Finally, on the sixth day after Etim’s death, the event Mary had been waiting for happened. It was early evening when a party of missionaries and native helpers from Duke Town burst into Ekenge. As Mary welcomed them loudly, she announced they had come to show their respect for Etim in a very special way. The villagers gathered around to see what would happen. Outside the palaver hut the missionaries set up a table. They opened a black leather case and took out a lantern contraption and placed it on the table. Then they draped a sheet between two palm trees.
One of the missionaries struck a match and lit the lantern. An immediate gasp of amazement went through the crowd, followed by stunned silence. The eyes of everyone in the village were on the screen. Mary heard mothers whisper to their children, “White man’s magic.” The missionaries had brought with them a magic lantern show. As they placed glass plates with pictures painted on them in front of the lantern, the image was projected onto the sheet hung between the two palm trees. Everyone sat cross-legged, spellbound by the images they saw—images they could never have imagined of horses pulling carriages, steam trains, and elaborate palaces.
When the show was over, Mary explained to the village that the missionaries had come to honor Etim in a new way, not with killing but with words and pictures. She desperately hoped this would convince the village that the prisoners should be set free. It worked. Begrudgingly, Chief Edem let the prisoners go, one at a time.
The next day Etim was buried in his beautiful coffin, along with his umbrella, his mirror, and a single cow that had been slaughtered to feed him in the afterlife.
It had taken every ounce of Mary’s faith and effort, but Mary had achieved the impossible. For the first time in the Okoyong region, a member of a chief’s family had been buried without bloodshed. Perhaps, Mary told herself as she put her children to bed that night, she would live to see God break the chains of superstitious customs and practices in the Okoyong region.
Chapter 16
Bit by Bit
Mary almost had to pinch herself to believe that such a wonderful day had arrived. Today she and Charles Ovens were dedicating the new church at Ifako along with the missionary house and medical dispensary at Ekenge. There was much celebrating, and a number of important men from both villages gave long, complimentary speeches. Since Mary had banned rum and gin from the celebration, instead of the people sitting around getting drunk after the speeches, Mary took them all on a tour of the wonderful house Charles Ovens had built for her and the children. The people marveled at the glass panes in the windows and put their ears against the clock face to hear the ticking sound. They turned the flywheel on the sewing machine and watched the needle go up and down. They peered at themselves in the wall mirror and took turns holding Mary’s china cups. Some people, even some of the bravest warriors, were reluctant to climb the stairs to the second floor. Except for perhaps climbing a tree, they had never been up so high before!
That night, after everyone had left and the children were tucked in bed, Mary and Charles Ovens sat around the fire laughing about the events of the day.
“I wish every day could be like today,” said Mary wistfully, poking the dying fire. “You know, I don’t even think they missed drinking; they were kept too busy. And did you see how fascinated they were with the windows and doorknobs?”
Charles nodded. “Aye, it would be a great thing if they were able to work and trade for such things themselves instead of lying around drinking.”
Mary nodded in agreement, but she knew that very little trading went on between the tribes of the Okoyong region and those on the coast. What little trading did take place usually consisted of slaves sold to coastal tribes in exchange for guns, rum, gin, and chains.
As Mary lay on her clay bed that night, she began wondering how she could get the people of Ekenge to understand that they could produce palm oil and root crops to trade with the coastal tribes for useful things such as pots, mirrors, and work tools. Of course, she knew that such items were not really important to the people of Ekenge. But if she could figure out some way to get the people trading for them, two good things would follow. One, the village would be kept busy and there would be little time for the people to sit around and get drunk, and two, for the first time the people would have meaningful, nondeadly dealings with the coastal tribes.
By morning Mary had a plan. She would invite a delegation of Ekenge leaders to go with her to Creek Town, where she would introduce them to her old friend King Eyo and ask him to help set up trade links between the two tribes. Everyone in the village thought the idea was very strange. Why ever would they go into enemy territory if not to rob or kill? Mary, though, would not give up. After several weeks of Mary’s pestering Chief Edem, the chief finally agreed to get a group of leaders together and go with Mary to Creek Town.
Mary arranged for Ma Eme to watch the children. The next morning she was ready to go. Mary suspected that the men were afraid to take the journey, since it would be the farthest any of them had traveled from their village. Her suspicions were quickly confirmed as she neared the riverbank. The sounds of wailing and crying filled the air. Women were clinging to their village leaders. “Don’t go. We will never see you again. The gods don’t want you to leave us,” they begged through deep sobs.
The seven men looked sheepishly at Mary, who immediately took charge of the situation. She ordered the men to climb aboard the canoe. The canoe rocked wildly from side to side as the men took their places amid the cargo of palm nuts, maize, yams, and palm oil. Mary’s face showed a tinge of doubt as she climbed in herself. The canoe was small and obviously overloaded. The men of Ekenge were warriors and farmers, not rivermen. Despite her doubts, Mary said a prayer and ordered the canoe be pushed out onto the river.
