CHAPTER 13

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TANGANYIKA TERRITORY ; MWANZA
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Mwanza Is Dreadful — Sugarless — A Hard Mission — The Missionaries Spirit
Government Schools — Missed Opportunities — A Depressing Town — Nyegezi
Cardinal Hinsley's Work In Africa — An Arab Dinner — A Thrilling Drive
Rumours Of War — Missionary Joy — Tukuyu And Poverty — I Board A Train
Father Donders — Lost In The Forest — Saint Anthony, 'The Path-Finder
The Triumph Of Football — Tabora-Under-The-Sun

It was bright sunshine still when we reached Mwanza on the following day, and once off the boat I got my first real view of Tanganyika. A very pretty approach to the shore caused us to hope nice things. Vain hope! Mwanza is dreadful. First, I do not ever remember such heat. It simply scorched the skin off one, and made one think that Uganda is a cool country. Then, underfoot, through that ghastly town of wooden shacks, there was a foot of dust. So this is Tanganyika Territory but, of course, it cannot all be like this.

We climbed a hill, and what a hill it seemed in that heat, to the Mission, but even the Fathers' warm welcome and the coffee they gave us to drink did not dissipate that first impression that this country is not worth living in. Perhaps the fact that our coffee was sugarless had something to do with it. In this Vicariate of Mwanza, the missions are so poor that sugar has been withdrawn from missionaries' tables. Many comments clamour in my brain for expression. The bare statement of the fact is, however, I think as eloquent as a book could be.

I met dear Father Willy Smith without recognising him. He has hidden his beauty behind a huge red beard, but the old charm and kindness smiled out of his eyes. He tells me that three languages are necessary to be a missionary at Mwanza, and that we must not compare Tanganyika with Uganda. Uganda is a converted country, Tanganyika is still in the stress of the first struggles of making contact with the mass of the people. Not that these missions in Tanganyika were founded later than those in Uganda, but that they have developed with greater difficulty. At Mwanza, too, there are a great number of Mohammedans, and they provide an obstacle which, wrote Cardinal Lavigerie, "can only be removed when it dies of its own corruption. "

This is mission life at its best, or worst, according to one's point of view. Worst, in that few are the consolations; best, in that the missionary is still the pioneer, digging the ground and sewing the seed of which, please God, his successors reap the harvest.

I realise that I am comparing Mwanza with Uganda and with Ruanda and Urundi. If I compare it with the Missions to the Arabs in the North of Africa then, of course, Mwanza is much more fruitful in results. Already I realise too that coming from Uganda my view of any other mission in Africa will tend to be pessimistic.

What is admirable here, as elsewhere, is the gaiety, the courage, the devotion, the self-sacrifice of the missionaries. There has never yet appeared before my eyes any self-seeking. Always and everywhere it is the Kingdom of God that matters, and the missionary does not care whether it is he or another who reaps the harvest. As God wills so let it be. And in fact from a missionaries' point of view, whether one is digging the ground, reaping the harvest, or consolidating the position, life is, from entirely different points of view, equally interesting, equally difficult and equally necessary.

7th September 1938
A very short night after a long, hot, dusty day and (surprisingly) a dinner party. The impression I took yesterday of Mwanza, that it consisted only of rocks and dust, seemed to me on rising to be incredible, so I set out after breakfast (still sugarless and almost "everything else less") to explore. The Acting Provincial Commissioner with that kindness which I shall always think of as characterising him, sent me his car and chauffeur.

First, I went to see a Government school in the making. The journey was through dust and rocks in unbearable heat. The headmaster of the school received me with iced lemonade and every other kindness. He was an Englishman and just back from leave, yet apparently perfectly happy. He likes African boys and has his heart in his job. He must have it so, or he would not be happy here. He was, when I arrived, actually working with his hands in the grounds, a most comforting spectacle.

As for the school— there are none of this kind in Uganda, I am glad to say, where the Government gives grants to the mission schools, but has practically no schools of its own. These Government schools in Tanganyika are indifferent to religion, and the students belong to one religion or another, or are pagans or Mohammedans just as they like. A priest is allowed to visit the school for religious instruction, I think, three times a week. From a Catholic point of view it is eminently unsatisfactory.

