The African has the greatest respect for old age. On coming into the presence of a chief, he gets down on his knees and performs an elaborate ceremony, bowing down till his head touches the dust, then a ritual of hand clapping and the use of respectful terms of address. An elder is called an osekulu. The word is used not only for the ruling elders of a village in their tribal life, but it is also the term used for an elder in the church. The whole idea of respect for authority and mature experience is inbred in the African.
When I first arrived at Chilonda, there were three outstanding African elders in the church, Vongula, Sanji, and Sawimbu. The first time I attended a service in the Umbundu language, Vongula was the speaker.
The church building, like the missionaries’ homes, was made of sun dried bricks, plastered with mud and whitewashed. It was thatched with grass and had no ceiling. Two kerosene lamps hung by a wire from a roof beam. It had a clay floor with rough plank seats without backs, raised about a foot from the floor. All the men sat on one side and the women on the other. The elders sat on special seats flanking the speaker on the platform. The singing was beautiful. Little children in the front seats harmonized in a delightful way and I could hear rich bass voices of young men at the back. It was easy to see that this was a musical people.
When Vongula rose to speak, I noticed that he was dressed in an old pair of blue pajamas with gold braid. Where buttons were missing, and to hide the fact that he did not have an undershirt, it was pinned at the neck with a safety pin. As he passed me going to the desk, I saw that he was in his bare feet and that there were large thick calluses on his heels, black and cracked. I had never seen a preacher like this before! But as soon as he started to speak and got warmed up to his subject, I forgot about his appearance. Here was an accomplished orator, but more than a mere orator, a man of God. After the service, I asked Sanders about the calluses on Vongula’s feet.
“Don’t laugh at him,” he replied, “those are honorable calluses; that man has literally walked thousands of miles backwards and forwards across Central Africa preaching the gospel.” I have often thought that Vongula was a perfect illustration of the passage in Isaiah 52:7, and quoted by Paul in Romans 10:15: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace”–the beautiful feet of the Saviour and of the pioneer preacher.
Many years later I met Vongula returning from one of his long journeys into the interior. A little boy carried his bundle of simple belongings, a grass sleeping mat, a tin plate and spoon, and a change of shirt. They had been sleeping on the ground at night beside a fire and eating whatever was set before them by hospitable and friendly Africans. He was carrying a long staff covered from top to bottom with notches cut with a knife. I asked him about the notches.
“In the olden days,” he explained, “when I went hunting and shot an animal, I cut a notch on my bow or my gun, and also attached a piece of its hide. Now I am hunting for souls and when one of my people confesses Christ as Saviour, I make a mark on my staff.” His staff was covered with them!
He never owned a pair of shoes, his large spread-out toes wouldn’t have fitted into them anyway, but he was a real evangelist and an honored servant of God. He was the prototype of many African pioneers who in the early days performed incredible feats of walking and at the same time gossiped the gospel among their own people.
Sanji, another Chilonda elder, I learned, was one of the first converts in Central Africa. In later years he was tall, lean, white-haired, dignified, independent, with a razor-keen wit. As a lad he went into Lubaland with a caravan of Ovimbundu rubber and slave traders. When he got to Nana Candundu in the Luvale country he came down with smallpox. His companions abandoned him, thinking he would die.
The missionaries had just arrived in the vicinity and Jeanie Gilchrist from Scotland, hearing of the stricken lad, had a grass hut built, carried him into it, and at some risk to herself, tenderly cared for him until he recovered. On first coming to Angola in 1889, Miss Gilchrist had spent two years in Bie and so knew Sanji’s language. Day after day, she told him the gospel; he drank it in and was truly converted. He never forgot the gallantry and kindness of the white woman who risked her life to save him, when he had been abandoned by his own people.
On returning to Bie, he determined to preach the gospel in the village where he was born. But a callow youth is seldom allowed to express his opinion in the presence of his elders. Night after night in the onjango (palaver house) he attempted to introduce the subject, but was always rebuffed by the akulu (elders). Finally one night he saw his opportunity and told them this story:
“One time in our country there was a severe drought. It hadn’t rained for many moons; rivers and lakes had dried up, and many were dying of thirst. The animals of the forest gathered to consider what they would do. The first to speak was the lion. He as king demanded obedience from the rest.
” ‘I know where there is water,’ he said. ‘If you follow me, I will lead you to the perpetual spring where I drank when I was a cub.’
“When he had finished speaking, the tortoise crawled into the circle and, lifting his head, said, ‘I know where there is water!’ The lion was so angered at his insolence that he cuffed him with his great paw, but he rolled with the punch and so was not hurt. That day they all followed the lion, but after a long weary journey, when they got to the so-called perpetual spring, it was dry.
“Next day they gathered again, and this time it was the elephant’s turn to speak. ‘Listen to me,’ he bellowed, ‘when I was young, and there was a drought, the leader of the herd, a wise old elephant, always took us to a waterhole where the water never dried up. If you follow me, I will take you to that waterhole.’
