# THE FAR HORIZON
111
A Glance at tke Field at Home and Abroad
i
AFRICA It is good news th a t th e im portation of all sp irits into th e B ritish West African colonies has been prohibited for th e present, save under licenses issued by the Colonial Government and based on th e imports for 1918, and th a t li censes are no t to be granted for th e im portation of “ trad e sp irits.” F o r many years, movements, h a v in g ' for th e ir object th e protection of the negro from dem oralization consequent upon the traffic in “ tra d e sp irits,” have been in existence, and have laboured h ard to bring about th e resu lt ju st announced. According to the Edinburgh Report, about 35,000,000 of th e 65,000,000 w ithin th e pagan area of Africa are u t te rly beyond th e reach of th e present distribu tion and operation of P ro test a n t missions. Jesse E. Raynor of th e Africa Inland Mission w rites concerning the influenza epidemic th a t is still raging there. The Agikuyu people all w ant to be at home when they die, so when th e epi demic broke out in Nairobi, when any one became ill they would immediately leave for home in th e reserve, and of course th is spread th e disease all over th e country, and as most of these sick trav elers had no medical trea tm e n t whatever, and the natives will not per m it a sick strang er to stay over n igh t in th e ir villages, many of th e sick died in the path. Also the natives do no t bury th e dead, so on th e m ain p ath through th e country Ruirie and K anyan jua saw 18 corpses. Whenever a person or an anim al dies in th e path, a native will al ways go around the place if he knows it, for superstition says th a t if a person should step on th e spot he would get a very sore foot, because th e sp irit of the
dead stays th ere for th a t purpose. We meet w ith some sad cases of supersti tion and ignorance as we go about among the people. I w ent to a village and saw a girl about two years of age w ith th e left eye blind and almost ready to drop out of ithe socket. I asked the fath e r w hat was th e cause, and he said th a t th e child had had a pain in the eye and th a t they had bled th e eyelid by cu tting w ith a razor to let th e sp irit out, b u t the sp irit was evidently of fended a t th e fath e r or m other because of something they had done. The cuts became infected and th e infection ran down into th e eye and caused the child to go blind, and th e infection continu ing was causing th e eye to drop out. THE SUDAN A. P. S tirre tt w rites concerning the pressing need of help in N igeria and th e Sudan. “N igeria is the larg est B rit ish dependency in eith er E ast or West Africa. The inhab itan ts— negroes— may be divided into Pagans, Moslems and Christians, th e la tte r form ing only a negligible qu an tity as far as th e N orth ern and eastern portions are concerned where th e population may be aqually divided between Moslems, pagans. The Moslem element may be reached through one or two principal languages so th a t the language b arrier is alm ost n il com pared to th a t in the P agan field where a larg er num ber of tribes exist each having a different language. Now al though the Moslem field would seem more accessible from a language stand point, yet from a religious point of view th e P agan field is far more prom ising—- for while Paganism may be said to be non-christian, Moslemism is distinctly
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs