VII.
January 26, 1907.
AT Yakusu great stress is laid upon the work of teaching. The mission property adjoins an important Lokele village. Within easy reach are villages of three or four other tribes. It is an area of rather dense population. Villages in number occur all along the shores of the river for miles downstream. Other villages of inland folk lie behind these. Thousands of people are within easy reach. The mission maintains a liberal force of houseboys for the four houses of missionaries; it has also a corps of excellent workmen, who make brick, do carpentering, build houses, and keep the grounds in order. These are not from the local tribe, but are Basoko from down the river. Children from the immediate village flock to the mission school, but this is only the least significant portion of the work. More than 200 teachers are in the employ of the mission, teaching in village schools throughout the country around. To supply text-books, the mission press at Bolobo turns out editions of four or five thousand copies.
Similar in its plan of sending out native teachers to outlying villages is the great work at Wathen, in the Lower Congo. This was once on the main caravan route from Matadi to Leopoldville. Since the building of the railroad it is completely off of beaten lines of travel, and only one who specifically desires to visit it will see it. The main feature of this work, marking it off from all the other mission work in the Congo State, is a central boarding school for native children, where a definite course for study, extending through several years, is continuously carried on. Boys graduating from this school go out as teachers. And the mission demands that the villages thus supplied shall meet the expense of conducting their schools. This seems to me the best educational experiment in the Congo, and scores of villages throughout the district of the cataracts have self-supporting schools with Wathen boys for teachers.
In the official report of the royal commission of inquiry sent to investigate conditions in the Congo Free State recently, there is found this passage:
“Often, also, in the regions where evangelical stations are established, the native, instead of going to the magistrate, his rightful protector, adopts the habit, when he thinks he has a grievance against an agent or an executive officer, to confide in the missionary. The latter listens to him, helps him according to his means, and makes himself the echo of all the complaints of a region. Hence, the astounding influence which the missionaries possess in some parts of the territory. It exercises itself not only among the natives within the purview of their religious propaganda, but over all the villages whose troubles they have listened to. The missionary becomes, for the native of the region, the only representative of equity and justice. He adds to the position resulting from his religious zeal the influence which in the interest of the state itself should be secured to the magistrate.”—Translation.
It is true that the Congo native carries all his grievances to the missionary. On one occasion, when we had been in Leopoldville but a day or two and had seen but little of native life and customs, we noticed a line of fifty people, some with staves of office showing them to be chiefs or chiefs’ representatives, filing in a long line to the mission. They squatted under the palaver-tree, awaiting the attention of the missionary. Their errand was in reference to the local market. Formerly there was a market at Leo, important alike to the people of the town and to the producing natives of the country around. There had been disorders and disturbances; the sellers lost their goods through theft and seizure, and for several years it had been discontinued.
After repeated petitions on the part of the people to the government, Bula Matadi yielded, promised restoration of the market, assigned a place, and put up a building. Though apparently all had been done that they had asked, the people were not satisfied, and this delegation had presented itself to the missionary to ask him to present their complaint and desires. The place selected was not a good one; a different one close by the railroad station and the English traders, was requested. The missionary brought the matter to the attention of the local government, which yielded to the people’s suggestion, and gave permission for the opening of the market on the following Sunday in the place of preference.
We became interested in this matter, and on the following Sunday the missionary, my companion, and myself made our way to the spot to see how matters were progressing. A considerable number of sellers had come in with produce, mostly kwanga and other foodstuffs. They were beginning to display these upon the ground. Would-be purchasers were gathered in numbers, and among them crowds of Bangala women from the workmen’s camp. The sellers seemed suspicious lest attack might be made upon their wares. Their suspicions were, unfortunately, well founded. For a little time things appeared to go well but at last Bangala women, standing by, swooped down upon the piles of stuff temptingly offered for sale, and seizing handfuls, started to run away. One soldier-policeman, who, a few moments before, seemed to be fully occupied with his duty of guarding the railway station, and several idle men and boys joined in the looting. The thing was done as quickly as if there had been pre-concerted plotting and a given signal.
