Mary’s mouth dropped open. She knew one hundred lashes meant nothing less than a long, slow death for the two girls. Their backs and legs would be shredded to pieces by the whip, and the infection that would set into the wounds would surely kill them. Mary had to think of a way to save them.
“Recall the palaver,” Mary abruptly demanded in her most firm voice. “I want to speak on the girls’ behalf.” She held her breath, waiting to see what the chief’s reaction would be.
“I cannot do that. The sentence has been set,” Chief Okon replied.
“Did you ask me to come here and tell you about God?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” replied the chief.
“Well then,” she continued, “I wish to tell you what God thinks of the girls’ behavior and of your punishment.”
For a brief moment, Chief Okon looked confused, and Mary knew she had said the right thing.
“Very well,” the chief finally sighed. “But the men will not be pleased to hear from you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mary was sitting cross-legged in the palaver hut. The two girls sat opposite. For a brief moment, Mary thought about the dangerous situation she had put herself in, but her concern for the girls gave her courage. She cleared her throat and spoke loudly. “I want to tell you girls that you have brought shame on your husband’s house. You should not have run off in the night like you did.”
The two girls looked shocked at what Mary had said, while the men all sat a little straighter, smiling and nodding as if to say, So the white man’s God agrees with us!
The men did not smile for long. Next Mary turned to them. “It is disgraceful that you continue to take young girls to be your brides when you have all the wives and children you could ever need. The young women should be given to the young men in the village, not cooped up for the rest of their lives in a yard waiting for some old man to summon them.”
Mary blushed as she spoke. Coming from Victorian Britain, she knew she was talking about indelicate matters that a well-bred woman would never talk about in front of a man. But she reminded herself that this was Africa and Africa was different.
The men began to yell at Mary, and Mary yelled right back at them! After an hour, tempers calmed, and the men agreed to reduce the girls’ punishment to ten lashes each—that was as low as they would go.
Mary thanked the men and returned to her hut. At least the girls had a chance to live now if they received immediate care. As she opened her medical bag and took out several bandages and an amber bottle of laudanum, a powerful painkiller, Mary could hear the crowd gather, and then she heard the slash of a rawhide whip. She stood rooted to the spot, counting. One, two, three. Would Chief Okon honor his word? The first girl’s piercing screams split the air. Eight, nine, ten. The lashes stopped, and Mary breathed a prayer of thanks and hurried out the door.
Several women were already half carrying, half dragging the first girl to Mary. Mary beckoned them inside, where they lay the naked girl on her bed, and went to retrieve the second girl, who was screaming loudly in the background with each lash of the whip. Mary went straight to work. She spooned some laudanum into the girl’s mouth, then began tending the wounds.
The second girl arrived screaming and writhing in pain and was laid facedown beside the first girl. Within minutes, the floor was awash in blood as Mary cleaned the long, deep lashmarks that the whip had cut into the girls’ backs and legs. Then Mary bandaged the wounds as best she could.
The two girls lay in Mary’s room, where Mary tended to them for the remainder of her visit to Ibaka. When it was time for her to go, she showed one of the chief’s wives how to change the bandages and look after the girls. Mary hoped the girls recovered fully, though she wasn’t at all sure the men wouldn’t hold another palaver and reverse their decision on the punishment after she had left.
After two weeks in Ibaka, which seemed more like a month to Mary, it was time for Mary to return to Old Town. The babies needed her, and it was time to start school up again. Chief Okon insisted that Mary travel home in his canoe, and he invited her to return as soon as possible. Mary assured him she would indeed return—and soon—but once again, sickness would change her plans.
Chapter 10
Janie
The local women wailed loudly and reached out to touch Mary as she was carried down to the canoe. It was March 1883, and Mary had become sick, too sick to medicate herself and wait for the illness to pass. To recover this time she needed to be in Duke Town, where she could get proper medical care.
Within the past month, two missionaries had died in Calabar. One of them was Samuel Edgerley, one of Mary’s good friends. Samuel had gone to explore farther up the Calabar River. He had managed to get to Atam, 160 miles inland. On the way back, he had become ill and had to stop and rest in a village. Alas, the hammock he was sleeping in snapped in the night, dumping him onto the floor, where he hurt his back. Samuel’s crew, not knowing what else to do, loaded him into the canoe and paddled all the way back to Duke Town. Samuel Edgerley died soon after arriving back and before he was able to tell anyone about what he had seen so far upriver.
Soon after this, Dr. McKenzie fell ill and died. He had been sick on and off for about a year, often needing to be carried to a patient’s bedside so that he could diagnose the patient’s condition and prescribe medicine.
Mary felt herself being laid gently into the bottom of the canoe ready for the trip downriver to Duke Town. She had already made arrangements as to what should happen to the children if she did not return—that is, all except for one child. Two weeks before, Mary had raced through the jungle in the middle of the night hoping to reach a pair of twins before they were killed. A woman from a neighboring village had risked her life to inform Mary of their birth. Mary arrived just as a hole was being cut in the back of the hut to pass the twins out. Since the villagers believed it meant extra bad luck to carry a twin baby out through the door of a hut, a special exit hole had been cut and then was mudded over later. The twins were still alive, and Mary raced into the hut, yelling wildly. She grabbed the two babies and ran back into the jungle, leaving behind a startled group of relatives who had come to witness the killing of the twins.
