All the warnings other Europeans had given C.T. and Alfred about the dangers of the area rushed into their minds. Both had the uneasy sensation of being watched. C.T. shivered as he stared into the dense foliage surrounding them. He and Alfred were exposed on all sides, clearly visible to anything or anyone concealed in the jungle.
At the sound of a rustle in the foliage behind them, both men spun around in time to see an African man emerge into the sunlight. C.T.’s and Alfred’s eyes were drawn to the bow and arrows the man held in his left hand. The man smiled, but the smile did not put the missionaries at ease. Instead it revealed teeth that had been filed to sharp points—a sure sign of cannibalism.
“I hope he is not one of the Balenda people they told us about at the border,” Alfred remarked.
“Yes,” C.T. agreed.
Only then did C.T. see the basket of sweet potatoes and maize the man was carrying in his right hand. The man, wearing only a tattered shirt, was still smiling. Deciding that he meant them no harm, C.T. used gestures to indicate that he and Alfred were hungry. The African readily came closer and gave C.T. some of the vegetables in his basket. When C.T. offered him some buttons in return, a broad smile spread across the man’s face, his sharpened teeth glistening in the sunlight. Then, suddenly, he beckoned for the two missionaries to follow him as he set off into the jungle. C.T. and Alfred looked at each other, then picked up their bicycles and followed.
C.T. and Alfred followed the man for an hour until they came to another clearing. In this clearing sat a cluster of grass huts. Smoke rose from a fire, and children ran around chasing one another. But as soon as they saw two white men in their village, they stopped playing and gathered round C.T. and Alfred, smiling at them and revealing their sharpened cannibal teeth.
“Do you think this might be a trap and they’re going to kill us and eat us?” Alfred asked, the fear obvious in his voice.
“No, I don’t think so,” came back C.T.’s calm voice. “There are more tender and appetizing animals to eat in the jungle.”
The man led the missionaries to a fire near one of the grass huts. Once he was sure they were seated comfortably, he placed the sweet potatoes and ears of maize into the embers of the fire. Half an hour later, he pulled the vegetables from the embers and served them to C.T. and Alfred. He brought some cooked meat from inside the hut and served it to them as well. The two missionaries, famished after a day lost in the jungle, gobbled down the meat and vegetables. The sweet potatoes and maize were perfectly cooked, and the meat was tender and tasty. C.T. and Alfred weren’t sure what animal the meat came from, and C.T. thought it better not to inquire.
When they had finished eating, C.T. tore some more buttons from his pants to pay for the food.
As C.T. and Alfred stood to leave, the African man seemed to sense that they were lost and turned and pointed into the jungle.
“I think he’s telling us to go that way,” C.T. told Alfred.
Both men shook the man’s hand, picked up their bicycles, and headed in the direction the man had pointed. As they left, the people of the village gathered around and applauded the two missionaries. C.T. waved to them, and then he and Alfred disappeared into the dense jungle.
As they made their way along, C.T. prayed silently, thanking God for keeping them safe. They had survived their first encounter with cannibals. In fact, not only had they survived it, but also they had departed friends. Hall’s dire warning on the eastern shore of Lake Albert two nights before and the words of the Belgian immigration officials at the border had proved unfounded, and C.T., for one, was happy about that.
On realizing that the missionaries might be lost, several of the porters had come into the jungle to look for them. As C.T. and Alfred made their way in the direction the man had pointed, they soon came upon the porters looking for them. By nightfall they were back on the right trail and pitching their tents in a clearing.
The next day the two men bicycled on toward Kilo, though C.T. kept a constant ear out for the sounds of the porters behind them.
Four days later, on June 5, C.T. and Alfred peddled into Kilo. They were no doubt the first people ever to do so, judging by the commotion their bicycles created among the inhabitants of the mining town. People lined up along the main street of the town and yelled and whistled as they watched the two missionaries balance on their strange machines with two wheels.
Soon a Greek trader stepped forward and introduced himself. He spoke in broken English, but his intentions were clear. He invited C.T. and Alfred and their porters to make camp in his compound, where they could stay until they were rested and ready to go on.
C.T. gratefully accepted the offer, assuming that they would be there for a night or two. He had no inkling that it would be three long, uncomfortable months before they would be on their way again.
Chapter 12
In the Heart of Africa
Mail was waiting for C.T. and Alfred at Kilo. The letters, delivered by a runner traveling faster than the missionary party could, contained good news. C.T. was now a grandfather. His daughter Dorothy had given birth to a girl, who had been named Ann. And Alfred’s father wrote not only to apologize for the negative telegram he had sent his son but also to announce that Alfred’s older brother George was preparing to join them in the Congo. C.T. was very relieved to hear the news. It meant not only that his friendship with Barclay Buxton was still intact but also that Alfred now had the full blessing of his father in his missionary endeavor.