In an instant all was turmoil. Some of the sellers were hastily packing away in cloths what was left of their stores; others grappled with the thieves, some of whom, however, were making good escape with their plunder. We all three rushed in to help the robbed to stay the thieves, and for a few minutes there was a free-for-all fight. Most of the stolen stuff was retaken, and the angry sellers, with all that was left to them packed away, refused to again open up their stores. The missionary suggested that they should move nearer to the trading-post of the English traders and ensconce themselves behind a fence, buyers being allowed to approach only upon the other side, while we three and the white men from the traders should guard to prevent further attack and thieving. Finally, this scheme was put into operation. One or two soldier-police were summoned, the stores were again opened up, though trading had to stop every now and then to permit of the dispersal of the crowd which thronged around awaiting the opportunity for another attack.
Under these difficulties, in which the missionary and my Mexican companion performed prodigies of valor, the market was conducted with a fair degree of success. I was interested in the further history of this market. Our missionary friend shortly wrote me that things had been reduced to order; that the government had built a market-house and supplied regular guards to maintain order; that the number of sellers had increased, and that purchasers flocked to buy.
But all this brilliant promise came to a sad end. When we again reached Leopoldville the market-house was closed; there were no signs of interest. It seems that Bula Matadi thought the market presented an admirable chance for getting even. One day, when the stock of kwanga and other foodstuffs was exceptionally large, the representatives of the law swooped down upon the sellers, claimed that they were in arrears in payment of their kwanga tax, and seized their stock in trade. The result was that the market died.
Among the laws which in their intention, perhaps, were good, but in their application vicious, is one regarding orphan and abandoned children. In native life, unaffected by white influence, there could be no difficulty regarding such children. If a native child were left without a mother it would at once be taken over by the mother’s family. There would be no feeling that it was a burden, and it would suffer no deprivation.
Such a thing as an abandoned child, in strictly native condition, is scarcely conceivable. According to state law, an orphan or abandoned child less than 14 years of age may be turned over by the court to missions for care and education. The mission, of course, is entitled to the child’s services through a term of years. Advantage of this law has never been taken by Protestant missions, but Catholic missions have at different times had numbers of children committed to their charge and have used their services in the development of property. A child of 14, the limit of the law’s application, is better than a child of 12, because capable of immediate service. A boy of 15, 16, 17, 18, would be still better, but, of course, it is illegal to seize a young fellow of that age and employ him at such labor. Once committed, the child remains in the mission’s power until manhood.
There is no question that the missions, taking advantage of this law, many times seize boys who are beyond the age limit and many others who are neither orphans nor abandoned. I myself have seen a young man who could not have been less than 19 or 20 years of age, who was married and a member of the Protestant church, who had been taken by the peres under this law. He was brought before the state authorities and immediately set at liberty.
It is due to this fact, that the native goes constantly to the missionary with his complaints—that he looks upon him as the proper person to represent his cause before the state officials; that the missionary, himself, feels it his duty to bring abuses to the attention of the authorities—that the feeling already mentioned between the missionary and the state official has arisen. There have been, unfortunately, abundant occasions for intervention; there have been flagrant and cruel things which the missionary has felt called upon to report.
I do not doubt the honesty of the missionary. I have sometimes felt, however, that they have become so filled with a complaining spirit that they are incapable of seeing any good. I have heard them for hours complain of things that neither in themselves nor in their results were really open to criticism. I have heard them carp and find fault with any matter with which the name of the government could be connected. If their attention is called to some apparent purpose to reform abuses, they shake their heads and say it will come to nothing; it is a subterfuge. If, as time passes, the thing assumes the appearance of reality, they say there is some hidden and mysterious purpose back of it; the state would never do so well unless it were preparing some new iniquity. The attitude of complaint becomes habitual: the ability to see improvement seems completely lost.
The first time that I attended family prayers in a missionary home I waited with some interest to hear the petition in favor of the government. When it came, it assumed this form: “O Lord, stay the hand of the oppressor. Pity and aid the oppressed and overburdened. Prevent cruelty from destroying its victims. Interfere with the wicked and designing schemes of the oppressor.”
A dozen such expressions and petitions were uttered, but no request for divine wisdom and enlightenment for the rulers. It can easily be conceived that, where godly and pious men cherish such sentiments toward representatives of the state, the feelings of state officials toward missionaries are little likely to be completely friendly.
BACHOKO BRINGING IN RUBBER, DJOKO PUNDA