I would need to be ordained in England, of course, but here, in Chitambo, was the beginning. For though I was not yet ordained, I had the authority that comes from God, for He is an authority greater than any church. And in my heart, I blessed the Lord for the Blessings of His Loving Munificence.
I read the service for the Burial of the Dead from the Doctor’s own Book of Common Prayer: “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life, we are in death: of whom may we seek for succor, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”
Even as I spoke, it came to me that these words would be wasted on these men and women who understood almost no English. Apart from the Nassickers, as the Doctor called us, of the whole party, only Chuma and Susi, Amoda and Mabruki, speak the language, although the latter speaks it as badly as he does all other things.
If the rest of the party wept, it was not because of the power of my words. So I added some words in Suaheli, translating the book before me, and adding my own flourishes. As I spoke, I was grateful again for the three books with which I have traveled, all from Reverend Wainwright.
My Readers will no doubt be aware that the Nassick school is an outpost of the London Missionary Society and, accordingly, is run on Congregationalist lines. From his letters to those of us who bear his name, it appears the Reverend Wainwright is particularly admiring of the Pilgrim Fathers, who, he says, had, through their piety, established their faith in a new land. He would that we become the Pilgrim Fathers of our own land and that we, in similar fashion, would assist in the establishment of the True Faith across all of Africa.
When I told him that this was my dearest wish, he sent to me three gifts in the form of books that he said were to be my guide. First is my confirmation gift, the Polyglot Bible that I read each morning and again at night and whenever it is that I have periods of leisure. Then there is the book I have already talked of, The Pilgrim’s Progress by Mr. Bunyan, a steadfast and certain friend on my journey. On many a day, on the crossing from India to Zanzibar, only the comfort of those pages helped me withstand the heaving of the sea, a turbulence I felt as terribly as when I first felt it, as a child torn from my land and headed for I knew not where. Even in moments of peace, I find it the greatest pleasure to lose myself in those pages that have proved in all seasons to be the most nourishing food for my ravenous spirit.
That I could one day be given the visions to write such a treatise! But no, the humble powers that the Lord has given me are such that I am best emulating the Reverend Bean rather than the Great Dreamer. And by the Reverend Bean, I mean my Book of Family Worship. This is the third book that is always on me.
I have as yet no family with which to worship, being one who goes out to the world in the state of bachelorhood, but this Book of Family Worship has been an immense comfort to me, for the Reverend Bean has been with me as surely as My Lord Jesus is Faithful. The Reverend Bean consoled me as our ship traversed the seas. Across the untamed places of Africa, he has brought me comfort and succor. He gave me solace on restless nights.
It is astonishing that the Reverend Bean seemed to find a prayer for each occasion. There is a Prayer that we may have Grace to follow the Examples of Godly Men, that we may improve by what we see in the Sufferings of Christ, that we may always Set God before us. There is a prayer in a Time of public Distress and a prayer at the time of the Assizes or on the Day of a Criminal’s Execution.
There is a prayer on a change of weather, and even one that seems to have been written especially for the endlessly talking cook-woman Halima, for the Reverend Bean has been so thoughtful as to write, for those who need it most, a prayer for the Government of the Tongue. I have found the Reverend Bean’s prayers immensely powerful, but there is sometimes, I believe, a need to fit the prayers better to our circumstances. The Revered Bean, in his wisdom, has anticipated most occasions on which prayers might be needed. But, having never been in climes such as those of Africa and India, he may not know that a prayer in a time of Great Frost may not be as important as a prayer in a time of Overpowering Heat.
Heat, I have found, indeed both at Nassick and here, and, particularly, extreme heat, can have a most woeful effect upon the mind. It is wont to induce languor, and nothing is as pernicious to the reception of the Lord as a mind that is languorous.