I tried honestly to see in what way such Government schools might be superior to missions schools. The buildings are often certainly better—but at what a cost! I understand that the principle underlying the policy of these schools is that education should be open to all the country; that religion should not be a condition sine qua non; that a pagan should he able to obtain a good education without any religion being necessarily brought to his notice. This sounds very fair and very British, but how, on this earth of fallen men, one is to educate without teaching the knowledge of God, of His revelation and of His laws, no one on the spot was able to offer me the very faintest explanation. "We oblige the boys to keep the rules of the school" was the profoundest wisdom that issued from any of those I questioned. Most stated quite frankly that such things did not interest them. They hoped that the boys would be better workers than those who did not attend school. Their morals, apparently, were no concern of the teachers.

Centuries of paganism have piled a mountain of evil upon the soul of Africa. Instruction without education will merely make the pagan a more cultured pagan; it will supply richer materials for the satisfaction of profoundly evil passions. The grace of God is needed to change the soul of a man, and a higher motive than self-interest is required to change a man's morals.

The shortage of missionaries in Mwanza and the appalling lack of resources make it impossible for the missions to provide all the schools needed to fight successfully the evil of the "neutral" school, and the Vicar-Apostolic is, therefore, obliged to tolerate the attendance of Catholic boys at these schools.

I went then to visit the Government hospital where a doctor talked to me. It appears that the Government of Tanganyika can do so little medical work in this vast territory that the scope for mission work of this kind is unlimited. One is, however, forced again to the conclusion that owing to lack of Sisters and funds, a great opportunity of making sympathetic contact with the people and of helping them, is passing us by.

In the dust of the streets people go on their way, not smiling, not greeting us, as they do in Uganda and Ruanda and Urundi, but sullen, frowning and depressed. The very huts and villages look appalling, with their scraps of corrugated iron, and rags kept on with lumps of rock. I left the car and went off into some villages to see at closer hand what I should see. Lots of dirt and squalor, masses of pagans and Mohammedans, who paid no attention whatsoever to me as they sat, for the most part, in the shade of their huts doing just nothing; few were even talking.

I was not cheered up in any way, and I returned up that hill to the mission in the sun of midday, realising better than I had ever done before the immense benefits that Our Lord's coming to a country brings. The contrast between Mwanza and Uganda or between Mwanza and Urundi is as black to white.

In the afternoon the Vicar Apostolic, Bishop Ooman drove with me to the junior Seminary and Secondary School at Nyegezi. (photo)
It was but a forty minutes' run, but again those dreadful rocks and that fearful dust was all that I could see. The Vicar-Apostolic was a fountain of useful information.

There are roughly 900,000 people in his Vicariate. Of these some 19,000 only are baptised Christians, and there are 6,000 catechumens. It is still pioneer work, full of all the hardships and the heartbreaks that make up the life of the missionaries in such places.

At Nyegezi I had a very agreeable surprise. This is a first class college where boys studying for the priesthood attend classes at which other boys also assist. The Seminarists live, however, apart from the college boarding school. This system economises, of course, in the teaching staff and I am told that it finds favour with the Delegate-Apostolic.

Here too, is a truly splendid technical school. Well built and equipped, it is as clean as a model dairy. All credit to the good brother who has charge of it.

There was much fun at tea when, instinctively, I asked someone kindly to pass the sugar. "And," said a wag, "what, may I ask, is sugar?" Truly I have been spoilt in Uganda.

The Vicar-Apostolic spoke very highly of His Eminence Cardinal Hinsley and said to me at parting, "We owe to His Eminence an eternal debt of gratitude."

From December 1927, until January 1930, Cardinal Hinsley was Visitor-Extraordinary to the Catholic Schools in British Africa. After that, until he was forced to retire by ill-health in August 1934, he enjoyed the wider powers of Delegate-Apostolic. Up to the time of his arrival in Africa the Missions controlled most of the education in British Africa, of which they had been the pioneers. Then the reports of the Phelps-Stoke Commission on East and West Africa moved the British Government to take a very much more active interest in native education than had before been manifest. The Missions became anxious lest the Catholic education of their children should pass from their control.

On the other hand, the Holy See saw that closer co-operation between the Missions and the various Governments in Africa might well prove of great value to the Church, and the Holy Father appointed Mgr. Hinsley as Visitor-Extraordinary to the Mission schools, to put before the Government the views of the Missions, and explain to the Vicars-Apostolic the proposals which the Government was making. It was a very delicate, difficult and supremely important task.

