but to leave my work would only make me worse, not better."

[Specimen experience on board a river steamer.]

" November. We were going around the islands at the entrance of the Ogowe, and there we stuck in the mud. The captain had spent his life running sailing-vessels and knew nothing of the management of a steamer. Twice we got off and twice we ran on worse than before, till a part of the cargo had to be removed to the island near by. In short, we stayed at that delectable place from Thursday afternoon till Saturday morning. Once in the river, the captain had no more to do with the ship and we got on better. I am glad you were not on board. The captain was the queerest old stick, kind and goodhearted, but so wanting in manners. The food was a caution. There was one course of meat, almost always the same — roast beef. We were seven white men, and, if real hungry, I could eat the whole business. Imagine how careful we had to be to make it go around! The captain saw the danger, and so helped himself first. He would sing out, ’ Come to chop,’ and, while we were taking seats, help himself to about one third of all the meat, then pass it. You would have laughed to see him. We had no vegetable but rice, and once string-beans. While we were aground fish were plenty. There was, fortunately, bread and butter and cheese in sufficiency.

" Tell B I bought him a pet, a young bushcat. It has a very sharp nose, body the color of a raccoon, tail very thick at the base and running to a point."

[Letters from his wife having been sent past Kangwe to a French trading-house upriver.]

" December. They may be returned in ten days, may go on to Stanley Pool. It is interesting, I tell you. However, I have not given up hearing from you altogether. If I live to a ripe old age, I hope some of your letters will reach me to be a comfort in my declining years.

" The usual number of people are going wrong, and an encouraging number are trying to go right."

[Referring to obstacles raised by a French official.]

" He has found a law of 1781 (how is that for finding laws?) which gave the commandant authority to examine the character of missionaries ’ before allowing them to labor in the colony. I gave him an account of all the young men, accepted all his terms, and await his decision. He is anxious to stop the Bible-readers. It is not pleasant to have so much responsibility resting on me. I have scored several points in the mission’s favor; but one cannot see ahead, and if I blunder it will be bad for all. I have made up my mind, if he does not allow the Bible-readers to go on, to refuse to submit to the law. If he brings me up, I shall claim that the law does not apply."

[His claim would be that the law read "missionaries," which the black men were not; their title was either " Bible-reader " or " catechist."]

"To-day I have tackled accounts, and Monday begin stock-taking. [Of mission goods, which take the place of currency in Africa.] You know how I like that."

[Care, feverish days, isolation, were beginning to tell. No one in his house but black boys.]

" I am getting irritable and cross, and find it impossible to deal with people and things equably. Things look to me favorable or unfavorable just according to the humor I happen to be in, and I am in a bad humor pretty much of the time.

" January, 1887. I came up (from mission meeting at Baraka) by Fernan Vaz; saw a lot of new country and a lot of people needing the gospel. They wanted me to do something for them, and I promised to take a trip through there. It means a journey of three weeks; don’t see how I can leave for so long."

[Referring to the possibility of going to America to bring his wife.]

" In the present state of our mission there is no honorable course for me but to stay on the old craft as long as I possibly can. The Board, the church, and you would despise me if I were to leave the field now. If I ever go home, I want to go with nothing to be ashamed of.

" But I will tell you what I have done, and you will vote it about the most selfish thing I ever proposed. I laid a request before mission which opens the way for you to come out again in the summer, if you are well enough and willing, I to go to England for you. I should be absent from Africa nine or ten weeks. It would be a change that would enable me to stay here two years longer. Until I hear from you I shall not lift a finger. When I think of the comforts and friends that surround you, inviting you out to this land of bush and mosquitoes to relieve my loneliness seems unvarnished selfishness.

"January 26. Ogula is cook and very faithful, only he wants to cook twice as many things and twice as much of each as I can eat. It is the time of green corn and inkula nuts, and there are sour-sops; altogether, I fare sumptuously every day. Evenings at Kangwe are the most lonely, when mosquitoes make it impossible to read or write, and I can only walk the floor and think. But don’t worry; I am not going to die of homesickness in a hurry.... To leave work here for personal comfort would be little less than treason. My health is provokingly good.

" Holland sends me some beautiful plates and drawings; says he has an article in the printer’s hands describing three new species and three hitherto undiscovered females. I am still finding a few new things.

" February. One good sign is the number of books sold. I sell Scriptures almost every day, often to strangers. Sometimes men from down-river bringing food will buy two or three books at a time, evidently for other people. There must be from one to two hundred people learning to read on this river now.

"April. Last month took a trip of eight days down-river to Lake Avanga, on the south side of the Ogowe — a narrow lake running inland ten miles and containing ten or twelve towns of Nkamis, Akeles, and Fang. I was the first missionary who ever visited them. Came home by way of the small river. In all parts of our field I found a fairly encouraging state of affairs.

