CHAPTER XIX

Missionary Work

Missionary enterprise in Uganda has been justly described as one of the greatest modern triumphs of Christianity. Indeed, the record of its workings read like pages from the annals of the infant Church in Apostolic days. But, whereas in those times Christianity had to face the most exclusive and bigoted form of belief, Judaism, the highly developed intellectual power of Grecian learning, and the shameless profligacy of civilized Rome, in Uganda it has had no force to contend against save barbaric ignorance that could not stand before the advent of Truth and Righteousness. After the missionaries had been working some years in the country it occurred to them that the most effectual way of reaching the people was to try and meet their insatiable demand for instruction by instituting throughout the country little synagogues or reading schools, where the people could come together daily and be taught to read by one who had received some training. A little graduated reading sheet, consisting of the alphabet, syllables, words, the Lord’s Prayer, and a selection of texts, was circulated by the thousand at a charge of ten cowrie shells each. By these means within a comparatively short time the land had been sown with portions of Holy Scripture, which were being eagerly read by the people, who possessed no other books.

Certainly the success of Christianity in Uganda has been due to the widespread distribution of the Bible among the people and the remarkable desire and ability on the part of the Baganda to impart whatever knowledge they have been able to assimilate. It has been rightly said that every country must be evangelized by its own people. Certainly this has been proved to be so in Uganda. A European pioneer missionary is obliged to travel with a certain number of things, and, however meagre they may appear in his eyes, yet to these poor Africans they represent great wealth and create a deal of suspicion. They will gather round him half timidly and full of curiosity, and while he is endeavouring to deliver his message to them, their eyes are travelling from his collar stud to his boots, then from his bath to the frying-pan, and all the time they are thinking within themselves, “Wonderful, wonderful; the white man is beyond our understanding quite!” When they, at last, attempt to listen and find that he is speaking to them in their own tongue, and not in English, in spite of the slight foreign accent, they are absolutely incredulous, for they cannot believe that they and the European can have anything in common. The European is white, he has wisdom—great wisdom—he is rich, but the African is black and a fool, and a beggar; the white man worships one great, wonderful Spirit, and the black man worships a spirit—only it is an evil one. On the other hand, if one of the native converts goes out on pioneer work, he ties all his possessions in a sleeping mat, and off he starts with the little bundle on his head. When he reaches his destination, he creates no suspicion or fear, as he unrolls his mat, shakes out his bark-cloth covering, and takes a drink of water from his gourd; they see he possesses nothing beyond what they themselves own. But as he draws out of a little cotton bag a Book, they all gather round to inspect the novelty, and he tells them that the Book is a written voice, and the letters stand for the words uttered; he has learned to read the signs, and he has come to teach them to do so, for it is God’s voice that has spoken to them. Immediately their excitement is aroused, and the teacher from that time has found his pupils. As there is no house large enough to hold them all, they set to work to build a reading school, and, as many come from a distance and are anxious not to arrive late for the day’s lessons, a big drum is hung outside the building and beaten every morning at 7.0 and 1.0 to warn everybody that in one hour reading will commence. After a few months, when the European visits the station on an itinerating tour, he finds a demonstrative welcome awaiting him. Food is brought and banana juice to show their gratitude for the teacher having been sent. Then their books are produced in order that the European may hear the great wisdom they have learned, and others come with questions about words they have read in their Gospels and do not understand. Uganda to-day is calling out for European missionaries more than it ever was, not to evangelise the heathen but to organise, train and instruct the thousands of Christian men and women, that they may be capable of taking their place among the civilised nations of the world, and become a praise and a glory in their land.

It was through two young Baganda teachers that Christianity was first carried into Toro in the year 1895. At that time the country was in a very unsettled state. The King, Kasagama, had not long been established on the throne, and his chiefs were not too eager to own allegiance to him. Soon after the arrival of these two evangelists, Kasagama was falsely accused before the British Officer in charge of the Government Station there, and was thrown into the chain gang. On his release he was advised to go into Mengo to the Government headquarters and have his case gone into. His stay there ran into some months. During that time he was deeply impressed by the change that Christianity had effected in Uganda, and attended the Church classes daily that he might receive instruction. When Her Majesty’s Commissioner had heard the charges and exonerated Kasagama he was told to return to his Kingdom with full power ratified by the British Government. Before leaving Uganda he begged Bishop Tucker to be allowed to publicly confess his faith in Christ by Holy Baptism, and asked that a European missionary might be sent to Toro to help him and his people to increase in the wisdom of God. Meanwhile there was great excitement in Toro when the people heard that their king, after such a long absence, was coming back to them, and they collected together in hundreds at the capital to welcome him. As he mounted the hill, leading to his house, the people thronged him, dancing and screaming with joy and poured into his courtyards. Then, standing up and ordering them to remain quiet, he delivered his speech to them. He told of all the wonderful things he had seen in Mengo, of his own confession of Christianity in the Cathedral, and concluded by saying that he wished his country to go forward in strength and wisdom, and this could only be obtained from God, so he called on his people to believe in his God, to stand by him faithfully in the united desire for the good of their country.