It must be said that when Mgr. Hinsley arrived in Africa, many of the Mission schools were little more than catechetical centres, and he saw that if the Church was to win the soul of Africa a drastic change must take place in the outlook of some of the Missions and a new impetus given to education.

Mgr. Ooman at Mwanza said to me: "I believe that Mgr. Hinsley's appointment was providential. He showed clearly to the Vicars-Apostolic that their great work was, for the moment, the progress of all our schools. It was through him that our co-operation with the Government became possible."

Another Vicar-Apostolic said Mgr. Hinsley was dauntless; he brought together the Vicars-Apostolic to present a united front to the Government. God has rewarded him magnificently, and if today we are in the front rank of education in Africa, we owe it to his unwearying devotion, his clear views, his tact and his great heart.

Later on, in London, an important official of the Colonial Office said to the author: We cannot praise too highly Mgr. Hinsley's services to education in Africa.

Mgr. Birraux, Vicar-Apostolic of Tanganyika Vicariate (now Superior General of the White Fathers), said: "Mgr. Hinsley came to us at an age when the body does not bend itself easily to the hard conditions of an African Missionary's life. But we saw him carry the the burden of day, and endure its heat, with a smile on his lips. Nothing was too much or too little for him. Whether it were in an aeroplane, his own feet, over-heated railway carriages, steamers that were too slow, motorcars that were too swift, a native dug-out boat, or a boat of our own construction, beds that were too hard, food that was too frugal, mosquitoes, tsetse flies or rain, it was all the same to him, and he took everything as the most natural thing in the world, without a moment's hesitation and always with a smile. "

Talking of the Cardinal (at Nyegezi on this day, 7th September 1938) Mgr. Ooman said: "He is a wonderful man. When he came here to lay the foundation stone of this Seminary, he was very ill. But rather than disappoint the boys and the people he came to the ceremony with two men holding him up. When he had finished the ceremony he went back to bed. Then, after his departure, while we were still talking about his extraordinary kindness and endurance, he wrote to apologise. Mgr. Ooman showed me the letter. "Not without shame do I recall the little I did for you during my visit and the great trouble I gave at Nyegezi by so ignominiously breaking down just when my services were wanted."

This evening I walked through the dust from the Mission to the house of the Provincial Commissioner. Mwanza is, if horrible by day, gloriously beautiful by night. The effect of the moonlight upon the rocks hanging high over the waters of the lake is superb, and it cheered me to think that the day will come when the beauty of Christ will also, shine in the hearts of all these people, so many of whom are still sitting in the shadow of death.

The Provincial Commissioner gave us an amazing dinner. He had remembered that, while on the ship on Lake Victoria, I had spoken of North Africa, and enthusiastically of the Arab dish, Kouskous, and it was an Arab dinner of chicken and spices and all things "nices." . The conversation was also intensely interesting, for the Provincial Commissioner is very much interested in the natives, and everything that concerns them. His views about not tacking "Europeanism" on to the natives without a development of soul, coincided too much with my own for any argument to ensue upon that matter, but I had an opportunity of expounding the Catholic point of view on education and civilisation. I have always found the British Officials in Africa kind to the natives and kind to us; ready to help us in any way that they can.

A giant of a Veterinary Officer with a charm as large as his frame, drove us home in a very small car at a very great speed. It was a thrill from the starting of the engine to the last screech of the brakes at our door. I am still under the impression of that drive in the open car as I sit, tired and hot and still somewhat depressed for I cannot get out of my mind the immensity of the needs of this country and the smallness of the means which we have here to supply for them. There is, it seems to me, only one text of the Gospels that I can ever remember wherever I go in Africa: "The Harvest indeed is great, but the workers are few" . . . If only it is able to bring Catholics at home to rise to Our Lord's command! "Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He send workers into the harvest," and with the workers the means for them to work.

Somewhere in Ruanda, something began to happen to some of my fingers. There is some kind of infection under the nails. The throbbing of them tonight reminds me that I have been today to a hospital and forgot that I needed attention.

