JUNGLE TEA PARTIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1005, 23 June 1930, Page 10

JUNGLE TEA PARTIES

BISHOP’S DROLL STORIES CHIEFS’ CARS AND WIVES 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, are strange contrasts in tne jungle diocese of Dr. Arthur Kitching, Bishop of'the Upper Nile. Dr. Kitching, who is in England for the Lambeth Conference, has a diocese three times the size of Britain. He told a “Daily Chronicle” representative something of life on the Upper Nile. The Collar Problem “We have 70,000 Christians. 60,000 more awaiting instruction, and 1,400 churches in Central Africa,” he said. “There are live European clergy, 14 native pastors, and some hundreds of native evangelists. “The clerical collar, which they wear with a white robe, 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 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 100. wives. The White Man’s Vices “We are trying hard to stop the vices of civilisation reaching the areas where we have churches, and Europeans have been deported for supplying the natives with spirits. But there are many Indian shopkeepers now' in the villages W'ho sell clothes and food, and they teach the African bad ways, especially gambling. “Now the Government has made the natives pull up their hemp, w’hich they used as a narcotic, they have taken to tdbacco eagerly. Even small children will pick up cigarette ends and smoke them. “The natives arc in many respects backward —they do not understand pictures, and would not recognise a photograph of their mothers. “Their great delight is ‘squeaky’ brown boots. I have seen a man enter church noisily in a pair, take them off, and pass them out of the window to another man so that he. too, might make a sensational entry. Football in Jerseys “We have football leagues with coloured 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 bottlegreen 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 in the north of the diocese it is still unsafe to begin missionary work. “All our native pastors ax-e supported by their congregations, and at Ng’ora, my headquai'ters, we have a corrugated iron pro-cathedral, 15 -white men and 12 shops.”