Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside SchoolsBrawley, Benjamin Griffith
History
Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside Schools
Brawley, Benjamin Griffith
African American women -- Biography; Women -- Biography
For two years she labored at Palabala, frequently writing letters home
and occasionally sending back to her beloved Spelman a box of curios.
Said she of those among whom she worked: "When the people are first
gathered into a chapel for school or religious services, it is sad and
amusing to see how hard they try to know just what to do, a number
sitting with their backs to the preacher or teacher. When the teacher
reproves a child, every man, woman, and child feels it his or her duty
to yell out too at the offender and tell him to obey the teacher. Often
in the midst of a sermon a man in the congregation will call out to the
preacher, 'Take away your lies,' or 'We do not believe you,' or 'How can
this or that be?' One of the first workers, after speaking to a crowd of
heathen, asked them all to close their eyes and bow their heads while he
would pray to God. When the missionary had finished his prayer and
opened his eyes, every person had stealthily left the place." Then
followed a detail of the atrocities in the Congo and of the encounters
between the natives and the Belgian officers, and last of all came the
pertinent comment: "The Congo missionary's work is twofold. He must
civilize, as well as Christianize, the people."
Early in 1891 Nora Gordon, sadly in need of rest and refreshment, went
from Palabala for a little stay at Lukungu. Hither had come Clara A.
Howard, Spelman's second representative, under appointment of the
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the East. Lukungu is a station two
hundred and twenty miles from the mouth of the Congo, in a populous
district, and was the center from which numerous other schools and
churches sprang. The work was in charge of Mr. Hoste, an Englishman,
who, when Miss Gordon wrote of him in 1894, had spent ten years on the
Congo without going home. Other men were associated with him, while the
elementary schools, the care of the boys and girls, and work among the
women, naturally fell to the women missionaries. A little later in 1891
Nora Gordon left Palabala permanently to engage in the work at Lukungu.
Under date September 25 she wrote to her friends back home: "Doubtless
Clara has told you of my change to this place. You can not imagine how
glad we are to be together here. I have charge of the printing-office
and help in the afternoon school. I am well, happy, and am enjoying my
work. In the office I have few conveniences and really not the things we
need. Mr. Hoste has written the first arithmetic in this language and I
am now putting it up. I was obliged to stop work on it to-day because my
figures in type gave out, and you know we have no shops in this land.
My boys in the office are doing nicely."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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