MISSION IN THE WILDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22366, 13 September 1934, Page 11

MISSION IN THE WILDS

WORK IN BELGIAN CONGO YOUNG NEW ZEALANDER’S ' EXPERIENCES. Two thousand five hundred miles up the Congo River in Central Africa, where few white men ever penetrate, is the Baluba village of Kisale, where for more than three years a young New Plymouth man, Mr J. H. Geddcs, has labbured to educate, civilise and convert from primitive heathenism and ancestral worship one of the fierce native races which inhabit the vast area of the Belgian Congo. Mr Geddcs is one of the workers in the Congo Evangelistic Mission and has returned to New Plymouth to visit bis parents. It is nearly five years ago since Mr Geddes left his home for the self-sacri-ficing and often hazardous work of the Congo mission field, but after several severe attacks of malaria he has been compelled to seek a more temperate land in which to recuperate. He plans to leave again early next year for his remote mission station. VAST AND RUGGED COUNTRY. “ The Belgian Congo is still primitive territory,” said Mr Geddes. “ So vast and rugged is the country, 40 times the area of little Belgium which controls it, that much of it has never been explored by white men. It has been impossible to estimate accurately the native population, which is placed by pure guesswork at 20,000,000. Officials find it extrclnely difficult to conduct any kind‘of census. Every time they visit a native village they do so for the purpose of collecting taxes. The natives know this and leave their homes in the villages to seek shelter in the bush. By the time the tax collector puls in an appearance villages of normally 500 natives will be deserted by all but a mere handful of people. “ Many of the Baluba arc still cannibals and in the hinterland there are whole villages of these ferocious tribesmen, of whose existence the Belgian Administration is scarcely aware. For the Englishman life in the Belgian Congo is a lonely existence. The only white people ever seen, and these at rare intervals, are the Belgian Government officials and a few Greek and Jewish traders. ACTIVITIES OF MISSION. “Thirty while men and women, with the assistance of 400 native evangelists, carry out the work of the Congo Evangelistic Mission, which is an interdenominational organisation. Native chil- , dren are taught in the mission schools.

There arc established 11 white mission stations, 500 native churches have been built, nearly 2000 villages, some of them containing as many as 4000 people, are being evangelised, and there are 17,000 native Christians in fellowship. “In many places the temperature never falls below 80 degrees. Malaria and blaclnvater fever arc scourges, and the mortality among mission workers is high. There arc, too, dangers from wild animals and insect posts. “The country teems with game of every description,” said Mr Gcddes. “ I have seen great herds of elephants, as many as seven or eight lions prowling together, and often the plains near the river arc brown with antelopes. Elephants wreck whole villages, creating the utmost havoc. At night lions prowl through the villages, but the natives barricade the entrances to their huts and so keep themselves safe from the marauders. Usually the lions are satisfied if they can seize a stray dog or a goat Leopards are by far worse than the lions. They will attack on sigh" and lie in the undergrowth by narrow native tracks awaiting victims.