It is my humble prayer that I may do the same as the Reverend Bean, and fashion my own prayers. I flatter myself that I am, as I showed at the burial of his heart, equal to any task, and that I can fashion any prayer appropriate to the occasion. But in those moments when my powers fail me, and the Gift of the Spirit deserts me, it is comforting to fall back upon those familiar words.
5
10 May 1873
Fifth Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, written at Chitambo’s Village; in which Wainwright Takes Inventory of the Doctor’s Possessions, Makes a Note on the Leaders of the Expedition with a Reflection upon their Character, and Laments the Unnecessary Presence of Women in Expeditions.
It will be at least a fortnight before we are ready to start for the coast. I have counted the travelers and have noted that there are seventy altogether, including the men and children. I have attached to this record a full list of all who will travel with Doctor Livingstone’s body, for I know well enough that a record will be required of all that transpired on the journey, beginning with a full list of all those with whom he traveled.
I must make particular mention of the expedition leaders. There are six expedition leaders responsible for their different departments: Chuma is responsible for navigating our route. Amoda is in charge of the pagazi, and Uledi Munyasere is in charge of Provisions. Susi is to take charge of the Doctor’s Remains. Chowpereh, as safire, will lead the body of men from the front, while Mabruki is in charge of our twenty soldiers, the askari, and of their guns and ammunition.
At my insistence, I have been put in charge of the Doctor’s papers. This is why I am now, together with the other Nassickers, preparing his papers, instruments, and other personal effects. As I have proved myself the natural leader among the Nassickers, it is I, not Farjallah Christie, who is to take command of the papers.
It is only right that it be so.
Of the seven of us from the Nassick school, it is I who is the most fit for this charge. Farjallah Christie and Carus Farrar are older than me by many years, that is true, but they are no scribes. Indeed, it was a surprise to see them among the men recruited by Mr. Stanley, for they had left the Nassick school some years earlier and had both worked as assistants to two surgeons, Farjallah Christie in Zanzibar and Carus Farrar in Bombay. It was them who cut the Doctor open and it is fit that they have this task. And while both Benjamin Rutton and Matthew Wellington are as good writers as I am, they are not as responsible, and besides, neither has plans to be ordained. John Rutton is too young for any grave charge beyond carrying loads, and John Wainwright, well, we may both bear the surname of our benefactor, the Reverend Wainwright, but we are as night and day, for he is as far from being a leader as Mabruki.
I have just the right qualities for such a responsibility. The first seven years of my life aside, I have lived all my life with Englishmen, and have been trained and instructed in their ways of doing things. And so it is that I know how much they value exactitude. It is in that spirit that I enumerate his possessions.
The Doctor traveled with two large tin boxes for his papers and his instruments. Contained in these boxes were all the notebooks he had filled up. Many of these had already been taken to London by Mr. Stanley, but even after that gentleman left our party, the Doctor had continued his usual custom of recording each day in his journal.
He wrote most prodigiously. His paper had been sadly depleted and was only replenished when we arrived on Mr. Stanley’s orders, meaning that the Doctor had been forced to resort to such material as he had
at hand, mainly other books and old newspapers, yellowed and damp, on which he wrote across the existing type. And when the ink he possessed had given out, he had simply used a substitute form of ink that he made from the juice of dark berries.
The only books he had spared writing over were a work by Ptolemy, his Bible, his Church Service book, and his Book of Common Prayer. I packed his Bible with reverent hands. On this journey, he said, he had read his Bible four times through, but it grieved me to learn that it had mainly been for want of other material. His Prayer Book I took and kept by me, together with his most recent notebooks.
He had three main books in which he wrote. First was his small notebook for what he called his field notes. Inside, it had paper to write on, but the outside cover was made of metal, and could thus withstand every kind of weather. He often joked that if he ever had to take a bullet, he would prefer that it went through the pocket where he kept this book, for always it was on him. He would write even as he walked, stopping a moment to jot down something or other that he had just that minute thought of or observed.
