Soon the chief and some of his elders were sitting down with David and his party, eating and drinking heartily. About halfway through the meal, the chief looked confused and spoke to David. “You must tell me why you have come to my village. You do not wish revenge, and you do not have goods to trade. What is your reason for coming among us?”
David laughed. “You come to the point too quickly. When this feast is finished, I will talk to you all. I bring you good news.”
After everyone had eaten his fill, David announced that it was time for the villagers to gather around. Spying a pile of rocks at the south edge of the village, he quickly climbed up on them. In Bantu, he shared the gospel message with the people of the village. The people listened carefully to what he had to say.
As David scrambled from his rocky perch when he had finished speaking, he fell and broke his finger. Although the pain was excruciating, he knew he could not let it show. To do so would make him appear like a child in the eyes of the people. African men and women rarely showed any outward sign of pain. David had observed this many times. He had even cut a one-inch tumor from a woman’s calf muscle while she sat calmly talking to a friend about the corn crop.
David asked Pomare to help him set the finger in a splint. When his finger was properly bandaged, he continued to talk to people about the gospel message one-on-one.
David and the guides stayed in the Bakaa village for several days, and no one tried to harm them in any way. Indeed, the chief spent much time with David, talking to him and asking him questions. He also told David about the terrible fear the people of the Kalahari Desert lived in. To the north of them was a powerful leader, Chief Sebitoane of the Makalolo tribe, and to the east was the legendary Zulu chief, Mosilikatze. Everyone in the area feared an attack from one of these chiefs or the other. This was why everywhere David went, people begged him to stay longer. They thought it would make them safer having a white man living among them.
By the time David had to leave to return to Kuruman, he and the chief were good friends. In fact, the chief insisted his own son accompany David south to safer territory.
The chief’s son turned out to be very helpful as the group made its way back across the edge of the desert. He knew about the various plants in the Kalahari that could thrive on very little water. David watched as the chief’s son carefully dug up roots from the sandy ground and chose the fruit from specific plants to eat. As best he could, David drew each of the edible plants in his notebook, recording the parts of them that were useful or edible. Before the trip was over, he had identified thirty-two roots and forty-three fruits in the Kalahari Desert that could be eaten.
In late June 1842, David Livingstone arrived back at Kuruman; he had been away for nearly five months. Although the Reverend Moffat had not yet returned from England, Roger Edwards and William Ross had been working hard at the mission. Indeed, David was greatly impressed with their results. On July 13, 1842, he wrote to his father that “souls are gathered in continually, and sometimes from among those you would never have expected to see turning to the Lord. Twenty-four were added to the church last month and there are several inquiries….”
Although he was delighted by the success of his fellow missionaries at Kuruman, David couldn’t get out of his mind the image of so many undiscovered tribes who had never heard the gospel message. Although he itched to head north again, it was not possible right then. Fighting had broken out among the tribes, and although David was willing to brave being among such hostilities, he could not convince anyone to go with him, at least not for a while. He was stuck in Kuruman for the time being.
Still, there was a lot to be done in Kuruman, and David set to work with enthusiasm. He visited the surrounding tribes and preached to them, mended the mission’s printing press, supervised the building of a small chapel at another mission station, and visited the sick each afternoon. He was busy and happy, but always he had an ear open for news that the fighting had stopped and it was safe to travel north.
Eight months after completing his previous trip, circumstances were finally right for David and a group of Africans to travel north. First, David wanted to visit his old friend Chief Sechele and the Bakwain people. He knew the chief was angry with him for visiting and helping Chief Bubi and his village. Indeed, Chief Sechele had gone so far as to send word to Kuruman that if David dared to come back to the village he would not be welcome, and harm might even come to him. As usual, David was not put off by such threats, and after eight days of traveling, he arrived at Chief Sechele’s village. It was not the same village he had visited earlier. That village had been destroyed by the fighting, and a new one, called Chonuane, had been built farther east.
Those traveling with David need not have been concerned about the reception they would receive from Chief Sechele. The chief was glad to see David again, and with good reason. The chief’s son was very sick, and everyone expected him to die soon. A European doctor was his only hope. David immediately examined the sick boy. It did not take him long to make a diagnosis: The boy was suffering from severe dysentery. David gave him some medicine and watched over him carefully. Eventually, the boy began to recover. Chief Sechele was so grateful that he never mentioned the threats he had made against David. It was as if he and David had always been friends.
Chief Sechele began to ask David many questions about his religion. He wanted to know why, if it was so important for people to hear of this God, had it taken so long for white men to come and tell the Africans about Him. This was one question David had no answer for.