8th September, 1938 — On the train in Tanganyika Territory
The feast of the Nativity of Our Blessed Lady. So many thousands,in this place who have never heard of her! How dreadful— for them. Suppose one did not know her; what a hole, what an emptiness in one's life. That thought does move one to desire more than before to make her known, and with her, as always, her divine Son.

This morning I walked abroad looking for something pleasant in Mwanza; some fairly good shops — kept by Indians: a couple of hotels into one of which I went to save my life. I saved it with an iced drink. The hotel I found full of Germans. The proprietor is one too, stayed on here after the war. I am reminded that we are in ex-German territory. They are all anxious about some situation that is developing in Europe. They say there will probably be war and then they would be interned. They do not, therefore, want war. On the other hand nor do I, for other than personal reasons I hope. It seems to us a shameful thing that these poor natives should be drawn into any European conflict.

How hot it is still. I am inclined now to the opinion that Uganda is quite a cold country and that Urundi, which I found scorching, is but cool; for never before, I am sure, have I suffered so much from the sun as it beat down on the rocky dusty streets of Mwanza. One cannot but admire intensely the missionaries who spend their lives here for the salvation of souls, and surely those souls cannot fail to receive the light and love of Our Lord, begged for them so sincerely and at the cost of so much labour and self-sacrifice.

I had envied the lot of the messengers of God in Urundi who are reaping so great a harvest. I wonder if these priests in Mwanza are not to be envied more; for surely their's is a life which can hold nothing but the love of God. I, at any rate, cannot see in what else they can possibly find their joy. Yet great joy they do possess; the joy of those who have literally given all things for the extension of the Kingdom of God and enjoy not even the consolation of great success. The day must surely come and be not long delayed when the mass of paganism here will crumble, as it is now doing in Urundi, and the successors of these missionaries reap a glorious harvest too.

High up above the Mission, the White Sisters have a new house at Mwanza, which when completed will be a dispensary, a hostel, a girls' school, an orphanage, a workshop for girls, a Maternity Home, and I know not what else,
I went there looking for a nurse, and I found a Sister who could not be anyone but Bishop Horsts' sister. She has, the same round, smiling, capable face. She is the nurse. Her brother is in charge of the Vicariate of Tukuyu, Tanganyika Territory, which is suffering very much indeed from the German ban on the exportation of money.

The whole Vicariate is staffed, I understand, by German Fathers and Brothers, none of whom can receive any money (except a few marks from their parents every month) from Germany. This means something like disaster to a Mission of the White Fathers. Most of the Fathers' private resources, as everyone in Africa knows, is spent on their missions, for the money sent yearly to Africa by the Association of the Propagation of the Faith and kindred Societies does not nearly suffice to meet the expenses of a Vicariate.

The poverty of Tukuyu, therefore, makes the Vicariate of sugarless Mwanza look like riches. Here one candle only is burned at Mass; two at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The wine for the Holy Sacrifice is measured with a teaspoon and none at all is used for the ablutions after the Communion. The schools are opened for as long as the money allows the Fathers to pay their teachers and are then closed until another allocation arrives from Rome. This fight with grim poverty is desperate enough to rival the epics of missionary heroism anywhere in the world, and convinces one that this Vicariate is sowing a seed which will bring forth an immense harvest later on.

In the meantime one's heart bleeds for the Missionaries, even while one thanks God that the spirit of self-sacrifice and tenacious devotion to duty characterise the Fathers of today no less than it did the first White Fathers who, some sixty years ago, walked over the very ground this train is covering on their way to establish the missions of Central Africa.

The Bishop's sister then, is very anxious about her brother, but she is hilarious about my fingers. Boiling water and a knife and her strong arm, are called into action. "You will have to undergo a proper operation later on, just the same," was the only dull remark that escaped the bright sister's lips.

All the Fathers of the Mission staff accompanied Fathers Arts and myself to the station. There I found my friend, the Acting Provincial Commissioner, who thus added a further pile to the debt I owe him. Nothing could have surpassed his kindness nor the "niceness" of that famous Arab dinner.

The train, which was made by the Germans long ago, still has notices in German all over the place, and one hears German spoken all over the place too. "Will they be coming back?" is a question I have often heard during these last few days. "Do the natives want them back?" is another question, the answer to which I am trying to find for myself.
Black leather-covered seats, with sleeping accommodation arranged for the night, look comfortable, and we set to work to prepare for the long journey to Tabora.

