Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

418 THINKING BLACK
know that summer is nigh," is as African as it is
Biblical.
Nowadays we are all better off and dine on a better
diet—better off, yes, but are we better? Sharp is the
contrast between a London ''slummer" and the modern
African Missionary on his highly respectable station.
Pause half a moment and consider. Note this curious
new word " Station " we begin to use in Africa, a new
word for a distinctly new idea. You will search the
dictionary in vain for its meaning, and the Acts of the
Apostles too. Yet this term can with special fitness
stand for the idea, because this is the thing that anchors
the Missionary. Not a sheep-run nor a railway station,
but a Mission Station—in a word, an isolated estate
some hundreds of yards or acres square on which the
Missionary lives as magnate of the district. Station in
name and station in nature is such a place, for it forces
the preacher to be as stationary as his station : the native
must come to the Missionary, and not the Apostolic
contrary. And what if this lightly-come lightly-go negro
runs off seeking pastures new ? How can the stationary
Missionary follow him? The danger is that in this
Africa ever on the move, this Africa peopled by roaming
tribes, the natives spasmodically scratch the soil in one
valley for three or four years and then flit to new districts
for new fields. Remember rural Africa cannot boast one
plough, only hoes ; and this is fatal to fixed population.
He only scratches the soil and then moves on ; not one
of them will play the man and dig deep. Nor has he