FROM CENTRAL AFRICA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 148, 13 September 1927, Page 18

FROM CENTRAL AFRICA

WORK AMONG THE BANTUS LONDON MISSION SOCIETY’S DOCTOR VISITS N.Z. TN Northern Rhodesia, near Lake Tanganyika, Dr. H. E. Wareham labours for the London Mission Society. For 25 years he has been among the Bantu natives, doing hospital and administrative work. This morning Dr. Wareham arrived from Sydney by the Marama on his first visit to New Zealand, and during hisi stay here he will visit the Congregational Churches for the London Mission Society. He has been in Australia for six weeks on a similar mission. Away in that distant corner of tropic Africa, Dr. Wareham has ministered to a sick New Zealander who was biggame hunting in the jungle and was suffering from a poisoned leg. When Dr. Wareham first went to Mbereshi, in Northern Rhodesia, the slave traffic had just been stopped by the British Government. Befor.e that the Arabs used to raid the Bantus and take them to the coast, where they were sold. Dr. Wareham said this morning that the Belgian administration of the Congo has much improved, and all slave trafficking has been stopped. The. doctor said. that the London Mission Society is doing wonderful work among the natives. There are 20,000 in the classes organised by members of the society and 13,000 in the schools. Scripture and hygiene are the two principal subjects. “In a hundred years’ time Africa will be an African country," said the doctor. “The blacks will work with the whites. Both are needed •For Africa. That is our mission, to prepare them for the time when they will assist with the government of their own country. “The days of the white men going out to tropical Africa and ‘drifting’ are over,” continued the doctor. “Nowadays white women go out there. “Northern Rhodesia has never had a chance to develop, though it is fine country. The trouble has been with the tsetse fly, which has killed thq cattle,” said the doctor. “However, the mines are very productive, and are going ahead.”