Chapter 36
Africa - Setting the Scene
This
chapter is by way of a thumbnail sketch of all the other chapters to give you, the reader,
an insight into the overall plan before detail partly obscures it.
Month
by month from about the age of eleven, until I went to War in 1915, I had leaflets about
Livingstonia and its fine tribes and people from the Rev Chrichton. Steadily, my scrapbook
of African stories grew. I had a Nyasaland map: dotted on it were all the Outstations, the
names of active missionaries, the founder, Dr Robert Laws, some of his medical workers:
Rev Dr Walter Elmslie, Rev Charles Stuart, Dr Chisholm, Dr Donald and his wife Dr Agnes
Fraser, Dr Turner and Ministers: D.R. Mackenzie, A.G. MacAlpine, R.D. MacMinn, the Young
brothers, T.C.Y. and W.P. There were also many other gifted people who freely gave of
their skills and knowledge such as builders, joiners, stone-masons, engineers, printers,
teachers, nurses and many loyal wives. Also an ever growing host of forward-looking and
thinking Africans such as:
Yakobi Harawa, Edward Boti Manda, Peter Joli, Kenneth Kaunda, William Mkandawiri and all
the many broadminded Chiefs who were receptive to new ideas.
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These
Greatheart adventurers, by freely offering love and instruction, had brought peace and
tranquility to a land that for generations had been torn by tribal war, slavery and
disease. The more I read about Livingstonia, the greater my longing grew to be there and
work with my boyhood heroes. In
1912 Dr Laws was made Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland. I went to hear him
preach about Livingstonia when he came to St Pauls Church, Dundee. From that moment on, my
sights were firmly set on service in Nyasaland and to the Livingstonia Mission in
particular. The
Great War came in late 1914 and even after I enlisted the Rev Crichton wrote regularly to
me in the trenches and so I was able to quench my thirst for information about African
missionary work during lulls in the fighting and amongst the worst carnage imaginable from
the Battle of Loos in September, 1915, to a score of others, up to the final one at Mons
in Soon
after my demob in January, 1919, the Rev Thomas Crichton, then Minister at West Calder,
had a letter from Dr Laws wondering if I was well, finished with the Army and of a mind to
be a missionary at Livingstonia. When the Doctor knew that I was, he invited me to
Glasgow, to be interviewed by Dr Laws and the formidable eighteen-member Foreign Mission
Committee. |
It was
an interesting meeting. One old minister asked about my army career. I said calmly, 'Sir,
you were too elderly to fully understand what battles, wounds, comrades killed at one s
side, hunger and thirst, could do to a man's spirit and soul. If you mean drink, smoking
and other evils, I say here and now, I am clean and I am proud to say so.
The
old minister came over to me and patted me on the back. 'You really read my thoughts.'
I was
appointed Assistant Horticulturist, Agriculturalist and Head of Forestry Department at
Livingstonia.
Many
years later, after Dr Laws had died, the Rev Chrichton's family gave me the following
letter that their Father had received and treasured from the Doctor.
Edinburgh. 21 Feb, 1922
