The Book of Missionary Heroes - Basil Mathews (reading a book txt) 📗

and saws, screw-drivers and chisels were busy day after day, and the missionary and his helpers laid the bricks one upon another until there rose up a strong church with windows and a door—a place in which the people went to worship God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from the fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and oxen.

This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses is in Britain. For there were as many as sixteen and even eighteen oxen harnessed two by two to the long iron chains in front of the wagon.

There were no roads, only rough tracks, and the wagon would drag through the deep sand, or bump over great boulders of rock, or sink into wet places by the river. But at such times one of the natives always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that was fastened to their horns.

So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight line. He needed to know which were the bad-tempered ones and which were the good, and which pulled best in one part of the span and which in another; and how to keep them all pulling together and not lunging at one another with their horns.

Shomolekae also had to be so bold and daring that, if lions came to eat the oxen at night, he could go with the gun and either frighten them away or actually shoot them.

So you see Shomolekae was very clever, and was full of good courage.

While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said:

"John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who can drive his wagon well for him."

The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon to Shoshong, where John Mackenzie lived.

"Let me go with you," said Shomolekae.

So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after day northward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was a boy.

So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong.

At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe at Shoshong—left Khama and all his people—and travelled southward to build at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train young black men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekae himself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie. He set to work with his own hands, and he helped to make and lay bricks, to put in the doors and windows, and to place the roof on the walls, until at last the little school was built.

And when it was actually built Shomolekae himself went to be a student there, and Mackenzie began to train him to be a preacher and a teacher to his own people.

For three years Shomolekae worked hard in the college, learning more and more about Jesus Christ, preparing himself to go among his own people to tell them about Him.

At last the time came when he was ready to go; and he started out, and travelled long, long miles through sandy places, and then by a river, until at last he reached a town of little thatched huts called Pitsani, which means "The Town of the Little Hyena."

In that town he gathered the men and women and the boys and girls together and taught them the things that he knew.

While Shomolekae was at Pitsani there came into that part of Africa a new missionary, whose name was Mr. Wookey.

It was decided that Mr. Wookey should go a long, long journey and settle down by the shores of Lake Ngami, which, you remember, David Livingstone had discovered long years before.

Shomolekae wished to go out with Mr. Wookey into this country and to help. So he took the wagon and yoked the oxen to it, loaded it up with food and all the things needed for cooking as they travelled along, and drove the oxen dragging the wagon over many hundreds of miles of country in which leopards barked and lions roared, until at last they came to the land near Lake Ngami.

When they came into this land, and found a place in which to settle down, clever Shomolekae mixed earth into mud just as boys and girls do in order to make mud-pies, but he made the mud into the shape of bricks, and then placed the bricks of mud out into the sun to dry.

The sunshine was very, very hot indeed—so hot that the bricks became hard and dry and strong. Day after day Shomolekae worked until he had made a big heap of bricks. With these he built a little house for Mr. Wookey to live in. But these sun-dried bricks soon spoil if they get wet, so he had to build a verandah to keep the rain from the walls.

When the house was built and Mr. Wookey was settled in it, they travelled still further up the river to learn what people were living there.

After a while it was decided that Shomolekae should go and live in a small village by the river, and there again begin his work of telling the men and women of Jesus Christ, and teaching the boys and girls to read.

In his satchel, which was made of odd bits of calico print of different patterns, Shomolekae had a hymn-book with music. The hymn-book was written in the language of the people—the Sechuana language—and Shomolekae taught them from the book to sing hymns. The music was the sol-fa notation.

This is one of the hymns: