Transformations Beyond the Zambesi by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 7, 1915

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 92, No. 49.

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Transformations Beyond the Zambesi

By W. A. S.

“Where did you get these boys?” asked a European ranchman who saw our Pemba Mission school at work.

“They came from the kraals” (villages), replied Brother W. H. Anderson.

“Not from the kraals about here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no; you don’t mean that! I know the Bataka boys; and these surely are not kraal boys from this part.”

But they were; they were gathered out of these very villages about, and came with all the dull and unintelligent look upon their faces that the visitor had always associated with kraal boys. But they are not the same people now. Bright-faced, keen-eyed, ambitious to learn, singing the songs of Zion, and climbing upward every day, they look absolutely of a different tribe from their own villagers who are still in the darkness and degradation of pretty nearly the lowest type of heathenism.

“How different they look?” I exclaimed again and again.

“Yes,” said Sister Anderson; “we can see the change coming over their faces often when they have been here but two or three months.”

Six tribes were represented in this school, away beyond the Zambesi, nearest of all our South African missions to the untamed wilds. One or two boys were in from regions where their tribesmen chased them with spears, intent on killing them, to keep them from coming to the school. Now in that same region these people are begging for teachers; and one splendid teacher, who five years ago imperiled his life to get to school, is planning to go back and start work for his people.

Brother and Sister Anderson had been down to the union conference, taking a short furlough after long battles with the fever. Brother S. M. Konigmacher was in charge of the school, and Brother Victor Wilson of the industrial work.

Now the first plea this mission makes is for the permission and the funds necessary to start work in the Lusaka district, a hundred miles north, beyond the Kafue River. At the close of the school Brother Victor Wilson went up there with twenty or twenty-five schoolboys who had come down from that region. He says:—

At one kraal I found the whole village keeping the Sabbath, and nearly all the married men asked for books. I feel as Joshua did after coming back from spying the land of Canaan. I have never met such a class of natives. I beg more than ever to be allowed to start work among them. I could have found places for at least twenty native teachers, but, oh, where are they?

Brother Wilson is so anxious to get work started there at once that he has proposed to make a start at getting established with five hundred dollars, if no more be available. But experience teaches that we must do better than that in these unhealthful regions in order to start with an equipment that will save the lives of the workers and make for strong, efficient service.

That northern station is really essential to round out the territory of the Barotseland Mission. And the people up there are waiting for us.

W. A. S.