Solusi Mission and Experience with African Fever
By G. A. Irwin
Since the arrival of Brother and Sister Sturdevant five years ago at the Solusi Mission, not one person has been sent to South Africa to engage in native mission work south of the Zambesi River. Up to the time of the arrival of Brother Sturdevant, very little effort had been made to raise crops of any kind upon the mission farm. Brother Sturdevant at once began to clear away the bush near the mission buildings, and break up the ground, and plant it to some kind of crop, believing that with early planting and proper care and attention, paying crops could be raised. The Lord has honored his faith, and has blessed his efforts. Each succeeding year has seen more ground cleared and planted, until the present year they have two hundred acres under cultivation, divided as follows: one hundred and fifty acres of mealies, twenty-two acres in nyauti, five acres in Kafir peas, fifteen acres in monkey nuts, and five in sweet potatoes. All of the later-mentioned crops are looking well, and fully one hundred acres of the mealies is as good as you would find on an average throughout the corn-raising States of America. The other fifty acres was so damaged by locusts that much of it had to be replanted the third time, and hence will make only a partial crop. A threefold blessing is obtained by these farming industries: first, the mission family is thus supplied with an abundance of good food, and with a surplus to sell, to pay the expense of operating the mission, and to make needed repairs; second, it furnishes employment for the boys and girls, by means of which they are not only learning how to work and make themselves useful, but they are by this means making it possible for themselves to receive an education and fitness to carry the third angel's message to their own people; third, the breaking up and cultivation of the land is making the place much more healthful. The improvements on the farm are quite substantial for this country. The main buildings are on a line east and west, and front to the north. They consist of two brick cottages, each twenty-five by twenty-five feet, with verandas around three sides, and a back addition eleven by twenty-five feet, with a hall, or corridor, eight feet wide, roofed in with the main building. Each of these cottages stands in the center of a lot one hundred and fifty feet square, and surrounded by a stone wall four feet high and two and one-half feet thick. Between the two cottages there is a space of two hundred and fifty feet, in the center of which, and even with the back line of the cottages, is a brick store and grain house, twenty-eight by thirty-six feet. Two hundred feet west of the main cottage stands the schoolhouse, a brick structure thirty by forty feet, roofed with grass. One hundred and forty feet west of the schoolhouse stands the church, a brick and iron building twenty-eight by forty-eight feet. West of the church one hundred feet is the graveyard, a lot one hundred feet square, and surrounded by a stone wall three and one-half feet high and two feet thick. Three hundred feet back of the main cottage stands the students' dining hall and girls' quarters, a united brick building, fifteen by one hundred and five feet. To the east of this building, but on a line with it, stands a row of round huts for the boys, six feet high and twelve feet in diameter, made of poles and mud. In front of the row of main buildings, and two hundred feet away, stand the carpenter and blacksmith shop and the wagon sheds. Still north of this, four hundred feet, is the large cattle kraal. This mission home, when seen from a distance, so as to take in all the buildings as they stand in line and related to one another, with the growing crops surrounding it, and the rock-kopjes for a distant background, is certainly a pleasing sight. There are at present fourteen native kraals located upon the mission land, with an aggregate population of three hundred. There were many more than this in the beginning, but of late years they have been moving farther back, where land is better. There are at present fifty-four students living at the home and attending the school—thirty-five boys and nineteen girls. Counting those who attend day-school from the outside, the average attendance is seventy-two. They have at present only two white teachers,—Brother Sturdevant and Brother Ellingworth, a young man who came up from Cape Town to assist for a time in the work. They have ten native teachers, three of whom are teaching in the school. The other seven are carrying on small schools at out-stations, of which they have four at present, the nearest being fifteen miles away, and the farthest thirty-five. One can have but little conception of the endless round of duties that come from early morning until late at night, to the man and his wife having charge of one of these mission homes, until he remains there for a time, and has opportunity to see with his own eyes. Nor are these duties confined to the business of the mission and mission family. Natives come as far as fifteen miles to have the fondusi (teacher) treat their different ailments. As I recall what I saw while at Solusi, it was as follows: first a man to have a tooth pulled, then a man with a boy who had been bitten by a snake; they had walked five miles to have Brother Sturdevant cauterize the wound, and administer antidotes to counteract the poison. The next was a poor woman with a cancerous throat, whom her husband had brought a long distance in the hope that she would get help. Next came a man with a gash five inches long on his leg, made by the tusk of a wild boar. The next was a young girl with sore eyes. These instances are but a sample of the almost every-day calls and demands that are made upon the missionary's time, and for which nothing in the way of remuneration is received in return. February 25 Brother Sparrow arrived at the mission, bringing with him Brethren Hyatt and Branch, who had been spending a few days at the M'kipuvula Mission. It was the plan for us all to remain at Solusi until the sixth of March, and then go on to Somabula. In order to catch the right train at Bulawayo, it would be necessary for us to leave the mission the morning of the fifth. Our preparations were all made the day before, so we might get an early start. But “man proposes, and God disposes.” During the night I was attacked with fever, and when morning came, my temperature was found to be 102½°, and it was plain to those of experience that I was in for a run of fever. Brother Branch went on according to arrangements, but Elder Hyatt remained to assist in caring for me. The brethren told me that the fever would last for at least seven days, and it might be ten days before it would be broken. But by the blessing of God upon the efforts put forth and the remedies used by the brethren, the fever was broken inside of seven days, and I was up and around, though weak from loss of sleep and lack of food. At first I could not understand why the fever had come upon me. I had been very careful, and had taken every precaution that I knew, and all that others had told me of, except the taking of quinin. I had not gotten wet, nor been bitten by mosquitoes. But as I reflected over the matter, it became more clear to my mind. Had I been permitted to visit these missions in February and March—the two worst months in the year for fever—without getting the fever, I would no doubt have attributed the fact to my own ability to care for myself, and would have been inclined to look upon the brethren as sinners above others because they had fever frequently. I would have said that it was the result of carelessness on their part. I could not have entered into their experiences, nor sympathized properly with them in their afflictions. Nor would I have been able to make a true report before the council of our mission work in Africa, of what our missionaries must face. The Lord saw all this, and allowed me to have the fever, and pass through one of those dreadful chills which goes14along with it, and for the time destroys all one's power of control, causing one to feel that he is in the grip of some dread monster, who has set out to break every bone in his body, and to separate the flesh and muscles from the bones. The Lord allowed all this that I might in a measure enter into the experiences of some of our missionaries who have in the past endured these things at intervals for weeks and months before they could succeed in expelling the malarial poison from the system. When the time arrived for me to go on to Beira to take the boat for Mombasa, on my contemplated trip to our mission on Lake Victoria, in Uganda, I was still weak, and liable to another attack; hence it was thought unwise for me to take the risk, inasmuch as I would be compelled to travel most of the way alone. So I remained at Solusi until the fifteenth of March, when Elder Hyatt and I came on to Somalula, where we have been stopping for a few days.