The canoe had floated about ten feet offshore when several of the men leaned to the right to wave good-bye to their families. This proved too much for the overburdened canoe, which quietly rolled over and sank. Thankfully, the water was only chest deep. Mary ordered the men to rescue the trading goods and carry them ashore.
Chief Edem carried a palm leaf basket filled with yams and threw it down at the water’s edge. “I told you we should not go,” he said to Mary. “The river gods are trying to kill us. It is a sign. If we try again, they will succeed, and we will all die.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Mary, twisting the hem of her skirt to wring some water out of the garment. “That wasn’t any river god. That was a small canoe with far too much in it. Get me a bigger canoe.”
The chief opened his mouth to say more and then closed it, no doubt realizing how pointless it was to argue with Mary.
Soon a larger canoe was found, and the villagers’ trading goods were loaded into it. Mary had to chase down several of the men, including Chief Edem, who had hidden behind a nearby tree. She dragged the men to the canoe, sat them down, and told them to stay put. The men did as they were told, and this time when the canoe was pushed out onto the river, it did not capsize. The men began to paddle in a rhythmic motion, and the canoe slipped away downriver.
The group had been traveling for half an hour when Mary spotted the gleam of swords between the casks of palm oil. She sighed deeply. The men had been warned not to bring weapons, but who could blame them for trying? The only reason they had ever left their territory before was to go on raiding parties. Mary thought for a moment. If she were to get angry at the men for bringing their weapons, the men would be embarrassed and might insist they turn around and go back to Ekenge. The trip was too important for that to happen. So while the men were distracted by a hippopotamus on the shore, Mary grabbed the swords and dropped them overboard into the silty water. She watched for a reaction from the men, but there was none. From the splash the weapons made, she was certain they must have guessed what she’d done. Instead, not one word was ever said about the swords. It was as if they had never existed.
The trip to Creek Town was a huge success from the start. King Eyo welcomed the men from Ekenge as if they were long lost brothers. He had feasts prepared for them and led them on a tour of his town. He also helped them barter their goods for useful items. Mary insisted that no goods would be traded for gin, rum, or guns. Mary’s missionary friend Hugh Goldie invited Mary and the men to a Christian service at which King Eyo himself spoke from the Bible about the God of Peace.
The party stayed three days in Creek Town, and before they left to return to Ekenge, King Eyo and Chief Edem made solemn promises to each other. King Eyo agreed to send men upriver to trade with the people of Ekenge and Ifako. He would even lend the villagers several of his larger canoes for the times they wanted to come downriver and trade in Creek Town. In return, Chief Edem promised to put a stop to the raiding parties that plundered the farms in his region of Calabar and not to attack Efik men who traveled farther inland.
Mary had done what two years before, when she first ventured into Okoyong territory, had seemed impossible. The chiefs were now beginning to open up their territories. They were making treaties together and beginning to trust each other.
The men received an enthusiastic welcome when they arrived back in Ekenge. It was as if they had come back from the dead, and to many people in the village, they may as well have! The night was filled with singing and praying, trying on trinkets from Creek Town, and telling stories of King Eyo and his amazing house. Drummers beat out news of the new treaty with the coastal tribes. A drummed message could carry for up to seven miles, and as was the custom, it would be repeated by other drummers deeper into the jungle. Ma Eme assured Mary that every tribe within two hundred miles of Ekenge would hear the news.
Mary enjoyed new respect among the people of the Okoyong region. Chief Edem began asking her opinion on more and more things, and chiefs from other villages sent for her to settle their disputes.
Now that King Eyo’s canoes were traveling regularly between Ekenge and Creek Town, Mary used the opportunity to visit the other missionaries downriver, especially after Charles Ovens had left to help at another mission station. After he left, Mary felt truly alone for the first time. She missed singing Scottish songs and reminiscing with Charles about life back in Scotland.
A new recruit named Charles Morrison had recently joined the missionary staff in Duke Town. Charles was a serious young man of twenty-four who loved to read and write poetry and who had been sent out to teach the Africans how to be teachers themselves. Mary liked Charles Morrison from the minute she met him, and he liked her as well.
Over the next year, Mary made several trips to Duke Town to visit Charles Morrison, and Charles came to Ekenge to nurse her when she became ill with a bout of malaria. Somewhere along the way, the two of them fell in love, though Mary found it hard to believe. After all, she was old enough to be his mother! Still, by the time Mary was ready to return to Scotland at the end of 1890 for her third furlough, Charles Morrison had asked her to marry him. Mary agreed, under one condition—that he join her in Ekenge. Whatever else happened, her work among the people there must not stop.
Back in Scotland, Mary applied to the missions board for permission to marry Charles Morrison and have him move to Ekenge with her. The mission board would not agree to her request. Charles Morrison was a highly educated man who was needed in Duke Town to train teachers. If Mary wanted to marry him, she was informed that she’d have to move to Duke Town. A wife moved to her husband’s work, not the other way around. This response posed a serious dilemma for Mary. Her work had always come first, and she believed it was God who had led her to Ekenge. Did she have the right to change that calling just so she could get married?
