In early February 1913, Albert Schweitzer passed his final practical surgical exam and was awarded his doctorate in medicine. He was jubilant. It had taken him six exhausting years, but he’d done it. Now he and Hélène could begin their final preparations for Africa.
A month later, on March 9, 1913, Albert preached a farewell sermon at the Church of St. Nicholas in Strasbourg. As the text for his sermon he chose Philippians 4:7: “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Albert went on to explain that the peace of God is like the distant snow-covered peaks of a mountain range which gleam in the sun as they rise above the mist. Hidden in the mist are foothills, which everyone who wishes to reach the peaks must climb. Many people are happy to live in the mist and not concern themselves with reaching the peaks, but the Christian life requires us to keep reaching higher and accepting new challenges.
Buoyed by the best wishes of the congregation members in Strasbourg, Albert and Hélène traveled on to Gunsbach, where Albert gave a farewell sermon to his family and friends on March 16. This service was an emotional ordeal for Albert, especially because his mother barely spoke to him. Although Albert wished he could reassure her that everything would turn out fine, he realized he couldn’t guarantee that.
On the morning of Good Friday, March 21, 1913, it was time for Albert to say goodbye to his family. His mother stood by mutely as he and Hélène hugged everyone around them and climbed aboard the train for Strasbourg. In Strasbourg the couple spent a night with Hélène’s parents and caught the train to Paris the following day. Upon arrival in Paris, they enjoyed Charles-Marie Widor’s Easter organ recital at Saint-Sulpice.
At the recital Albert learned that the Bach Society of Paris had a gift for him. They had ordered a specially built piano as a thank-you for his long years of service to the music of J.S. Bach. The interior of the three-ton upright piano was encased in zinc to help it withstand the tropical climate of Africa. The instrument was also fitted with organ pedals instead of the normal piano pedals, so that Albert could keep up his footwork practice in Africa. The new piano was waiting for him in Bordeaux. Albert was touched by the thoughtfulness of the gesture, though he doubted he would have the time or energy to continue his music in Africa. That was something he’d already come to terms with. However, just in case he did have the time, Albert had packed five hundred music manuscripts to take with him.
Following the recital in Paris, the Schweitzers caught another train for the 350-mile trip south to Bordeaux. There they collected seventy crates of equipment for the new hospital that had been sent on ahead. The crates, the new piano, and all their other baggage had to clear customs before being loaded onto the steamer Europe, which was docked at Pauillac in La Gironde Estuary, a few miles downriver from Bordeaux.
March 26, 1913, was a sunny day with the promise of spring in the air. Hélène and Albert stood together on the deck of the Europe as it left the estuary and sailed out into the Bay of Biscay.
Albert had traveled around France, Germany, and several other European countries by train and sometimes on his bicycle, but he’d never sailed on a ship before. At first, he found the movement of the Europe beneath his feet a little disconcerting. Not only did the vessel roll from side to side between port and starboard, but also it pitched back and forth from bow to stern with the motion of the ocean currents. It reminded Albert of the rocking horse he had had as a child. By evening he felt he was getting used to the ship’s motion, and he accompanied Hélène to the dining salon, where they ate dinner with the other three hundred passengers.
As they readied for bed that night, Albert noticed that the Europe was beginning to pitch and roll more and more violently. Soon after he and Hélène had crawled into their bunks, the two trunks stowed in their cabin began sliding across the cabin and crashing into the bulkheads. Albert climbed from his bunk to secure the trunks, but his timing was wrong. One of the trunks came hurtling toward him, and he had to dive back into his bunk for safety. Albert and Hélène spent the rest of the night listening to the sliding and banging of their trunks. As he lay there, Albert thought of the seventy crates of equipment in the ship’s hold. Were they tied down well enough to stay in place in the turbulent swells? And the piano—what damage would it suffer if it came loose and started rolling about?
In the morning the steward came to the cabin to check on the couple. He showed Albert the correct way to tie down the trunks so they wouldn’t have to endure another night like that. Albert listened with interest as the steward explained that ships like the Europe that plied the African coast were known as Congo boats. They had shallow drafts that allowed them to enter sandy harbors and river estuaries. But the shallow drafts also caused them to pitch and roll at sea much more than other ships, especially in the heavy swells they were currently experiencing.
The steward informed Albert and Hélène that things aboard were probably going to get a lot worse, as the ship appeared to be headed into a storm. His prediction proved correct. For the next three days the ship was lashed by fierce wind and rain. The Europe pitched and rolled so violently that the cooks couldn’t prepare meals in the galley. Because it was also too dangerous for passengers to move about the vessel, Albert and Hélène stayed safely in their cabin.
The storm abated shortly before the Europe reached Tenerife in the Canary Islands, two hundred miles off the western coast of North Africa. By the time Albert made it out on deck, two barges had been tied up alongside the ship, and coal was being loaded into the Europe’s bunkers to fire the boilers. Albert checked on the state of things in the hold. He was relieved to discover that the piano and all the crates were still securely lashed down.
By mid-afternoon the coal bunkers had been filled, and more food supplies had been taken aboard. The captain then gave the order to weigh anchor, and the Europe steamed away from Tenerife, headed south.