The windows are covered with a fine-meshed mosquito netting, so that I cannot look out on the moonlit African plain; the electric lighting is too poor to read by; my fingers do not appear to be in the mood to allow me to sleep and so I regret that I was unable to find any other means of travelling.

9th September, 1938 — Still on the train
I did sleep a little, but on waking still felt that a train is an abomination of Europe which has no right to be here. One has no contact at all with Africa in the thing; one might just as well be in Europe, better, for in this swaying monster there can be no question of offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

After writing that, early morning tea was brought in, then an excellent hot water shave was provided. We made a Meditation and said some prayers out of the breviary. My temper improved.

As we sat in the restaurant-car during breakfast, a small, khaki clad, very weary, bearded White Father, appeared at the door, and smiled at us. Where on earth had he sprung from? He advances, we offer breakfast and he explains. He is Father Donders, Regional Superior of Tanganyika Territory. He had passed the night on some dreadful station in the bush and boarded the train early this morning. Someone had told him there were two Fathers gorging themselves in the dining-saloon, and so he came to look us up. Otherwise, most certainly, he would have taken no breakfast. He is one of the Tukuyu missionaries. I thank God that the sale of my motor-bicycle will enable him to have a good meal for once in his missionary career.

We travel through an immense "little-treed" forest. It looks, and it is, almost impassable. We see nothing but closely packed bush for a hundred miles. Father Donders has been walking through it from north to south, along a native track. After some days he and his porters got lost. He had in his mind the story of Father B. who quite recently was also lost in the forest. He was in fact only two hours from the Mission, and said he would hurry on ahead of his porters. Four days later a search party found him in an almost dying condition. He had taken neither food nor drink. He was carried to the mission where eventually he recovered.

Father Donders, lost in the forest, was thinking of this. "So " he went on, "I said to my porters, all nice Catholic boys, 'let us kneel down and pray. I know a saint, whose name is Antonio, he always finds lost things, and is not a track a very important thing to lose?' We knelt down and prayed for a short time. Then I told the boys to scatter and look for the trail, all to keep calling out and in touch with one another. In five minutes a happy yell told us that we had found the track. Which shows you that Saint Anthony is not only a 'thing'-finder but a path-finder."

There was a little silence and then Father Donders chuckled. "It also shows you," he said, "that you must not fool about with this forest."

"Now keep your eyes open," he said again, "we are going now along the very road that the first Fathers travelled, digging and cuffing their way through this forest. There, look well, this is the place where Father Pascal, the first Superior, died. He was buried in secret at night in this forest. We have never been able to find his grave. Visions of that first glorious but terrible journey came to me from the past. Fourteen months they took, those heroic priests, to travel from Marseilles to Uganda, a journey which I had covered in twenty days, and which can now be made in four days if one is rich enough to travel by Imperial Airways.

Except for the forest I have seen nothing in this celebrated Tanganyika Territory but stretches of dry black, barren land and rocks, with a few wretched villages here and there. One amusing sight only broke the monotony of this long ride. In a little clearing at the side of the railway track we saw goal-posts, proving that the love of football has penetrated to the very wildest parts of this black continent, and has triumphed over rocks and forest. There were some little boys kicking a ball about. It appears to be made of barkcloth, and I see again a London street, Commercial Road way, and a band of urchins playing football with a rolled-up cap. Boys are the same the world over.

After thirty hours in that iron horror we reached one of the most famous and infamous towns of Africa, Tabora, centre of the beastly slave trade of old. There is a junction of railway lines now where formerly the trade routes met. The station is grand, and as we steamed into it we saw a Vicar-Apostolic and a whole crowd of White Fathers on the platform. Touched at this extraordinary mark of affection we prepared to say how highly honoured and pleased we were. The words froze on our lips. They had not come to meet us, but to say "Good-bye" to the Bishop's brother, a layman who had been on a holiday trip here. We wait in the burning sun (and 'burning' is no mere "cliche") for over half hour until the gentleman's train took him off, and then cars took us all to the Mission and a good lunch.

I found here Father LaCroix, the first priest-student of Heston, Middlesex. He is now Superior of this mission, but none the less charming for all that. And what a beautiful church he has.

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