From that day the teachers had as much as they could do to instruct all those who came forward to be taught; and when Bishop Tucker arrived there the following year with Mr. Fisher, who was to establish a permanent station, he found fifteen men and women ready for baptism.

Excepting in the case of old people, everyone in Uganda desirous of being baptised must first learn to read. When they have passed the standard required of them and are ready to enter a baptismal class, they are obliged to bring with them two witnesses or sponsors who can vouch for the sincerity of their belief by the outward conformity of their lives to the teaching of Christianity. Then, for from three to six months instruction is given them for two hours four days a week. At the end of this course of teaching each candidate is carefully examined, and should the result be satisfactory the name is read out twice in Church and anyone is asked to bring forward a reason, if such there be, for keeping back the candidate from baptism. Thus every care is taken to test converts thoroughly before admitting them into this sacred rite.

Toro very soon sought to emulate the church in Uganda in recognising its responsibility to those living in darkness around, and one year after the founding of the work in the capital, young men came forward and offered themselves to be trained as teachers to the distant villages. Apart from an honest desire to enlighten those who have not received the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus, there is little to tempt men to devote themselves to this service—the only payment they receive is sufficient unbleached calico with which to clothe themselves. The people in the villages who have sent in the pressing request for a teacher are expected to build their own “synagogue,” as well as house, and feed the teacher sent to them. In this way the whole native church organisation throughout the Protectorate is self-supporting. In Toro alone, seven years after the introduction of Christianity, there were no less than eighty-five mission stations established throughout the Kingdom, with a staff of one ordained Muganda deacon and one hundred and five paid men and women teachers, all supported entirely by the young Christian Church. Besides these there was a strong band of honorary workers who taught in the capital on weekdays or went out to the near villages on Sundays.

Once a year there is a “review of the troops,” when all the teachers—regulars, reservists, and volunteers—come into the capital for re-equipment and reappointment.

One of these events took place after we had been in the country only a few months, when we were decidedly new to the way things were managed out here, and still retained a fair amount of the provincialism of home training; so when a teachers’ conference was announced we conjured up in our minds a kind of forthcoming Mildmay or Keswick Convention on a small scale, but the arrangements took a slightly different form. The first day opened with a big feast to all the workers. The dispensary was converted for the day into the banquetting hall; the entrance was draped in gaudy native cloths, and the floors of the two rooms were carpeted with banana leaves. The men were allocated to one room and the women to the other. Long before the hour of the feast the guests had arrived and packed themselves as closely together as was possible in circles of seven or eight, the King and his chiefs forming one of the groups. An ox had been killed for the feast; it was boiled in banana leaves and served up with quantities of unsweetened, cooked bananas. Prodigious piles were placed in the centre of each circle of guests, and then business began! Off came their top draperies or coats, and with bare arms all eagerly outstretched towards the food they dived into their food with astonishing rapidity and energy. The banana mash was rolled round the fingers into balls and stuffed down their throats without any regard being given to mastication. The King and chiefs seemed to momentarily forget their dignity, and ate till the perspiration rolled down their faces. Tea was served round in kettles; every available cup, mug, basin and jug on the station had been collected together for the use of the guests—and the two-quarts jugs were far more popular than afternoon tea cups.

With no small compunction I submitted myself to the native custom and joined in the feast. After a series of hand ablutions I sat on the floor next to the King’s mother, who picked some of the choicest bits of meat off a bone and set them before me. It was such an effort for 3.0 p.m. in the tropics, and visions of Mildmay’s shilling tea tent, with its ices and strawberries, made at least the first stage of the Conference appear very different.

The King’s band, with its medley of instruments, round drums, cylindrical drums, squat drums, horns, and reed pipes decorated with monkey tails, performed boisterous symphonies outside. But when, after the feast, the people were for the first time introduced to the phonograph, the Toro band stood still in astonishment, and as an English orchestral band roared out “Soldiers of the Queen” it felt quite eclipsed and could only exclaim “Ekyamahano, ekyamahano” (marvellous, truly marvellous).

The following day the real Convention started, and was continued over three days. The mornings were entirely given over to devotional meetings, and in the afternoons the workers were asked to bring forward difficulties met with in their work, and discussions were invited as to what more effectual measures could be employed in organisation and in strengthening of the various mission stations. Throughout all the meetings a deep and earnest interest was evinced by the teachers. It was most encouraging to watch the enthusiasm gradually growing and to hear the young teachers talk of their work and their peculiar difficulties relating to the subject treated.

A specially impressive service was held when all the workers gathered in from near and far distant heathen districts met together at Holy Communion.

Before returning to their spheres of service a large missionary meeting was held in the church, at which most stirring accounts were given of the victories against the powers of darkness. At the close, a collection was taken up. For this a large packing case was placed in the centre of the chancel to receive the larger contributions and a row of baskets for the smaller offerings. Then the people came up in single file to place in their gifts; one brought a tusk of ivory, another a huge bundle of bananas, others beans, potatoes, and sugar cane, the Queen forty yards of fine white linen, others chickens, and finally a goat was brought up and tied to the pillar. One little boy, carried away by the impulse of the moment, put his little fez cap into the basket, and as this was only a loan it had to be redeemed afterwards.

