African Hospitality and Missionary Health
A LADY missionary in Africa tells this story, which points its own moral:— “It is a very common thing among the Africans when strangers go among them to make them a present of a chicken, a goat, or a bullock. “When I went they did not give me anything, and I several times told them they had never treated me right, for they had not even given me a chicken. They always replied: ‘No, and we don’t mean to give you anything either, for when the first white people came here we gave them a sheep and a bullock, and they killed them, and ate so much fresh meat that they died from the effects of it, and we don’t want you to die, so we won’t give you any.’ “It is a remarkable fact that during the last four years there has not been a death among our white missionaries in all Africa. People are learning to take better care of themselves, and in proportion as we do we have better health. There is, no doubt, some truth in what the native said about the death of the two missionaries.”