My First Glimpse of Native Life
By Ina Marchus Robison
BY MRS. INA MARCHUS ROBISON After spending eleven happy months at our college at Cape Town, where we were busily engaged in teaching, we eagerly prepared for a vacation trip of nine hundred miles up country, to visit old schoolmates on the mission stations in Basutoland, and get our first glimpse of real Africa. As the train wound slowly up through the mountains, how eagerly we watched for the first sight of the queer native huts, little children dressed in smiles and shining black birthday suits, the small mealie (corn) patches, and other signs of typical native life! Soon they began to appear—odd little villages, composed of small thatched mud houses, their smoke curling up from many a green hill. We found the Basuto people very interesting. They differ from most heathen people in that they seem to have no religion or form of worship, except a few ceremonies connected with the burial of their dead. They are pleasant and sociable, of comparatively high moral standard, yet proud, stolid, and self-sufficient, often slow to accept the gospel; but once in their hearts, it usually takes deep and abiding root, producing marked changes in their lives. Many of the women are adopting European dress. They have the idea that the number of skirts worn indicates the rank in society; hence we find the “élite” wearing as many as twelve or fifteen full gathered skirts at once, which stand out almost horizontally from the body. Their huts, nearly void of furniture, are also usually without windows or air holes. On retiring at night, several persons in one hut, the door is closed, the blanket pulled over the head, and thus they sleep until morning. No wonder tuberculosis is a common disease here. Their chief article of diet is corn meal porridge. Our hope lies in the education and training of young natives as teachers and gospel workers to labor for their own people. To do this, more men and means are needed. Dear friends, let us help by giving cheerfully and faithfully what we can.