The sight was very remarkable. It was as if one had been taken back to the Court of the Tabernacle at the Feast of First fruits. The similarity of these people’s lives with those of Old and New Testament history is so strong that it is difficult to convey to the native mind the idea of distance in time, and often one is asked if Joseph, the son of Jacob, was the husband of the Virgin Mary, or if Paul before his conversion was the first King of Israel.

The Toro Church has now reached its sifting time. The excitement and rash enthusiasm of infancy have matured into the more evenly balanced judgment of manhood. Its disciples are learning to weigh the demands of its tenets, its refusal to compromise with sin and with almost everything that has constituted their existence for centuries past, and its call for constant activity of heart and hand as opposed to the intolerable indolence of their nature. All these things must constantly be borne in mind by the missionary if he is not to be unnecessarily depressed by occasional failure on the part of the converts. One must not look for impossibilities, and the growth of past centuries cannot be destroyed in a day. I am not sure but that too much is expected of the young teachers. For instance one goes out to the villages when only quite a youth with a hereditary taint, many generations old, of the worst forms of heathenism as against two or three years of religious instruction. He is the only Christian in the village, and, indeed, for miles round; and there he is surrounded by the old heathen practices and constantly tempted to return to habits of the past, while he has not the same normal amount of moral and intellectual strength which nerves an English lad to fight against these external influences and internal tendencies. And yet only about twenty per cent. of them really fail.

King Daudi Kasagama once said that the white man could never understand how fierce was the black man’s conflict with himself at times. The one has generations of civilization and Christianity as a rear-guard, and the other, centuries of corruption and self-indulgence. Without trust in a Divine keeping power, said he, one would inevitably fall. Ten years have now passed by since the Baganda teachers left for heathen Toro, and in that time the character of almost the entire country has been practically transformed. British jurisdiction has established peace throughout the Kingdom, and now that an end has been put to tribal and civil warfare, there is nothing to distract the mind of the people from settling down and learning to improve their land.

In the districts that have come under the influence of Christianity, heathenism has been abolished, if not absolutely at least in the outward form of practice. Over three thousand converts have been baptized, and although this only represents a very small proportion of the inhabitants, it includes mainly the more influential and leading body of men.

The desire of the Batoro for teaching and their love of reading promise much for the future of the country if this can be satisfactorily coped with immediately and not starved by inability on the part of the missionaries to meet the need. It certainly cannot be said of Uganda and Toro “of the making of books there is no end.” The Baganda are, I believe, limited to ten books, namely:—

Holy Bible. Prayer Book. Hymn Book. Oxford Bible Helps. “Search and Find.” Geography Book. “Pilgrim’s Progress.” “Kings of Uganda.” English Primer. Commentaries on three Gospels.

Those of the Batoro who do not understand Luganda and so are confined to books written in their own language, only possess the New Testament, Prayer Book, with Psalms and Hymn Book. Through the generous aid of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, and the S.P.C.K., which have provided the country with almost the whole of its literature, these books have been supplied at a cost price, much under their cost of production and carriage, so as to bring them within the possible reach of the people, who, as a whole, are exceedingly poor.

But even so, it is generally necessary, in the villages especially, for the people to make real efforts to supply themselves with books they require. A curious scene was enacted in the courtyard of our house when the teachers came in from their stations on the first Monday in every month to execute the orders for books or stationery entrusted to them by their people. Our yard was temporarily converted into a live-stock market, for the purchases were rarely made with cash. The most popular currency was cowrie shells, which were tied up in bundles by means of dried banana bark, but when these were beyond the means of the would-be purchaser, he would send in by his teacher a goat, or chickens, or eggs. A curious shaped till was needed by the salesman! One of his orders would be for “One chicken, Matthew,” which being interpreted was “One Gospel of St. Matthew, price one chicken.”

Another man, after purchasing a hymn book for six eggs, would ask if he had enough eggs over to buy Bunyan. It frequently happened that a lad had been carefully collecting the eggs from his one hen for weeks, but as the hen had not been very obliging by the time the right number was reached, the salesman was distinctly out of profit through his customer.

Others, who possessed nothing saleable, came in from distances of ten to fifteen miles and asked to be hired for work during the day, in the late afternoon they would set off on their journey home the proud owners of the little hymn book or reading sheet which had been thoroughly earned.

At the close of one of the terms of the teachers’ preparation class, prizes were to be given for the best answers at their examination, and the first prize was to be the option of four yards of calico or a Bible. The one who on this particular occasion stood out preeminently first was a peasant youth of about eighteen years of age with exceptionally well-formed and forceful features. His dress consisted of a coarse piece of the bark-cloth knotted on the shoulder: having come from a distant district he had never known the luxury of the calico garments worn by the more fortunate town folk. As he came forward to receive his prize, the choice between the calico and the Bible was given him. For a while he stood handling the material, then looked down at his own shabby garment; but it was only a momentary hesitation—laying aside the calico, he took up the Bible and clasping it with both hands, said “My master, the Bible has got the better of the cloth.”