After visiting Chief Sechele, David pressed farther north and east, right into the territory of the Matebele people. Wherever he went, he was welcomed, and he spent many hours sitting at fires in the evenings listening to local stories and legends. Whenever possible he told his own stories about being a boy in Scotland, and always he was careful to include the gospel message with his stories.
Four hundred miles and four months later, David and his group rolled back into Kuruman. David hoped desperately that the Reverend Moffat was back. After all, David had been in Africa for two years now and was still awaiting instructions as to what he should be doing, but the Reverend Moffat was nowhere to be seen. There was some good news, however. A letter had arrived from the directors of the London Missionary Society giving David and Roger Edwards permission to set up a mission station farther north among the Bechuana people. David knew exactly where to build it. On his first trip north, he had eyed a piece of land near the village of Mabotsa where two streams ran together, creating a lush triangle of land covered with large, shady trees. That was where David and Roger hoped to establish the mission station.
Another letter was waiting for David when he arrived at Kuruman. It was from Mrs. Robert, the wife of a pastor in Scotland. Mrs. Robert had collected and sent to David twelve pounds to be used to hire a native Christian helper, or agent, as they were called, to be a preacher.
By the end of July 1843, David Livingstone and Roger Edwards were ready to head out and establish the new station. David used the twelve pounds that Mrs. Roberts had sent to him to hire one of the best native agents in the area, a man named Mebalwe, who was glad to go north with the group.
It was now winter in southern Africa, the best time of year for traveling. Before the group left, three hunters and their African helpers, who numbered about thirty, stopped at Kuruman. The three hunters, headed north on a hunting expedition, were Englishmen. Two had come to Africa from India, and one had come from the West Indies. Besides their African helpers, they had a number of horses with them that were laden down with tents and all manner of supplies, from silver boot brushes to folding water stands. David was repulsed by the idea of hunting the wonderful African wildlife for nothing more than a few trophies, such as a tusk or a skin or a mounted head. Despite his feelings about what the hunters were going to do, he greatly enjoyed their company. He especially liked Captain Thomas Steele, who was aide-de-camp to the governor of Madras in India. The two men struck up a friendship and planned to travel north together.
This was the first time that David Livingstone had been in the company of very wealthy men. David chuckled to himself that money couldn’t buy much in the African bush. And for all the guides and servants the three hunters had with them, David was surprised that whenever they stopped for the night, the missionaries always had their camp set up long before the hunters and their entourage. This was because the missionaries and their African helpers worked as a team to set up camp. David and Roger Edwards didn’t just sit around and wait for their helpers to set everything up for them, as did the hunters. David wrote about this in a letter home to his family.
When we arrive at a spot where we intend to spend the night, all hands immediately unyoke the oxen. Then one or two of the company collect wood; one of us strikes up a fire, another gets out the water-bucket and fills the kettle; a piece of meat is thrown on the fire, and if we have biscuits, we are at our coffee in less than half an hour after arriving. Our friends, perhaps, sit or stand shivering at their fire for two or three hours before they get their things ready, and are glad occasionally for a cup of coffee from us.
Two weeks after the missionaries set out from Kuruman, they reached the site for their new mission station. They were welcomed by the Bechuana people, and after some negotiating, Chief Moseealele agreed to sell them the piece of land they sought for the mission station.
Roger Edwards got straight to work building a mission house similar to the one at Kuruman. The house was fifty feet long and eighteen feet wide, with a veranda running along one side of it. Within a week, the shell of the building was up, a feat that seemed to greatly please Roger. David, though, was less enthusiastic. Each day spent hammering and plastering was a day he was not spending getting to know the people. Still, since the building would serve as a good base for his missionary work, David helped Roger with the construction as best he could.
The work on the new mission house gave David time to think. After spending over two years in Africa, David was disappointed that his time there had turned out to be very different from the way he had imagined it would be. Getting things done in Africa was more often than not slow and complicated. Yet the African people themselves more than made up for these disappointments. David loved being with them, listening to them, learning from them, and, in return, meeting their physical and spiritual needs. Still, in a letter to a friend he outlined two specific problems that made a missionary’s work particularly difficult, especially the job of taking the gospel message farther inland.
The first problem David outlined was fever. Various fevers and illnesses in Africa could kill a person overnight. Chief among them was malaria. Nobody really knew how people caught malaria, but if a white person stayed in Africa long enough, it was only a matter of time before he or she became seriously ill or died from it. So far David had not contracted the disease.
The second problem was the tsetse fly. There was no mystery here. This little fly was the scourge of Africa. It swarmed in many parts of the country, and its bite was fatal to horses, oxen, cattle and sheep. The animals would become weak and sickly and then flop down on their bellies and refuse to get up again. The tsetse fly made it risky to take any expedition inland using horses or oxen. At any time the livestock could die, leaving the travelers without any transportation except their own two feet.
