BISHOP’S QUAINT STORIES

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 11280, 9 August 1930, Page 9

BISHOP’S QUAINT STORIES

TALES FROM A JUNGLE DIOSESE.

Witch doctors who can sway tribesmen at will with magic, chiefs with 100 wives who are driven to tea. parties in cars, and natives with a passion for “squeaky” boots arc strange contacts in the jungle diocese of Dr. Arthur Hitching, Bishop of the Upper Nile, Dr. Jvitchling, who.is in London for. the Lambeth Conference, told the “Daily Chronicle” 4 that he had a diocese three times the size of Britain. “We have 70,000 Christians, 00,OCO more awaiting instruction, and 1400 churches in Central Africa,” he said. “There ar e five European clergy, 14 native pastors, and some hundreds of native evangelists. The clerical collar came rather hard to some of the native pastors at first, but they are getting used to it now -—we have, a special design of celluloid to withstand the heat and the washing. Many of the great tribal chieftains are" Christians, and they come, to take tea, of which they are very fond, at my house in cars driven by native chauffeurs. What happens if something goes wrong inside the car? Why, they just leave it where it stands by the roadside. Many of the new Christians do not like giving up polygamy, for rich men, have as many as a hundred wives. ' ' "'

“We are trying-hard to stop the vices of civilisation from reaching the areas where we have., churches, and Europeans" have been; deported for. supplying the natives with spirits. But there ' are - many Indian storekeepers-now in .the visages wno sell clothes and food, and they teach the Africans bad ways, especially gambling. Now that the Government has ' made the natives pull up their hemp, which they used as a narcotic, they have taken to tobacco eagerly. Even small children will pick up cigarette ends and smoke them. Th enatives are in many respects backward—they do not understand pictures, and they would not recognise'a photograph of-, their mothers. Their great delight is “squeaky” brown boots. I. have seen a man enter a church noisily in a pair, take them' oiF, and pass them out of tho window to another man so that he, too, might make a sensational entry. We have .football leagues witlr'eolored jerseys, and bicycles are gradually being taken up. One cyclist, a very old man; I know wears nothing but a very old hat and a bottle-green morning coat with long tails. Witch doctors are still a great- power, though they raise their spirits in hiding. They were behind the murder of a district commissioner three years ago, and m the north of the diocese; it is still unsafe to begin missionary work. All our native pastors are supported by tlieir congregations, and at. Ng’ora, my headquarters, we liavp _a corrugated iron pro-cathedral, 15 white men, and 12 shops.”