After the men from the missions board left, Mary began to get restless. In Old Town, she was living just on the edge of a vast, unexplored wilderness filled with people she wanted to teach and help. She hired some local girls to look after her babies and started making longer and longer treks along the jungle tracks that led inland. Sometimes she went alone. On these treks, she was mindful of the instructions Mrs. Sutherland had given her when she first arrived in Calabar. So while she walked, she made lots of noise so as not to surprise the wild animals, especially leopards, which normally attack only when caught off guard. Mary sang hymns as loudly as she could and clapped her hands and stomped her feet.
Mary’s reputation went before her. More often than not, Mary found that people in the villages she visited had already heard of the “white ma” with the flaming hair, although her hair was no longer fashionably long, as it had been when she first arrived in Calabar. Since she found it hard to keep long hair washed and pinned up in such an environment, she cut it very short. The other missionary women were aghast, but Mary couldn’t have cared less. It was more practical to have short hair, and that was all that mattered.
Early in 1883, Mary received an invitation from Chief Okon to visit him and tell his people about the white man’s God. Chief Okon lived at Ibaka about twenty miles west of Old Town, along a swampy delta tributary of the Cross River. Mary eagerly accepted the invitation and began making plans. She sent word to Duke Town that she would need a canoe and paddlers to take her to Ibaka and collect her two weeks later. She planned to take the four oldest children in her care with her. She made arrangements for the younger ones to be taken care of while she was away.
Mary’s friend King Eyo heard of her plan and sent his men to try to dissuade her from going. He pointed out that the invitation could be a trick and she could easily be taken captive. Or she could be eaten by crocodiles on the way, or her canoe could be attacked by a hippopotamus. But Mary was convinced she should go. In the end, King Eyo insisted on providing his own royal canoe and paddlers to transport her to the village. He told Mary, “I do not want you to arrive there as a nameless stranger to a strange people, but as a lady and as our mother.”
Mary was humbled by the king’s generosity and even more amazed when his canoe finally paddled into Old Town. King Eyo had about four hundred canoes, but he had sent his biggest and most lavishly decorated one to transport Mary. The canoe was forty feet long and about five feet wide. In the middle was a small shelter, where Mary and the children would be able to rest in the shade and sleep a little along the way. The king had even had the canoe freshly painted bright yellow and red, which probably accounted for why it arrived in the early evening instead of after breakfast as promised. Mary organized her few pieces of luggage in the canoe, and then she had eight sacks of rice—a gift for Chief Okon—loaded aboard. Lastly, she lifted in the four children and then climbed in herself. Despite the late hour, they set off for Ibaka.
The people of Old Town yelled from the water’s edge. “Be careful. Don’t trust them. If they kill you, we promise to avenge your murder.”
It was hardly a cheerful farewell, and Mary was glad when Old Town was out of sight. She knew the people were warning her out of concern, but they were beginning to make her nervous!
The jungle had an eerie quality to it at night. It was filled with unidentifiable sounds, which Mary tried not to think about. Instead, Mary chose to concentrate on the rhythmic chants of the paddlers, who sang on through the night. Three drums kept time, and a man in the back made up words to sing, “Ho! Ho! We are honored. Ho! Ho! We have our white ma with us. Ho! Ho! On we go into the night.”
The children quickly fell asleep, and Mary, who was perched on a sack of rice, quickly found sleep as well.
The brilliant African sunrise the following morning came quickly, heralded by the trumpet of a distant elephant and the squawk of colorful parrots overhead. Mary rubbed her sleepy eyes, grateful to the men for paddling all night to get her to Ibaka. As the canoe rounded a bend in the river, there was the village perched on the side of a hill. A minute later, the canoe was scraping along the bottom of the silty river. Mary readied herself to clamber out of the canoe.
“No! No, White Ma! You must stay where you are,” yelled the lead paddler, splashing through the water to get to Mary. “You are not to get wet. King Eyo said so. We are to carry you,” the paddler explained as he beckoned to another man.
The two men fashioned a chair with their hands for Mary to sit on, and then they hoisted her out of the canoe and onto dry land. But they didn’t put her down. To Mary’s surprise, they carried her through the village, right to the chief’s door. As they set her down, one of them said, “The people must see what an honor it is to have White Ma for a guest.”
Mary was touched, but she noted that most of the villagers the paddlers had been trying to impress had run away and hid when they saw her. Once again she found herself in a place where most people had never seen anyone with blue eyes, red hair, and pink, freckly skin. Still, she was sure their curiosity would overcome their fear in the end and they would creep back to see what she was doing.
Chief Okon’s servant ushered Mary inside, along with the four children, who trailed behind her. As she made her way inside, Mary overheard the paddlers impressing upon the chief’s guards that they had better take care of her or there would be trouble when they came back to get her in two weeks.
The chief was grateful that Mary had come, and he spared nothing to make her stay as comfortable as possible, at least to his way of thinking. Mary spent most of the day eating and talking about the Bible with Chief Okon and attending to the medical needs of his household. She lanced several boils, disinfected and dressed a number of open sores, and even stitched up a cut so that it could heal properly.