" In one respect this was the worst trip I ever made. I thought I knew about mosquitoes before, but all I have ever seen is nothing to that trip. At Asyuka, where I slept two nights, after dark it was impossible to sit. I left my supper half eaten and fled to the street, where I walked till bedtime. The thickest clothes seemed no protection. If I sat down for a moment near a lamp, literally hundreds would be biting me. When I stirred them up, it was not mosquitoes I saw, but a swarm like bees. One night at Longw they got into my net. I fought them till I was tired, then fell asleep and let them go ahead. If I did not find two hundred mosquitoes full of blood in that net, then I cannot guess. Even by day, if I walked in the bush and stopped a moment, my legs would be covered. The people say the great quantity of obbos that have gone to waste in the bush this year is the cause of their numerousness.

" The big question now is, what to do with these crowded communions. The strain on the nerves of having all these people about is something fearful. They are quiet and orderly, but there is danger of abuses growing out of such gatherings. I must divide and hold communions in different districts. But there are no buildings, and it would mean long absences from Kangwe, and here is a school requiring constant oversight. I don’t know what to do with it all. I feel like running away and getting from under the responsibility. The very success of the work makes me feel utterly insufficient. But enough of whining.

" Am sorry B does not want to come back and live with black people.’ We could catch butterflies, and shoot squirrels and big birds, and go in the boat. In going about from place to place, you will need to be careful, not so much of his health as of his manners. People often act as if spoiling children were a virtue. I say this, not that you do not know it, but to show you that I realize the difficulties of your position.

"May. We get, on an average, one mail a month. I have waited a week now for American mail. I give it up, and start tomorrow for a trip to the lakes. I don’t feel like writing. Things are just as they were when I wrote last. The water of the Ogowe is still flowing. I suppose each day it is new water that passes, but it looks much like the same old water; and so of everything else.

" Later. This morning was dull and heavy, the beginning of dry season, and I felt in sympathy. This afternoon the sun has come out, I have bought a nice piece of fresh hippopotamus meat, caught a new species of butterfly, and feel in better humor.

" Should you decide to meet me in England, I will leave to you the business of laying in a stock of provisions. You can choose better than I. Get the best American provisions going. We are nearly out of everything. In a month or two I shall have nothing but fresh herring two years old. My meals take from three to five minutes."

[Having heard that Mrs. Good will come to England in August, he arranges for the meeting.]

"May 24.... Now those are my plans, and (D. V.) I will carry them out to the letter, so you may know what to depend upon.

"Another matter has been a subject of much meditation and anxiety, and I now submit it to you for decision. I shall act on your advice if I get it in time. After you left I was very careless of my personal appearance, and neglected to shave. As the result, the hair has grown all over my face until I do not believe my own wife would know me. What is to be done with that beard? It is a great convenience in my bachelor life, as it completely conceals the fact that I have on neither collar nor necktie; but of course when you come back such unworthy subterfuges must be given up. What — shall I do — with — this — beard? Write — telegraph!

"The music came all right, and will be enjoyed when you get back; but I feel too much like the Jews beside the waters of Babylon to care for music now.

" June. Last week enrolled thirty-two inquirers in Wambalia alone. In far-off Lake Ogemwe, where I have been only once, and that nearly two years ago and found the people in blankest ignorance of everything spiritual I am told many want to become Christians, through the influence only of Christians who have at different times visited in the towns. I shall strain a point to visit them before communion....

" You could never guess what I have gone through to-day and how exhausted I am after it. Actually, I cleaned house! Let me tell you how I did it. I took my writing-table into my bedroom, shut myself in, called the boys, and told them to take everything out of the parlor, clean, and put back again. Twice during the afternoon I looked in to see that they were working, and really, now it is over, I am not as fatigued as I thought I should be, and the room looks well, too; only it will take a week or so to find where anything is.... When at last (if I am spared) I get aboard ship and her head sets north, I shall give myself up to the anticipation of our meeting. Till then may God keep us, and may we meet to part no more." By instructions from the Board, Mr. Good went to Paris in September and held an interview with officers of the Protestant missionary society. The result was a promise from them to send three teachers to the mission as soon as possible, and also commissioners to look over the Ogowe field with a view to possible acceptance of it in the future. In this interview the question of wine-drinking was one of the most delicate to be introduced. "We missionaries are all as a matter of course teetotalers. It was with fear and trembling that I suggested the matter.... They admitted that the drink sold to the natives would ruin them, and that, as Christians, we were right in abstaining for the sake of weak brethren, and they promised that the teachers employed should have the matter laid on their consciences."

After an absence of three months and twelve days, Mr. Good was again at his post in the mission, and his report for the year begins with expression of thankfulness for the health and safe return of his family, and, "above and better than all else, the Holy Spirit has been with us and wrought a great work. The church has doubled numerically, and, I think, has fully doubled its strength."