Zambuk, Nigeria (December 1945—April 1949)

The people of Zambuk are of the Tera tribe—over 20,000 people living in over a dozen villages in an area roughly 25 miles long and 25 miles wide. Zambuk is approximately in the center of the tribal territory, and was the third largest village in the area, with approximately 1,000 people at the time we arrived. Later it increased in size. Each town was ruled by a local chief, which was responsible to the Emir of Gombe, who was not a Tera, but rather a Fulani. The Tera resented this, and a few years later they were granted their own Paramount Chief.

The English District Officer called all the chiefs together, and asked them to choose the man they wanted for their leader. Of course, they all wanted the leadership, but no one would say anything except, “Long may you live. Whoever you give us, we will follow.” This was not what the District Officer wanted to hear. After several meetings he gave up, and decided to appoint one himself, but he was unsure how to proceed. One day when I was in the District Office, the District Officer asked me who I thought would be a good man for the job. I suggested a name, and he was appointed when we were on furlough.

The new tribal leader was from the second largest village, and very friendly to the mission. Of course, the chief from the largest village, who was “anti-Mission”) thought he should be the tribal leader, and refused to follow the man appointed by the District Officer. The District Officer had to send a truckload of Government police to dissident’s town to move him out to a remote village. He was told to stay there, and keep out of trouble, or he would be arrested.

During the time the government was determining who would be the Paramount Chief I had several of the local chiefs ask me, “You are a white man, and you know the ways of the white men. Can you tell me what to say to the D.O. in order that I would be appointed Paramount Chief?” I gave none of them encouragement. I wanted to keep out of it, or I could get in trouble.

The Tera people fled from the Muslim conquest years and years ago. They were Animist at the time, but at the coming of the mission, they were mixed—Animist and Muslim. I have no good statistics for this area, but the last I heard, Nigeria as a whole was 50% Christian.

Missionary Work in Zambuk

Missionaries began working in Zambuk in 1930. When we arrived in 1945 there were 80 people attending the church. Five out-station churches also had been built. Shortly after our arrival a conference was held in Zambuk for all the area churches. It was a joy to see 300 hundred people attend our little church, which was built for 150. To accommodate the extra attendees, the front wall of the church was removed, and replaced by straw mats. After the conference the church was enlarged. Within a few months the Lord brought in more people, and we enjoyed a congregation of 180 people in a short time.

In January 1946 we had nine young men leave for Bible school training – a few also took their families. A few years later these and others who followed in their footsteps were used of the Lord to build up the church. By the time we left Zambuk in 1959 there were over 1,000 people in all our combined churches. Several more out-stations were opened. In order to progress you have to train the nationals.

When the missionaries first arrived in Zambuk none of the people could read or write. The missionaries began teaching them to read and write. Later they opened three schools for children with mission-trained national teachers—one at Zambuk, and one each at two other villages. Adult education continued, in association with tour Bible teachings.

Domestic Life

The house we moved into had been renovated by Alex Ireland, from whom we tool over the supervision of the mission station. It was a good-sized house with seven rooms. The kitchen was out back in order to keep the heat of the wood stove away from the house. One of the first things we did was to screen the house to keep out the mosquitoes and flies, as both are disease carriers.

Locally we could get eggs, chicken, and tough meat from the market. They butchered on market day, which happened to be Saturday. There were cattle in the area and we were able to get milk. When the milk arrived at our house we had to process it before we could safely drink it. First we strained out the flies and other stuff. Then we boiled the milk to pasteurize it. Local fruit and vegetables were readily available. Oranges, grapefruit, mangoes, limes, and guavas grew on the grounds of the mission station on trees planted by our predecessor. We really appreciated his foresight. African grains, peanuts, tomatoes, onions, okra, and squash were also available. We ordered other foodstuffs such as sugar, flour, spices, coffee, tea, and canned fruit once a month from the mission headquarters. After the first year we enjoyed fresh vegetables from our own garden—string beans, corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and lettuce. I also was able to keep us supplied with wild game, such as gazelle, wart hog, bush fowl, and occasionally, a goose.

Building materials like cement, lumber, glass, corrugated sheet metal roofing panels had to be ordered from Jos [?] and came by truck. Once in a while I had a team of sawyers come through and they would find a good tree locally, and saw it into the size of boards I needed. It was very crude. For example, a 2 x 6 would likely be 1½ x 5 at one end, and 2½ x 7 at the other end. Some of the fellows did fairly good work. Years later, someone started a sawmill in the area 250 miles away, and we were able to get very nice lumber.

Mission Health Care

We had a dispensary for treating the people. We had one African dispenser with a helper. Shortly after our arrival the mission sent us a nurse to look after all the medical work. She was a midwife, and we built a delivery room for her. She started delivering babies, and caring for them. This was a great help to the people. We also had an African woman who was a midwife, but she was not as well trained as our nurse.

Eva, our nurse, arrived just in time to save the life of a man bitten by a viper. The poison of a viper thins out the blood so that a person starts bleeding from any old would or even the mouth and eyes. This man was loosing a lot of blood from where the snake bit him. Eva put a clamp on the blood vessel to stop the bleeding. His people didn’t like that, so they tried to remove the clam, and take him away. Eva had to argue (almost fight) with them and said, “If you take him away now, he will die.” They finally agreed to let the man stay in Eva’s care. The next morning the patient was bright and smiling, and had a normal pulse. He went home well. Over the years we treated a lot of snakebites. If they got to us in time, we could usually help them. If not, they died.

We had to always be on the lookout for snakes. During the time we were in Nigeria we found six vipers in our house. One was wrapped around a curtain rod. Another time, when Charlotte was small, she called, “Mommy! There is something behind the trunk. It’s too big to be a worm.” It was in fact a viper. We educated our kids early to watch out for snakes and scorpions. Later, when they were older, the children would go around the yard, pick up stones, and see how many scorpions they could find and put in a jar. It made us a little nervous, to say the least. One day I found a cobra nest in our backyard, and killed ten snakes. However, the mother snake was not to be found.

One of our Christian women had her tenth child in our maternity hut. She only had one other child living. She didn’t have enough milk to feed the baby, so we rigged a bottle for her to use. I soldered the shell of a bullet onto the too of a jar, and we attached the rubber top of an eyedropper to it, creating a bottle. We kept the lady supplied with milk for her baby.