As she dressed wounds, Mary noticed she’d been right. People began to creep up and watch her. First it was just a few, but the number continued to grow, until it seemed that the entire village was following her from hut to hut. As Mary worked away, one of the chief’s wives yelled reports on everything Mary did for those who were too far back to see her for themselves. If nothing else, Mary decided, she’d brought free entertainment to the village.
When night began to fall, Chief Okon showed Mary to his own room, where she and the children were to spend the night. The room had no door or windows, just holes where they would have been. Soon black heads were popping in and out of the holes, watching as Mary prepared herself and the children for bed. Mary did hang a blanket in the doorway while she undressed and got into her nightgown, but she took it down again afterwards, not wanting to appear to have anything to hide.
Mary had just finished singing the children to sleep when two of Chief Okon’s fat senior wives waddled into the hut, laughing and slapping each other. Mary knew instantly why they were there. They were going to keep her warm by sleeping beside her! It was a custom in Calabar for honored guests to sleep between the fattened, well-oiled wives of the chief. A wave of revulsion swept over Mary, but she knew they meant her no harm. She forced herself to smile and welcomed them into the room. She lay down, and the two wives lay down, one on either side of her. Mary almost gagged at the heavy scent of coconut oil that hung over them all, but she felt it was important to respect their customs as long as they didn’t conflict with anything in the Bible.
The chief’s wives fell asleep almost immediately, snoring loudly while Mary lay sandwiched between them. As she lay there, Mary wondered what the church back in Dundee would say if they could see her now, or even how the missionaries in Duke Town would react. Mary knew her perspective was changing. She had begun to cross over from looking at what would be acceptable in Scotland to what was acceptable in Calabar. If God allowed her to live longer, Mary knew she would soon feel more at home among Africans than among Scottish people.
By midnight, Mary felt like she was suffocating. With no door or windows, there was no air movement in the room. Mary could hear rats scurrying over the thatched roof and unknown animals sniffing and snorting around the yard. Finally, just before dawn, she fell asleep.
Despite the lack of sleep, the days went by quickly. Mary continued to dress wounds and attend to sick people as well as hold Bible services each morning and evening. The local people were in awe of how well she spoke their language. Indeed, some people came just to hear a white woman with an “Efik mouth.”
On the sixth night, a storm swept through the village without warning. The chief’s hut was lit up by sizzling forks of lightning, and the wind roared through the door. The four children climbed into Mary’s bed and squeezed themselves between Mary and the chief’s wives. Things crashed and banged around them, but Mary knew it was safer to stay inside than to venture out. Suddenly there was a huge gust of wind, and the roof of the hut lifted into the air and disappeared. Mary, the children, and the chief’s wives found themselves deluged with rain. The two wives began to cling to Mary just like the children. Mary knew that she had to take charge of the situation.
“Come on, children, let’s sing,” Mary yelled bravely over the wind and then began singing one of her favorite hymns. Soon everyone joined in. By the time the storm had passed, everyone was hoarse from singing. It was still dark, but one of the chief’s servants brought a reed lamp for light. Next, the servants pulled a cloth over the rafters to form a makeshift roof. The box of clothing Mary had brought with her was still dry, and Mary found a change of clothes for each of the children. She settled them down on the platform bed with the chief’s wives to keep them warm, then dried herself off and took a dose of quinine. She felt sure the drenching she’d just received would bring on another bout of malaria.
Mary was right. By morning, she had all the classic symptoms of the sickness—chattering teeth, aching bones, and inability to concentrate. The chief’s wives, who had suffered no lasting effects from the storm, were very concerned for her. Mary gave them instructions on what to do with the children if she were to die, took another dose of quinine, and drifted back to sleep.
It was three days before Mary was well enough to get out of bed and leave the hut. When she did, she was shocked at the devastation the storm had caused. Just about every hut was damaged, and some were completely destroyed. Huge kapok trees had been uprooted and hurled onto their sides by the wind, and many canoes had been dashed to pieces or washed down the river.
Amid all of the commotion, Mary began to sense something else was wrong. She heard snippets of information whispered from one woman to another. Eventually, she got one of them to tell her what was going on. The storm had ripped a hole in the back fence of the wives’ compound of one of the senior men in the village. Thirty of the man’s wives were housed there, and the two newest wives, both sixteen years old, had escaped through the hole and spent the night with a young man from the village. The two had been discovered, and a special meeting, or palaver, as it was known, had been called to discuss punishment.
Of course, only the men of the village got to participate in the palaver, so the women waited tensely to see what the punishment would be. Mary waited with them. After an hour or so, the meeting came to a close, and Mary wasted no time in asking for an audience with Chief Okon.
“What did you decide to do with the girls?” she asked, getting straight to the point.
The chief, who would not have tolerated such a question from any of his own women, answered her directly. “They have done wrong. They will get one hundred lashes each.”