“When he finished speaking, the tortoise waddled in again and piped up, ‘I know where there is water!’ The elephant was so mad that he stepped on him with his great foot, but the sand was deep and he sank into it and wasn’t squashed. That day they followed the elephant, but when they came to the waterhole it was bone dry, with gaping cracks on the surface. Weary and tired they had to retrace their steps.
“Next day it was the leopard’s turn; and then the buffalo’s. Even the hyena had his say. Each day the tortoise came with his little speech, ‘I know where there is water.’
“Disillusioned and discouraged, when they had come to the end of their resources, brother rabbit spoke up.
“‘Dear friends,’ he declared, ‘we have listened very respectfully to our leaders and have loyally followed their advice, but we have been disappointed and are weary and tired and very thirsty. I would suggest that for once we should give brother tortoise a chance and see whether he knows what he is talking about or not.’
“It was all very humiliating, but they were all so thirsty, that they decided to follow tortoise for once, anyway. With tortoise out front, behind came lion and elephant and leopard and buffalo. After a long journey he led them to a lovely bubbling spring that came out of the rock. They all drank and were satisfied, and from that time tortoise had the gratitude and thanks of all.”
Sanji ended his story with the obvious application. He said, “We have been following you elders for a long time along the dark paths of witchcraft and fear and death and we are thirsty still. But,” he ended dramatically, “I know where there is living water!”
He was remarkably successful as an evangelist. In a gospel service, I heard him describe sin. He used one illustration after another to liven up his various points. His final word was on the universality of sin. He ended with a flourish.
“Why,” he said, “it’s just like lice, we all have it!” No one in the audience even smiled. They must have thought it was very apt!
On one occasion, a lady in England, hearing of the fine work Sanji was doing, offered to pay him a salary, so that he could give all his time to the work. Sanji asked Mr. Swan, through whom the offer had come, how he was supported. Mr. Swan told him that he had no salary, but looked to the Lord to supply his daily needs. Sanji asked for a day or two to think about the offer. He was a good hunter. He asked the Lord if He wished him to carry on the work the way he had always done, in dependence on Himself, that He would give some definite sign. The next morning he went out with his gun. He had hardly left the village when a duiker jumped out of the grass. He dropped it with his first shot. He took this as a token from the Lord that He would continue to care for him. He then went back to Mr. Swan and told him to write to the lady thanking her for her offer, but that he wished to continue on, looking to the Lord for his support.
Sawimbu was a real pastor in the New Testament sense of the term. I knew him only in later life, when he was an old man. He was reserved and quiet-spoken with an ample reserve of practical wisdom. Mr. Sanders told me that Sawimbu was mainly responsible for the decision of what attitude to take to polygamy among African people. This was one of the great difficulties in the early days of missionary work. From time immemorial it was the custom for Africans to have more wives than one. Some of the great chiefs had hundreds. A single woman was practically unknown, unless she was an imbecile or hopeless cripple.
It presented a problem to the missionaries when a man with a number of wives became a Christian and presented himself for church membership. Even the missionaries were divided in their judgment as to how the matter was to be decided. At a conference the matter was being discussed. Some argued that it would be unreasonable to expect a higher standard from primitive Africans, than, for instance, from Abraham, Jacob, or David, who were polygamists. Others inferred from the statement, “the husband of one wife,” that an ordinary church member might be a polygamist, but an elder must be the husband of one wife.
After much discussion, Sawimbu quietly arose and said, “Brothers, I think you have all forgotten what the Lord Jesus said about this matter. He said in Matthew 19: ‘From the beginning it was not so. At the beginning, He made them male and female, and for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be one flesh.’ Brothers, if one is thirsty and desires a drink of clear, pure water, he does not go away downstream where the water has been befouled by men and by the feet of animals, but rather to the head of the stream, where it comes bubbling out of the source. I would suggest that in deciding this matter, we should not go to Abraham or Jacob or David, but right back to the fountainhead.” That settled the argument. Since then in Bie, and, for that matter, in most places in Central Africa, church membership is limited to those with one wife and with a clean testimony in their marriage.
At Chilonda there lived a man called Jamba-ye-mina (“pregnant elephant”) whom I came to know and respect. When one of the Sanders children was born, there was no milk for the baby. It was the time of the Bailundu war and the whole country was in an uproar. At Benguela, at the coast, was a box of condensed milk which the Sanders badly needed. Jamba-ye-mina volunteered to go for it. He walked the 350 miles to the coast and on the way down and back had to run the gauntlet of the war parties around Bailundu. But he finally made it and saved the day by delivering the milk. He did not think that there was anything extraordinary in the fact that he had walked about 700 miles and carried a 60-pound load on his head half that distance, so that a missionary’s baby could have the food it needed.
From Angola Beloved by T. E. Wilson.
Available from Gospel Folio Press.