Mary Slessor was ready and willing to go inland. She had her heart set on going to Okoyong, situated in the triangle of land between the Cross and Calabar Rivers. When she told King Eyo this, he was horrified. Okoyong was the most savage region in all Calabar.
“Are you crazy?” he asked Mary. “You must listen to me. The Okoyong are not good people. They do not trust anyone, not even each other. They are always keeping watch in case they’re attacked by their neighbors.”
Mary nodded. “I know. They live in great darkness,” she replied.
“They practice all the old ways—twin murder, trial by poison bean, and wife and slave killing. Just last week I heard one of their lower chiefs had died. They said he had forty people—slaves, children, and wives—buried with him,” King Eyo pleaded. “Mary, they will think nothing of killing you if you tell them something they don’t wish to hear.”
Mary listened carefully to what the king told her. She knew the coastal and the Okoyong tribes had been at war for generations. The latest round of fighting had ended with the coastal group having the upper hand. The Okoyong offered to show that they were ready to surrender by burying a man alive. Since the Christian leaders at Creek Town would not agree to this, the two tribes had remained unofficially at war with each other. Still, nothing King Eyo said dissuaded Mary. Like her hero, David Livingstone, she wanted to go farther inland.
It looked as if Mary Slessor might never be allowed to pursue her dream of inland missionary work. But in 1881, the Foreign Missions Board in Scotland had made a decision to allow single female missionaries to work more independently of men. This new plan was called the Zenana Scheme, and it immediately went into effect in India, China, and the West Indies. However, West Africa was considered a special case. Even the women on the Zenana committee thought it would be certain death for female missionaries sent out on their own in this region. However, five years later, with constant prodding from Mary, the committee reversed its decision on West Africa. In 1886, it decided to recommend that single women missionaries should be allowed to apply for inland posts where they would be working alone. Naturally, Mary was the first to apply.
The Zenana committee promised to review Mary’s application, and in early 1888, Mary received a letter informing her she had permission to venture into Okoyong territory. Of course, only time would tell whether this permission would turn out to be a dream come true or an endless nightmare for Mary.
Chapter 12
To Ekenge
Leaving Creek Town was the saddest farewell Mary had ever experienced. The general mood felt like a funeral—her funeral! It had taken six months, but now in early August 1888, Mary was finally taking the enormous step of moving into Okoyong territory. After Mary had made three exploratory trips to the area, a chief there had begrudgingly promised her a tract of land on which to build a school and a church. Now Mary’s friends at Creek Town, both missionaries and natives, were sure she was about to paddle to her death, along with King Eyo’s finest paddlers.
A week of steady rain had turned the countryside into a sea of mud. As Mary made her way to the canoe, she slipped in the mud at the edge of the river. One of the new converts rushed to her aid. “I will pray for you every day, but I don’t know if it will do any good. You are going to your death,” he said as he helped Mary to her feet. There was a murmur from the crowd, and as Mary looked from the face of one person to the next, she knew they all felt the same way as the new convert.
Suddenly the Reverend Goldie yelled above the pounding rain, “It’s not right for Miss Slessor to go alone. Who would be willing to accompany her to her new home?”
Mr. Bishop, the mission’s printer, stepped forward. “I’m willing to accompany her,” he yelled, and to prove it, he stepped into the canoe just as he was, without a scrap of luggage. “Here,” he said to one of the paddlers, “hand me the children. It’s time to get going.”
Mary could not have agreed more. The gloomy mood of the people matched with the gloomy morning was more than she could bear. “Yes, it’s time to go,” she reiterated, helping Okin, Ekim, and Janie into the canoe and then passing her latest two adopted toddlers to Mr. Bishop. Within a few minutes, the five children were all arranged safely in the canoe, and Mr. Bishop helped Mary settle under the small thatched roof in the center of King Eyo’s enormous canoe. Mary was covered with mud from head to toe and shivering from the cold.
The drummers began their rhythmic beat, and the canoe pulled away from the shore. There were no shouts of farewell from the crowd. The hundred or so people who had gathered stood sadly and watched their white ma disappear around the bend in the river. Mary was glad to be on her way. She turned to Mr. Bishop and said, “Thank you for coming with me. Would you like some tea?”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” he replied.
Mary lit a small paraffin stove and placed a kettle of water on it. As she waited for the water to boil, she sliced some of her homemade bread. As they sipped tea and ate bread, Mr. Bishop began to ask about the assignment he had volunteered for. “Where exactly are we going, Miss Slessor?”
“To Ekenge,” replied Mary, her excitement building. “The village is four miles inland from the river, so we’ll have to leave the canoe and walk in.”
Mr. Bishop, still looking a little stunned that he’d volunteered for the mission, nodded, and the two of them sat silently for some time listening to the sounds of the jungle and the splashing of the paddles in the water. A head wind was blowing, and it took a full day of paddling to get to the clearing on the riverbank, where they would leave the canoe. Darkness was beginning to descend as the paddlers pulled the canoe onto the riverbank.
“There’s not much light left,” said Mary, surprised by how much extra time battling the head wind had added to the trip.
