IN BELGIAN CONGO

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 122, 25 May 1937, Page 4

IN BELGIAN CONGO

SICKNESS AMONG NATIVES

SUPERSTITION AND FEAR

Head of a mission station at Luanza in Belgian Congo, Mr. E. J. Salisbury, who is now in New' Zealand on furlough, has seen many changes in his seven years of residence in Africa. Since the. depression many factors had brought new conditions and new problems in the care of the natives, he said in an interview with a "Christchurch Press" representative on Sunday. The discovery in large and payable quantities of copper and tin had led to an extension of the industrial side of the colony, and many young natives brought up under Christian influences had been both spiritually and physically weakened by their contact with a foreign world, after terms of work in the mines. Much inquiry'had been done, and was still being carried; out. in the country into. the parasitic diseases which had for so long been a scourge, and leprosy and other diseases introduced by the white men.: ' Sfnce the degression the Belgian .Government had reduced its contributions towards the upkeep ■of leper; stations, but the Mission to Lepers had taken over much of the work and given valuable assistance. The Belgian Congo provided a huge amount of missionary work. Originally the natives had had a knowledge of God; but' ancestral worship and the continual effort by the natives to appease the anger of bad spirits by ceremonial dances and drinking, together with superstition and deadly fears, such as that of eclipses, made spiritual progress somewhat disappointing. With Mrs. Salisbury to assist him, Mr. Salibury is in charge of the Dan Crawford Memorial Hospital at Luanza. The hospital was a living memorial .in the country to the pioneering missionary work of MXi Crawford, who had devoted his life and talents to the care of the natives, as missionary, as translator, and as author. .....••■• . Africa today owed much to tne original pioneering missionaries who with the Bible as their counsel had gone through country unknown to white men to lay an enduring foundation of missionary endeavour and of assistance for natives, Mr. Salisbury said.