One Face in a Million Book 1: Mu Shangaaniana. William Bond
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offer with a smile and indicated that he needed to keep busy fixing the evening meal.
“This snack won’t ruin my appetite,” she said, and after she had eaten her cookies and finished her juice, she rinsed out the glass and then proceeded into the front room.
The room was modest, yet comfortable and cozy. The door from the kitchen led into the dining area of the room where four chairs were drawn up to a rectangular table. A cabinet housing a treadle-driven sewing machine stood before a window on the left, and at the opposite end of the room was a fireplace flanked by matching arm chairs. In the center of the room, facing the fireplace, was a sofa whose upholstery matched that of the fireside armchairs. A long, narrow table stood behind the sofa, and on it were some interesting wood carvings and other souvenirs that had come from various trips which they had taken in certain parts of southern Africa. On the low shelf of that table were some books and some photograph albums.
Centered on one wall was the front door which opened onto the veranda, and on both sides of it were a pair of matching windows. In front of the window in the dining area was a tea cart where Mother kept some of her African violets, and near the door to the kitchen was a hutch which was sometimes used as a buffet. Centered in front of the window in the living room area was a sapling that served as a Christmas tree. Because of this, the Victrola which usually stood in that place had been moved to a corner behind an armchair. On the wall opposite the tree stood an upright piano, the top of which held a lantern and some additional African artifacts. Opposite the front door was a small hallway which led to two bedrooms and a small room which served as Mother’s office. Thus, their house was not large, but it was home.
Sadly, the Christmas tree looked more forlorn than beautiful. They had decorated the sapling on the previous evening, but the baubles and trinkets were ones that they had used for as long as she could remember. Also decorating the tree were some paper chains that she had made years ago. They now seemed rather crude and childish, and they were not nearly as lovely as she had once thought them to be. Other paper chains had been festooned across the mantle and on top of the windows which faced the veranda. All the decorations were meant to look festive, but truthfully, they were now old and no longer attractive. Mother probably thought they looked a bit childlike, too, but they had been put up because no one had made a decision to throw them away—or replace them with something else. Christine would have liked some new decorations for their tree, but she knew that such things cost money, and Mother had to be careful how her modest income was spent.
Christine knew that some families have two incomes, but such was not the case in her family. She didn’t know what her mother’s income amounted to, but she knew that her mother was very thrifty. They always seemed to have the bare necessities, but there was seldom any money for extras—or luxuries! No money had been spent on any new Christmas ornaments; that was for sure. She didn’t know how much her education at a boarding school was costing, but over the years, it must have amounted to quite a lot, and it no doubt contributed to the reason why Mother needed to be so frugal.
Once again, Christine glanced around the room and gazed at the tree which they had decorated. She had expected to feel excitement as Christmas approached, but she had no such feelings! Perhaps if she had seen some presents near the tree, she might have had some feelings of anticipation and excitement, but no presents had yet been placed under the tree.
For now, she simply felt lonely and bored, but she expected that she would feel better when Mother came home from her work.
To pass some time, she picked up two photo albums that she had paged through more times than she could count. She seated herself on the sofa and began looking at the familiar pictures. She recalled that the old black-and-white photographs in the first album had been taken several years before she was born.
The first pictures were of Mother and her first husband shortly after they had arrived in Africa. She had been born Clara Benson and had grown up in a large family in the state of Michigan. She had decided at an early age to become a missionary, and she had attended a college where she had taken classes that would be helpful in her chosen career. In school she had met, and later married, Daniel Foster, who also had plans to become a missionary.
Together, they worked to learn all that they needed to know in order to enter the mission field. They had traveled to Portugal and spent a year or so there studying Portuguese before coming to their assignment at the mission station called Tavani near Manjacaze, Mozambique. They had only been in Africa a few months when he was stricken with black water fever and died. Although she had become a widow, Mother had remained at Tavani. Other missionaries had retired or been transferred, and she soon became the senior member of the mission station—and with that status came a lot of responsibilities! She had carried on believing, as she had often said, that the Lord would not give her more to do than she could handle.
There were several pictures of Mother with various missionaries and visitors. Most of the visitors were people that Christine had not known because they were before her time.
Others were people that had been around Tavani for years. Although they had moved away, she could remember the Greenfields and the Nelsons. She recognized pictures of the Bostwicks and Ms. Ferguson, of course, because they were still assigned to the mission at Tavani.
There were pictures of various buildings under construction. Mother had served as the supervisor and had directed some of the Shangaan men who had built some of the newer houses on the station. Over the years, she had been involved, not only in construction, but also with nursing, teaching, preaching, evangelism, and of course, administration. She was knowledgeable about most aspects of the work on the mission, and she was considered so indispensable that a recent furlough had been postponed. Because she was dedicated, hardworking, conscientious, and faithful, she was respected by both the missionaries and the local people. The Shangaans loved her and affectionately called her Mamana, meaning Mother. Many Shangaans had been won to Christianity during the time she had been at Tavani, and there had never been any problems with the authorities in Mozambique who oversaw the missionaries’ work.
There were many pictures of various Shangaans in church-related activities as well as some informal pictures of them that had been taken near their homes. The Shangaans were a friendly and gentle people who had been remarkably receptive to the missionaries and to the religious teachings which they had introduced.
Mother had been a widow for about three years. Then, she became acquainted with Paul Cartwright, a widower from South Africa who had been the superintendent of the church’s work in the southern part of the continent. He had courted her, and they had been married in February 1911. They were only planning to remain at Tavani until someone arrived who would be Mother’s replacement. They had then intended to move to Johannesburg so that he would be better located for his work. The move never took place, however, because, just a few days before Christmas, he had died unexpectedly. He had gone in a small boat to deliver some gifts and some words of encouragement to the inhabitants of a leper colony on an island near the mouth of the Limpopo River. On his way back from the island, his boat capsized and he alone had drowned. His tragic and untimely death had left Mother a widow for the second time. That had occurred just four months before Christine had been born on April 15, 1912.
There were some pictures that had been taken of her parents on their wedding day, and there were a few other pictures of her father—but not many. These few photographs were virtually the only connections which she had with the man who was her father. She could see that he had been a tall, good-looking man with dark hair and a swarthy complexion. His dark eyes suggested that he was intelligent, and she had been told that he was kind, capable, and very compassionate. He had been well-liked by those who knew him, and he had become a very prominent Christian in South Africa. Mother had admired him and had grown to love him, and Christine had been told on countless occasions that her father had been a wonderful man in whom she should feel great pride. Although she had never known him, she had concluded that he must be a very remarkable man. Her Indian ancestry had never concerned her at all until the past school year when Sara had said that she was “a half-caste who was trying to pass for white.” This had caused Christine to reflect on the fact that she was racially mixed, and it troubled her more than anyone—including her mother—realized.
Mother, of course,