Mr. Bishop stood up and stretched his long legs. “Well, we had better not waste any time then,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
“I must get the children dried off and give them something to eat as soon as possible,” Mary said. “Tomorrow is Sunday, so we’ll have to get everything moved up to Ekenge before midnight. We can’t have anyone working on the Sabbath, can we? I’ll walk on with the children. You come next with a couple of the paddlers. Bring some boxes of food and dry clothing with you. The rest of the paddlers can follow with the other boxes.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Mr. Bishop. “Is the trail well marked?”
“Not really,” replied Mary apologetically, “but some of the paddlers know the way, and you’ll have a lantern. You should be able to find your way.”
Mary gathered the children around her. She gave the two older boys a small box to carry, while Janie had a kettle and two pots tied together on a piece of rope around her neck. The other two girls were so small that Mary had to carry them, one under her arm and the other on her shoulders. Mary juggled a lantern in her free hand. “We’ll see you in Ekenge,” she called, sounding a good deal braver than she really felt.
“God go with you,” said Mr. Bishop as he helped unload a door frame and two window frames from the stern of the canoe.
Mary had walked the trail before, when she had come to negotiate permission to stay in Ekenge, but she had never traveled it at night or in the rain with two children clinging to her and three others crying and complaining. As she walked, she dared not think about the dangers ahead. She knew that if she let such thoughts creep into her mind, she’d probably turn around and walk back to the canoe. So many things could go wrong. The tribe could be on the warpath, in which case she and the children and the Creek Town canoe paddlers would be the enemy. Or the chief could be drunk or have “forgotten” that he’d promised her land for a school and a church and a house. And then there were leopards and snakes and other wild animals that could attack at any moment.
Finally, after three tense hours of slipping and sliding along the muddy path, Mary and the children reached Ekenge. Mary stood in the clearing and looked around, motioning for the children to be quiet. Something was wrong. There were no fires, no noise from the huts, no children running around. She yelled, “We have come back.” There was no response. The village appeared to be deserted. Had there been a raiding party? Mary wasn’t sure. Then suddenly in the darkness she heard a shuffle, and then two sleepy slaves stepped out of a hut.
“Hello,” said Mary. “Where is everyone? Is there trouble?”
For a moment she forgot the slaves could not understand Efik but spoke the Bantu language, which she did not know. She used hand gestures to communicate. From the slaves’ gestures, Mary guessed that the chief’s mother had died earlier in the day and the village of Ekenge had gone to the funeral, leaving only a few slaves to guard the huts and gardens.
The Reverend Goldie had told Mary about some of the funeral customs in the Okoyong region which for the most part involved everyone from the tiniest baby to the most wizened old person getting drunk and performing witchcraft rituals. Sometimes events could stretch on for days.
One of the slaves led Mary to what looked like an abandoned hut. The hut had no windows, only a gaping hole for a door. Mary stepped inside and immediately noticed rainwater running down the inside of the walls and across the floor. The thatched roof was also dripping. Mary promised herself she would have a new roof made for it first thing on Monday. For now, she had to concentrate on getting the children dry, fed, and off to sleep. Another slave brought some dry sticks for a fire. Mary placed the kettle Janie had been carrying under one of the larger drips. In no time, she had a fire lit and had collected enough water to make some tea. But no matter how hard she tried, Mary could not get the children warmed up. The children sat naked, shivering in front of the feeble fire. Mary worried about them. If they didn’t get some warm, dry clothes soon, they might get sick, and sickness was so often followed by death in the African jungle.
Mary poked the children’s wet clothes between the thatched palm leaves in the roof in a futile attempt to stop the drips. Then she sat down and tried to sing the children to sleep. “Do not be afraid, little children, God is watching over you,” she crooned, as much to herself as to them. Eventually, the children’s heads dropped as they fell asleep.
Once the children were sound asleep, Mary thought about herself for the first time. She was soaked to the skin, and her feet were swollen in her boots. She pulled the boots off and set them by the fire, not thinking for a moment that it would be six weeks before she would be able to fit them back on her feet!
Half an hour later, Mr. Bishop emerged from the bush. He was covered in mud, and his face was bleeding from where he had walked into an overhanging branch. “I couldn’t get the paddlers to budge,” he said. “I brought what I could. I have some dry clothes for the children.” He handed Mary a box of clothing. “The men said they were too tired and would not go into the jungle in the dark. It’s the people of the Okoyong region, you know—they’re scared enough of them in daylight.”
Mary sighed deeply. She was totally exhausted, but she needed the supplies, especially the food, and she would not allow the men to work on the Sabbath. She took the box of clothing over to the fire and rummaged through it for some dry clothes for the children. Then she quickly woke each child and dressed them all before laying them gently down again to sleep. When all five children had been dressed in dry clothes, Mary sat down by the fire and started to pull her boots on. No matter how much she tugged and twisted, the boots would not go back on her swollen feet. Undaunted, she turned to Mr. Bishop and said, “The water has boiled for tea, and the tea is in one of the boxes back at the canoe. I will go and get it myself.”
