The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A RomanceJohnston, Harry
General
The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
Johnston, Harry
British -- Africa, East -- Fiction; Missions -- Tanzania -- Fiction
There is not much news from the interior. I hear that Ali-bin-Ferhani
got rewarded by the Germans for saving Hangodi Station, and that Mbogo
is still chief there in name, the real chief of the district being Ann
Anderson, or Mgozimke—"The man-woman," as the natives call her.
In haste to catch the mail....
Your loving
ROGER.
_From the same to the same._
Mwada, The Happy Valley,
_July_ 28, 1891.
MY OWN DEAR WIFE,—
I reached the shores of the lake—which I now find is called Lawa ya
mweri—and the end of the Happy Valley on—as near as I can reckon—June
20. (The Stotts have no almanacs and are quite indifferent to dates,
times, seasons; they live under some enchantment, they tell me, since
they came here, like the legends of people carried off to Fairyland.) I
met Mr. Stott at Burungi, which now looks a flourishing station. The
Wagogo seem to me quite recalcitrant to Christianity, but the Stotts
have to keep this up as a depôt for their traffic with the coast, and
they are helped in this by the German Government.... Stott and I
journeyed together through the Irangi country almost in state. The
Stotts have become enormously popular as "medicine men." They have
stopped epidemics of small-pox by vaccinating the people, have shown
them how to stay the ravages of the burrowing fleas, and they are making
a dead set against infanticide, having found one or two leading chiefs
sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the importance of a large
population. Formerly, as you may remember, there was such a prejudice
against female babies that they were often exposed to the hyenas outside
the tembe, and all children who came into the world by an irregular
presentation, or with a tooth already through the gum, likewise all
twins, were either thrown into the lake or abandoned to the carnivorous
ants or prowling carnivores. (There is a curious legend here—Stott
says—that sometimes these unhappy infants were picked up by female
baboons of the Chakma type and nursed by them with their own offspring.)
Well: you can imagine, having lived already in these parts, what the
infant death-rate amounted to. But the local chiefs having had the
whole theory exposed to them have sanctioned a crusade against
infanticide for any reason. The Wa-rangi have further been persuaded to
abandon the custom of burning alive women suspected of adultery. I did
not like to tell you at the time, but as we passed through the Irangi
country in November, ’88, they were actually killing unfortunate women
in this manner. They believe that if a man goes out hunting and makes a
bad miss in throwing his spear or assegai at an elephant it is because
his wife is untrue to him at home! So when he returns from the chase
his wretched spouse is trussed up and bound to the top of a great pile
of brushwood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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