The letters also contained some bad news. Priscilla wrote that her heart was failing. She had collapsed while out shopping, and the doctor had confined her to bed for most of the day. However, she was still doing what she could to help the mission. She had written a newsletter for the Heart of Africa Mission and had it printed on heart-shaped pages. About two thousand copies of the newsletter had been mailed out to interested people. Priscilla also informed C.T. that his new mission was being constantly criticized by Christians who thought he should work alongside an existing mission like the Africa Inland Mission, or AIM for short. To make matters worse, some of those criticizing C.T. were members of the Heart of Africa Mission board, which C.T. had set up before he left. Still, C.T. was grateful that two members of the board, his son-in-law Martin Sutton and his old friend Lord Radstock, stood staunchly behind his work and supported Priscilla any way they could.
C.T. wrote back immediately to Priscilla, encouraging her to look to “Dr. Jesus” to heal her. He added,
We can trust Him too little, but we can never trust Him too much.… It is well to look things right in the eye and for God to try us like Gideon. When he has tried us to the utmost we shall come forth like gold. I really believe God has got us in tow and that He intends to execute His work of evangelizing the world. By God’s grace I intend to be in the job for all I’m worth come life or come death, committee or no committee, helper or no helper.
Over the next three months, this statement was to be tested in C.T.’s life. The group of porters who had traveled with C.T. and Alfred to Kilo disbanded, and for the first time since C.T. and Alfred had been in Africa, they had difficulty forming a new team of porters and so couldn’t continue their journey. In addition, little information had been available to C.T. and Alfred about the climate in the Belgian Congo, and what little they had read proved to be very misleading. The men had expected sunny, blue skies and sprinklings of rain. What they got in Kilo was deluges of rain and gusts of wind that lifted their tents off the ground and dashed them against the trees. Sometimes C.T. and Alfred sat in wet clothes for a week at a time, and when a storm hit, they had no shelter from its intense fury.
Despite the miserable conditions and the uncertainty of when they would be able to get enough porters to move on, the two men kept themselves busy. They rose around five o’clock in the morning and had a cup of tea. Then they read their Bibles separately until breakfast at eight. From nine until one in the afternoon, each man worked on his own projects. Alfred set about trying to learn the basics of Bangala, the local trade language, while C.T. wrote tracts and booklets that he sent home to Priscilla to be published. At one, C.T. and Alfred ate lunch and then prayed together. Much to his disgust, C.T. often had to take an afternoon nap, as he tired easily, a lingering effect of his bouts with malaria. After a nap he would work until five, when Alfred would join him for dinner. After dinner C.T. would stroll around town and return to camp in time to go to bed at nine.
The weeks turned into months, and finally, in late August, enough porters had been assembled for the missionaries to proceed with the final stage of their journey to Dungu. On August 28, 1913, C.T. was very glad to peddle out of Kilo and northwest into the Ituri forest.
The Ituri forest stretched on for miles over jagged mountains. The trees were so dense that they let little sunlight reach the forest floor. C.T., Alfred, and the porters made their way along in what seemed to them perpetual twilight. The trail they followed was narrow and treacherous, with large boulders and tree roots blocking their path. C.T. and Alfred soon found themselves carrying their bicycles more than they were riding. To make matters worse, the forest was continually damp. Water dripped from the branches above, causing slippery moss and lichen to grow over everything on the forest floor. At times it seemed to C.T. more like they were walking on ice than through an African jungle. C.T. and Alfred and the porters were constantly slipping and falling. C.T. wrote in his diary that the trail seemed like it was “soaped by the devil night and morning to ensure [its] being slippery.”
After four days the porters had had enough. They laid down their burdens—camping equipment and boxes of food—and disappeared into the forest. C.T. could hardly believe it. He could do nothing else but send Alfred on down the track to the next Belgian government station, or poste, as the stations were called, to try to find some more porters. Alfred’s ability to speak a little of the local language helped him hire some new porters, along with a few of the original ones who wanted to be paid more money before going back into the forest.
Finally, after eleven days of slipping and sliding, the men emerged into the sunlight once again. The grassland of Welle province now surrounded them, and the going was much easier. Soon they arrived at their next stopping place, the poste at Arebi. From there the path to Dungu was much easier for bicycling, and they made good progress. They passed many gardens along the way and were able to buy or trade for rice, millet, monkey nuts, bananas, sweet potatoes, and pineapples. It was a tropical feast to C.T., who could not think of when he had eaten so well.
Six weeks after leaving Kilo, the missionary party arrived at their destination, the unevangelized town of Dungu, or at least that is what C.T. thought when he entered the town. C.T. headed straight for the post office, where he received some disturbing news, not from the mail but from the postmaster.
As he handed C.T. several letters, the postmaster said, “So you are joining the other missionaries, are you?”
“What other missionaries? Surely we are the only missionaries here,” C.T. replied.
The postmaster shook his head and looked down at a list. “No,” he said, “there are four others. They arrived ten days ago and have already been granted land rights to start a mission. Let me see. Their names are Morris, Batstone, Miller, and Clarke.”
C.T. was dumbfounded. He recognized the names of Morris and Batstone—two of the young men who had been waiting for him in Mombasa and then decided not to go with him. “What mission are they with, do you know?” he asked.