The next day most of those aboard began wearing pith helmets whenever they went outside. When one of the ship’s officers saw that Albert and Hélène were not wearing their helmets, he took Albert aside. “Even though the weather is not hot yet,” he told him, “from today on, you must regard the sun as your worst enemy, whether it is rising, high in the sky, or setting, and even if it is cloudy. Take it from me, many people get dangerous sunstroke before they even get close to the equator. You must wear your helmet outdoors to help protect yourself from this enemy.” Albert unpacked his pith helmet and wore it whenever he was above deck.
With the storm of the first few days behind them, the passengers got to know each other. Albert discovered that most of the other passengers were either army officers, doctors, or civil service officials traveling to France’s African colonies. From them Albert gleaned helpful information about the hardships and challenges of living in Africa. One of the most helpful people was a military doctor with twelve years’ experience. He was on his way to become director of the Bacteriological Institute in Grand Bassam on the Ivory Coast. After an initial conversation, he agreed to meet with Albert for two hours each morning and give him a thorough and practical understanding of the tropical diseases he would encounter, along with the latest practices for treating them. Albert was grateful for this extra schooling.
After steaming south for a thousand miles, the Europe arrived off Dakar, Senegal, which was part of French West Africa. When the ship docked, Albert and Hélène went ashore. At the bottom of the gangplank, Albert paused and took a deep breath before setting foot in Africa for the first time. He and Hélène were now standing together on the continent where they’d pledged to serve God. The weather was hot and humid, and Albert’s forehead was covered with beads of sweat, which he dabbed with a large handkerchief pulled from the pocket of his white pants.
From the harbor’s edge, the city spread steeply upwards. As they made their way through the bustle of people carrying all manner of packages and baskets, Albert and Hélène reached some market stalls. Albert recognized some of the fruits and vegetables for sale, but there were other items he’d never seen before.
During their excursion, Albert and Hélène followed one of the streets up a hill. As he rounded a corner, Albert was confronted by an overloaded donkey cart stuck axle-deep in mud. Two African men sat atop the cart, whipping and yelling at the bedraggled donkeys to pull harder. Albert’s mind flashed back to the mistreated horse he had seen when he was a small boy visiting his aunt in Colmar. Now here he was in Africa, his new home, witnessing the same cruelty toward animals.
Albert couldn’t hold his peace. He could not stand to see the two men abuse the donkeys a moment longer. He yelled at them to climb down from the cart. At first the African men seemed unsure what to do, but eventually they climbed down. Albert got behind the cart and motioned for them to join him. The three men pushed the cart free of the mud. As he walked away, Albert was sure this wouldn’t be the last case of animal cruelty he would witness.
From Dakar, the Europe made its way to Conakry in Guinea. As it sailed on from there, the ship was now almost always within sight of the coast. When he wasn’t reading or writing letters, Albert stood on deck and studied the coastline as it slipped by. He was surprised by the jungle’s vivid shades of green. And when he studied the coastline through a telescope, he could see the pointed roofs of African huts and smoke rising from cooking fires.
At each port where the ship stopped, it was time to bid farewell to some new friends they’d made on the journey from France. Each time, Albert wondered whether he would ever see those people again, or whether one of the many dangers of living in Africa would claim their lives.
Early on April 13, 1913, the Europe reached Libreville, a thriving city on the coast of Gabon in French Equatorial Africa. From Libreville the ship sailed on to Cape Lopez, eight hours away. On Monday, April 14, it was Albert and Hélène’s turn to disembark the Europe. The first leg of their journey to Lambaréné was over. As their personal luggage, the seventy crates, and the piano were unloaded onto the dock, Albert was apprehensive. On the journey down he’d heard many tales of how customs officers overcharged and mistreated arriving passengers. He need not have worried. The customs officer treated him and Hélène fairly. Albert breathed a sigh of relief.
Early the next morning, Albert and Hélène boarded the steamer Alémbé, a broad, shallow-drafted riverboat with two paddle wheels set side by side at her stern. It was time to start the trip up the Ogowe River to Lambaréné.
Chapter 9
Lambaréné at Last
On April 15, 1913, Albert wrote,
River and forest . . . ! Who can describe the first impression they make? . . . It is impossible to say where the river ends and the land begins, for a mighty network of roots, clothed with bright-flowering creepers, projects right into the water. Clumps of palms and palm trees, ordinary trees spreading out widely with green boughs and huge leaves, single trees of the pine family shooting up to a towering height between them, wide fields of papyrus clumps as tall as a man, with big fan-like leaves, and amid all this luxuriant greenery the rotting stems of dead giants shooting up to heaven. . . . In every gap in the forest a water mirror meets the eye; at every bend in the river a new tributary shows itself. . . . So it goes on hour by hour. . . . Always the same forest and the same yellow water. . . . You shut your eyes for an hour, and when you open them you see exactly what you saw before!
As Albert wrote, he and Hélène sat on the deck of the Alémbé as the steamer plied the waters of the Ogowe River between its delta and Ndjolé. About 150 miles upstream, Ndjolé was the last navigable point of the massive river.