He also had with him a journal in which he recorded the position of the stars. The third notebook was his journal. He told us that these were the journals that, when at leisure in England, he had turned into the books that brought him fame in his land. In these notebooks, he wrote at greater length the observations already made in his field notes. Here he wrote down all that he saw and thought.
I have appropriated to myself some of the notebooks that were given to him by Mr. Stanley, and that were still to be used. It is in these books that I write this narrative of our journey. I am certain that neither the Doctor, were he alive, nor his heirs in England would find any reason to rebuke me for choosing to follow his example in this way, and using, for my own purposes, the notebooks and ink that, alas, he no longer has a need for.
I also oversaw the packing of his letters, carefully arranging them by date. In addition to this copious amount of paper, he also had with him a watch, two telescopes in their boxes, three sextants, and compasses. We also collected all his medicine into his medicine chest. We found a little money: a shilling and a half, three drachmas, and a half scrople. We put his beloved hat in its own box. Chuma tells me that it is the hat that he wore on every single day of each of his three long journeys, from the day he set foot on African soil to his last day on earth.
I have looked into the notebooks and found that his mind wandered to many things. In some of them are observations of the waxing of the moon, the names of rivers, the heights of hills, maps, and botanical notes. And there are some personal memoranda there too, some despairing and lamentations, and observations about women that are most unseemly. If I could I would excise all such passages, for they add nothing at all. But to do violence to any of the pages is anathema to me. Wrong as they are, it matters that the words be received as he wrote them. And besides, to tear out a passage would affect another.
Now, to the men. As I have already intimated to the Reader, I have appended to this most interesting Journal my complete list of the sixty-nine men and women and children that make up the present party. Shocking as it will appear to my Readers, there are indeed women and children among us, many of them living and born in Sin, and I will say more on them in due course.
I confess that I do not know the expedition leaders as intimately as they know each other, for when I joined the Doctor, sent for by Mr. Stanley after he had found the Doctor in Ujiji, it was to find Amoda, Chuma, and Susi already with him, along with some others.
I was deeply grieved to find when I arrived that the Doctor had in his party men who were heathen, as well as men who were Mohammedan, like Abdullah Susi, who had been with him ten years or more. So long had the Doctor employed this man and not once had he thought to turn him to Christ!
Susi is a tall weathered man with a wiry frame and leathered skin. He is a carpenter and shipbuilder from Shupanga, on the mouth of the Zambesi, where, he says, his people build dhows that sail up and down the coast. It is also where the Doctor’s wife, Mrs. Mary Livingstone, is buried. He is a constantly laughing man who takes very little seriously, not even his own faith.
It is precisely that which makes him the sort of heathen that would have been easily converted, for though he professes to be of the Mohammedan faith, his is not that firm and stubborn cleaving to his faith, which is so common to those Mohammedans of India and Zanzibar, where, I fear, Christ’s kingdom may never truly take root and spread.
He respects only those tenets of this religion as suit him, for a more wretched and debauched creature I have never met. There is no village we have passed in which he has not made approaches to a woman, sometimes more than one, and indeed, it is speculated that he has left bastards scattered between his home of Shupanga on the Zambesi and Zanzibar, and on every journey that he has taken with the Doctor.
Though he has a woman of his own, Misozi, I have watched him make eyes at the cook-woman Halima. She seems to encourage his reprobate attentions though she is attached to Amoda. I say attached, for it will shock my Readers greatly to learn that none of them are married to each other, though I encouraged that the Doctor marry them himself, for he is ordained.
When I was insistent on holding firm on this point, he laughed and said, “Am I to read the banns on the march, Jacob? Are they to wed in a canoe as we cross a flooded river? On what paper am I to issue the marriage certificate? Will the broad leaves of the tree yonder suffice for the purpose if I dry them of moisture?”
Thus he mocked me as his men continued to live in sin.
