A MISSION SCHOOL CLASSNow let me send you along with a mission lady to visit a village school, so that you may know a little about the educational work of an African mission. But I am afraid you cannot go to the village so I must let the lady tell of her visit herself. This is what she writes, and had you gone with her you would have seen it all with your own eyes:

“‘Our Donna is coming! Our Donna is coming!’ Thus heralded, we approach the village, a flock of small boys, who have come to meet us, dancing along before the machila, shrieking at the pitch of their shrill young voices.

“‘Our Donna has come!’ announces that we have reached the village courtyard. There stands the school, a little grass shed, with forms like bird perches; and the teacher, conspicuous by his clean white clothes, and Kungauma, the headman, are waiting there to welcome me.

“After a little, a wheezy horn is blown by a stalwart young man, and the scholars begin to assemble. Meantime I pay a visit to the women’s quarters where the older women are busy pounding the maize and sifting the flour. After a few words of friendly greeting, enquires about their work and notice of their babies—for a black mother, as well as a white one, likes to see ‘her bairns respeckit like the lave’—I return to the school. It is full to overflowing.

“A hymn is sung and prayers are said by the teacher; then the classes arrange themselves on their respective ‘perches.’ I begin to examine Class 1, while an admiring circle of fond mothers and sympathising friends squats outside. After going conscientiously through the lessons of Class 1, we go on to Class 2, and I hear them their allotted task.“But time is flying! I ask what other classes still remain to be examined. ‘Class 3 and an Infant,’ replies the teacher, indicating their whereabouts. I glance at the dozen or so of eager little faces that compose Class 3 and then look towards the ‘Infant.’ He may be such, legally so-called, but to my astonishment I see the stalwart young man who performed upon the bronchitic horn! It turns out later that he is the most advanced pupil in the school and is reading an English book, called the ‘Infant Reader’; hence his name.

“Leaving him and Class 3 for another day, I call the young women and girls to begin sewing. Forty are in my class, and more would like to enter, but I cannot give proper attention to a larger number. One is advanced to enough sew a child’s frock, several are hemming sashes, most of them are at the elementary ‘patch’ stage. As I give out the seams I glance at their hands. Some, conscious of cleanliness and virtue, will voluntarily turn up their little pink palms for my inspection. ‘Mine are clean, Adonna, look at mine!’ while others have to be sent to wash.

“Soon the class is hard at work. Some learn very quickly, others find the management of the needle almost beyond their powers; some need words of praise and encouragement to help them to persevere, while others require judicious fault-finding and criticism to nip incipient vanity in the bud. A few words about the use of the words ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you,’ a few lessons in the elements of gentle bearing to each other—courtesy to my self is never lacking—are taken in very good part, and remembered and put into practice.“In the course of the day’s lesson, which lasts two and a half to three hours, several may get advanced from the ‘patch’ to the ‘sash’ stage. The price of the ordinary sash is sixpence. (The work done in all the sewing classes is sold later at a little bazaar, and the proceeds are given to some scheme in connection with the native church.) I hear the girls planning how they will manage to buy the sash when it is hemmed. ‘I have fowls at home worth sixpence,’ says one. ‘I have only one fowl but it can lay eggs,’ says another. Some, having no source of income can but regretfully admire, and envy their more fortunate companion.

“About two o’clock I take in the work again, and proceed to do a little simple surgery, the binding up of ulcers chiefly. Anything serious I decline to dress, advising the sufferers to come to Hospital, but the simple sores, which are sadly common, are quite within my powers. It brings me into touch with the people at another point of contact and increases our sympathy.

“The dressings done and the farewells said, I call my carriers, get into my machila, and off we go, my men singing lustily as they bear me swiftly along the native path. The village lies close among the hills, and the path winds in and out through native gardens and bush and long grass, while two streams and a bog have to be forded. On either side rise the ‘everlasting hills’; solemn, grand, restful, beautiful at all times, in sunshine or shadow. In about an hour we leave the native path and turn into the dusty high road, and a very short time finds us again at the mission.”

And now to show you mission hospital work. I have found in the same magazine the story of Gwebede, the Angoni labourer.

“His home was in far Angoniland—the village where his childhood had passed, where he played through many a sunny day, rolling in the sand till he was white, fighting mock battles with big grasses for spears, ‘tying’ little houses of grass and sticks, and lurking in them—all play and no school; and at night time sleeping in his mother’s hut, close to the fire, beside the dogs and the chickens. Now he is a little boy, perhaps ten years old, and when his brothers and uncles and companions are getting ready to go off to work with the white men, Gwebede joins the party. He will work for three months and then come proudly home with his earnings. His earnings will be an altogether unimaginable extent of beautiful white calico. Perhaps it will be enough to pay his mother’s hut tax, and when that is paid they will tuck the yellow-edged paper with the stamp on it safely away among the shiny black grass on the inside of the roof.

“So he trots gaily along the narrow path, carrying on a stick over his shoulder some yellow cobs of maize for food by the way. At night he is very tired, and after roasting his corn and grinding it up with his little white grinders he very soon drops asleep. The party travel for a day or two, and then stop to work for a day at some village to earn food for the further journey. In about a week they reach their destination and see the coffee planters’ broad acres of cleared ground where in rows grow the coffee plants, as big as gooseberry bushes, some of them a little bigger. Then is Gwebede installed with hoe in hand amongst the coffee.