The Hunchback Missionary by Elsa Joubert

Author:Elsa Joubert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781868426331
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Published: 2014-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

8

Mulahawang

The land of the Biriquas. A vast, almost incomprehensible concept. A campsite under a thorn tree. A tent in the dry bed of a river, erected where firewood was plentiful and, close-by, a white pack-ox grazing, knee-haltered horses, a wagon …

On the 21st day of December, I wrote a letter from the Kroemans River to the Directors of the Society in Cape Town.

Dear brothers in Christ, I have been some time at the outpost of Brother Kok, a place of great fruitfulness and charm. More pleasant than I have yet experienced in Africa. Nevertheless Kok has been asked to trek to ’tHart, a country four, five or six days from here by ox wagon. The Korannas have invited him there – the Biriquas show him a measure of antipathy.

This decision did not come as a blow to my plans. It convinced me even more that my life’s work lay with the Biriquas. If it meant going there alone, so much the better. Had I not seen plentiful evidence of strife even among God’s servants?

In spite of my letter, I did not find Kok’s station attractive. The natural surroundings were enchanting. I had never experienced so intensely the soft grace of thorn-tree leaves waving in the wind, or the sun’s sinking, observed from my camp bed, where I lay in the shade of the thorn tree. The colours from gold to red, the afterglow reflecting in the small yellow clusters of stamens of a veldt flower within reach of my hand.

But the surroundings of the tent and the wagon and kitchen were filthy. Kok had a Bosjesman and his wife who travelled with him, to chop his wood, boil the pots, make coffee – I preferred to make my own. Kok’s wife was highly pregnant and, with one child in arm, still being breast-fed, she never really ventured far from her tent.

I hardly exchanged ten words with her. She was as fear-stricken as a deer, her eyes downcast, her face mostly hidden in the folds of her sunbonnet. Neither she, nor her children, nor even her husband, to be precise, could be described as clean.

Had I maintained my own cleanliness?

In my letter, I wrote:

With the exception of the few Biriquas, there is nothing much here to induce a missionary to stay. Brother Kok advises me that near to Brother Edwards’s place there are two kraals each with 1 500 souls. According to Kok, there are no missionaries among the Biriquas. Edwards can supply me with food and, if I could get hold of a wagon, then I could spend a long time at one kraal, and then go on to the other. Otherwise, Kok invites me to go with him to ’tHart region, to work among the Korannas.

It was a temptation to go with Marthinus Kok to his new station, to continue my journey under the protection of the big man with the waving arms and bellowing voice, to escape the terrors of solitude. It was not to be doubted that Kok was upright and dedicated.

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