The relatives did not follow Mary back along the trail to Old Town. It was too dangerous to travel through the jungle in the dark of night. Mary, though, didn’t care; she had the two babies tucked safely under her arms, and she prayed aloud and recited psalms as she ran. When she got back to her hut in Old Town, she lit a reed lamp and examined the twins—a boy and a girl—both small but healthy as far as she could tell. She ground up some plantains and mixed them with boiled water to feed the babies. Then she wrapped the babies up together and put them beside her in bed.
The twins flourished, and Mary’s assistant helped her care for them. However, Mary had made a mistake. She had left the babies behind one Sunday while she made her preaching rounds of the surrounding villages. While she was gone, the family of the twins had tricked Mary’s helper into “lending” them the baby boy. An hour later, the baby was found strangled to death on the jungle path. Mary wept when she heard the news and vowed not to let the little girl out of her sight. Now, as sick as she was, she insisted that Janie, as she called the little girl, go with her to Duke Town.
When Mary arrived at the mission compound in Duke Town, Dr. Hewan was there to meet her. He was a new doctor who had recently arrived in Calabar to study under Dr. McKenzie. Instead, he had found himself taking the doctor’s place. Dr. Hewan treated Mary as best he could, but he held out little hope for her survival. When the monthly steamer arrived from England, he suggested she go back to Scotland on it. She would probably die on the voyage, he told her, but he was sure she would die anyway if she didn’t leave Calabar. Mary agreed to go, on one condition—that she be allowed to take baby Janie with her.
Everyone at the mission compound, including the Reverend Anderson, thought it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard. What would happen to the baby if Mary died on the way back? Who would look after her? Mary listened to all their objections, but she would not budge. If she was to return to Scotland, it would be with the baby. Otherwise she feared Janie would be hunted down and killed by her family.
Eventually, the Reverend Anderson gave in to Mary’s stubbornness, and Mary and the baby set out for Scotland. As the steamer chugged its way northward, Mary did not die; instead, her strength began to return. Mary didn’t know why she was getting better, other than perhaps because she knew Janie needed her to live.
From the moment Mary stepped off the ship, Janie was the center of attention. Most people in the British Isles had never seen a black baby, and Janie was especially cute, with her curly black hair and ready smile. Mary couldn’t walk down the street in Dundee without people stopping to stare at Janie and ask questions about her. This amused Mary, who thought about how the reverse happened whenever she visited remote African villages, where she was the oddity everyone came to see.
Mary’s family loved Janie. Mrs. Slessor was particularly thrilled with her new “granddaughter” and looked after her and Mary. Janie was baptized at Wishart Memorial Church.
Finally, Mary’s strength fully returned, and she was able to begin the dreaded round of speaking engagements in churches. This time, though, she had baby Janie with her, and that made all the difference. To the members of the audience, Janie was a piece of Africa they could touch and hold. She was tangible evidence that the missionaries did save lives and challenge barbaric customs. Everywhere Mary went, money poured in for the mission. Although this seemed like a good thing, in fact, it held Mary up from returning to Calabar.
By January 1884, eight months after she had arrived in Dundee, Mary felt well enough to return to Calabar. The Foreign Missions Board, however, insisted she stay longer and do more itinerating. It pointed out that the mission in Calabar needed more money and more recruits and that Mary’s talks were providing an abundance of both. Reluctantly, Mary agreed to stay and visit more churches with Janie.
Although she hadn’t really wanted to stay longer in Scotland, Mary was soon glad she did stay. Her sister Janie became very ill with tuberculosis, and Mary was able to help her mother nurse her. The doctor told Janie she needed to move to a warmer climate if she was to have any hope of recovery. Mary was desperate. Since she could not leave her sister when she was so ill, she came up with a plan. She asked the missions board for permission to take her sister with her to live in Calabar. The board refused. The plan would not have worked anyway, because Mrs. Slessor caught tuberculosis from Janie. The only healthy family member left was Mary’s sister Susan.
Mary knew she could not return to Africa and leave her family in the condition they were in. She came up with another plan. She rented a house in Devon in the south of England, where the climate was warmer. Mary moved her sick mother and sister there while Susan stayed in Dundee for a few weeks to tie up the loose ends. Then the unbelievable happened! Mary received word that Susan had died. Susan had been staying in Dundee with a friend, who had found her dead in bed one morning. Mary, Janie, and Mrs. Slessor were devastated. Who would look after the two invalids now?
Mary hurried back to Dundee to bury her sister. While there she made a painful decision: She would stay in England with her family. Her missionary work in Calabar would have to wait until her mother and sister either died or recovered. It was a grim choice to have to make, but Mary could see no other option. She thanked God she still had baby Janie with her as a reminder of Africa.