As for drinking intoxicating brews of every description, only Adhiamberi, Mabruki, and a few of the lower pagazi are Susi’s equals. And it is precisely because of his debauched nature that I despaired at the Doctor’s failure. For what a rejoicing would there have been in my Father’s Kingdom, what a sounding of trumpets, what a ringing chorus of angels would have greeted a sheep as black as this as it stepped over the threshold of the Celestial City! For in my father’s house are many Chambers, and in none is there a more rapturous welcome than for the greatest of sinners.
Many of the pagazi of his faith are similar in attitude to Susi. The Mohammedans of this party appear willing to respect some tenets and not others. They have clearly no trouble having many women, but are not always inclined to obey the strictures on the consumption of intoxicating beverages and strong liquors.
Chuma, with whom the Doctor has worked the longest of all the men, is, in contrast, more thoughtful and quiet. As I recalled from having met him seven years before, his first name is James, and though he professes to be a Christian, I have never once heard him exclaim his faith with any great exuberance. He is most animated when he talks of maps and drawings, and mountains and rivers.
The other expedition leaders are Amoda, Chowpereh, Munyasere, and Mabruki. Amoda, a Suaheli from Zanzibar, is a big and powerful man of quick temper and irascible nature. Chowpereh is fast and foolish, while Munyasere is a huntsman happiest with a gun. They call him Uledi, meaning “Master Craftsman.” Mabruki is a nothing of a man. He is a man of low inclinations, and is even more of a debauched reprobate than Susi. The less said about him the better.
I thought it right that I be made an expedition leader, for as the most competent penman, I was to be the scribe of the party. Amoda laughed at this and said, “When the expedition becomes one about reading and writing, Uledi, we shall call on you.” When Amoda calls me Uledi, it is not the compliment that it is to Munyasere, but is said in a sneering manner that implies that I am lesser than he is.
Amoda is a competent man, that is true, but he is a hard taskmaster, and though the men respect his abilities, they often chafe under the yoke of his rule, for he has no respect for men who are not as strong as he.
I thought there was nothing more to be said of Mabruki, but I find myself making a further note on this most incompetent of men. He does not take seriously any responsibility, least of all that of being a husband. He not only abandoned t
wo women, both of whom he left with child, but has also now taken up with a woman of our party called Ntaoéka, or perhaps I should say he has attached himself to her, for no law would ever recognize such a marriage.
He bears the full name Mabruki Speke because he once traveled with Lieutenant Speke, the Nile explorer. He deserted that mission, naturally, for he is the sort of man who would desert. But for the cunning that made him convince Mr. Stanley that he knew more English than he actually did, and his comradeship with Bombay, the leader of Mr. Stanley’s expedition, he would have found no employment at all. He is a man full of tricks and deceptions. Happily for the party, in Farjallah Christie and Carus Farrar, we have two able marksmen, much more able than Mabruki ever will be.
Under these expedition leaders fall nine more gunmen, or askari, in addition to Mabruki and thirty-nine pagazi, many of whom were sent by Mr. Stanley from Zanzibar, and were naturally keen to return to their homes of Zanzibar and the neighboring islands of Pemba and Lamu.
As I have mentioned already, there are also ten women and their six children. It may surprise my Readers as much as it surprised me to learn that there are women and children on these expeditions of exploration. The reality of expedition life is that the men rest at villages so frequently, and sometimes for so long, that it allows all sorts of mischief to develop in their relations with local women.
When the time to leave came, it was not uncommon for one woman or another to attach herself to the party, and thus become part of the group. Nor was it uncommon for such women to find themselves with child a few months later. It is a licentious business, this traveling, with far too many opportunities for sin, for the men all have wives awaiting them at home.
It would appear that most of the leaders sanction this sort of licentiousness out of a misplaced sense of necessity, for without a certain degree of permissiveness, they may well find themselves with no porters. I was troubled to see that the Doctor appeared to not only sanction this behavior, but to be a little too concerned with the matrimonial affairs of his men, even to the point of procuring women and making matches for them.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 12
