It was to this school, in Saharinpoor in the Protectorate of Bombay, that I was taken with the other captives. And it was at this school that I left the name Thenga behind me and became Jacob, an Heir to Salvation saved for Labor in the Kingdom of Christ.
Every day, on the thirtieth day of November, the birthday that I chose for myself, which is also the anniversary of the day of my baptism, I pray for a Shower of Blessings on the men who rescued me from God only knows what fate. I could have stayed in Zanzibar or in Oman, or even in India, where I ended up, but not as the free man and child of Christ I am today. No; I would have been nothing better than a heathen slave, shut out from Salvation and mired in darkness.
I was grateful, deeply grateful to my rescuers, the sailors on the SS Daphne. I had them always before me, these men who rescued me. But it was not the whites among them who showed me my path, but the others, as black as I am, the “Krumen,” they called themselves, who first gave me a wondrous glimpse of the man I could be.
They were from Freetown in the land of Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa. What a wondrous name it seemed to me when I finally understood that this Freetown was a town founded by freed Christian slaves returned from England, a town that had as its neighbor a country called Liberia, founded by freed Christian slaves from America! Two shining lands of freedom, living in neighborly accord, governed by those who had known what it meant to be bonded to others as chattel, and what it meant to be free in the Name of Jesus!
The work of the Krumen of Freetown was truly the Work of Freedom, for their job was to move up and down the coast of the Indian Ocean on the Freedom Ships that sailed the high seas. They rowed their small boats on perilous waters and stuck out their oars to pull in the drowning. It was one of these men who had lifted me, trembling and frightened, from the prow in which I had hidden.
At the Nassick school, I was reborn with a new name. With the other rescued children, I received instruction in the English language, and learned skills such as carpentry, welding, shipbuilding, cartography, smithing, and agriculture. None of these called to me as strongly as did the possibility of service to Our Lord, the Savior. I took the first opportunity I could to be instructed in the Christian faith so that I could be baptized.
A Bishop Wainwright in England had given money so that ten boys could be accommodated and educated at the school. He had also donated Bibles and missals as our baptism gifts. Reverend Price suggested—in fact, he ordered—that the ten of us for whom Reverend Wainwright had chosen to stand Benefactor should take his name as our own, though we were free, he said, to choose our own Christian names. These, the reverend encouraged us to choose ourselves from the Bible.
I had thought at first to take the same Christian name as the Doctor. What a David I would have been, against the Goliath of Sin and Ignorance! But it was the name John that held for me a peculiar attraction. It was the name of both the Baptist John, and the Prophet John whom God had so blessed and favored by opening his eyes to His Glorious Revelation. For though I do not always understand all that the Prophet saw, the Seventh Seal and the Pale Horse, the Beast that comes out of the Sea and the Beast that comes out of the Earth, to read the Revelation fills me with absolute conviction of the Glory of the Lord.
The name John also had the attraction for me that it was the Christian name of Mr. Bunyan, the Great Dreamer, who was given the visions that he saw and set down so faithfully in The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come. I have pored over those pages, indeed, I have wept over them, for always, within them, I find something new and true. Were the Lord only to bless me by giving me such visions, I would consider it a true calling to set it all down.
This much had I invested in the name John. But before I could indicate my preference, the others had already been to see the Reverend Price to tell him their chosen names. They wished to be baptized Matthew, Luke, Timothy, James, and John. So the name John was taken before I could claim it, and taken too by a boy that I knew to be most unworthy of it!
There could hardly, Reverend Price said, be two John Wainwrights at the school, and as the unworthy boy had chosen first, I was to choose another.
It was a bitter, bitter blow. I prayed that the Lord would reveal to me a new name. I prayed on no other matter for two days, and at the end of that period, I opened my Bible only for it to fall on Genesis. My eyes immediately fell on the passage where the Angel of Peniel asks: WHAT IS YOUR NAME? And the answer JACOB jumped off the page like an affirmation.
It seemed to be the Lord’s very answer. Nor could I help but think that Jacob was also called ISRAEL. What name could be more fitting than the name of the father of the Twelve Tribes, among them the tribe of Judah, to which also belonged King David, the ancestor of our Savior Jesus Christ?
In the full confidence of my new name, I read more closely than I had ever before the passage that followed: “Do not be afraid. For I have bought you and made you free. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you pass through the rivers, they will not flow over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The fire will not destroy you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, who saves you.”
And so I left behind my heathen name of Thenga, and came to the light of Christ as His servant Jacob. At the Nassick school, I found my own ship, my boats and my oars. Just as the Krumen saved lives using these, I would use the Grace and Salvation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I felt certain that I had the calling of a missionary. I was to be a Shepherd among His Flock, attending to the Salvation and Moral Elevation of my heathen brothers and sisters. When I told this to the Reverend Isenberg, he said only, “Well, well. Let us not get ahead of ourselves because you do, of course, labor under the unfortunate disadvantage of being black.”
Indeed, I said, I did not presume to want to minister to the white sheep, but only to the black. My mission would be back in Africa, where so many were still mired in Ignorance and Want, yearning for the Salvation of the Life Everlasting. I would work to end the True Slavery of my continent, the Enslavement to Darkness and heathen ways, of which this noxious trade in humans was but one sorrowful example.
Like Paul, once Saul, who was, just as I was, born in Darkness and come unto the Light, I wanted to spread the word of Christ to the heathens. Just as Paul spread the light to the Corinthians and Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians, Hebrews and Romans, I would spread Christ’s Light to the Wagogo and Wayamba, the Wabisa and Wamwinyi. I would spread His light in Manyuema country and Bechuanaland, among the Barotse and Matabele.
The Light of Christ would shine over the Yao, over the very people who had sold me into slavery, from which action had come my salvation. From east to west, north to south, the light of Christ would shine with His Majesty, even unto the Ends of the Earth. For the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. So shall it be, so shall it be. Amen, my Lord, let it be so.
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8 May 1873
Third Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, written at Chitambo’s Village; in which Wainwright reflects on his Departure from the Nassick School and his First Encounter with Doctor Livingstone.
I knew of Doctor Livingstone long before I first set eyes on him at the Nassick school. Not only did his deeds and words feature most prominently in the newspapers that were circulated among us, both in our weekly assemblies and in our lessons, I held him as a beacon of what was possible.
I extolled his commitment to my natal land, so mired in darkness. In the speeches that he gave to audiences in England, and in which he talked to the great and the good of London, he addressed me too, a young native boy in faraway India. I listened closely as his words were relayed to us at assembly; I pored over his journeys in the Illustrated Times. I prayed for him and for the many that he was turning to Christ in our native land.
So when he came to the school when I was just a boy of fourteen, I could barely contain myself. It was in 1866 in the
Year of Our Lord. He was then at the beginning of this very journey that has had its sorrowful conclusion in Chitambo. His visit to our school was a great occasion, so great an occasion that for two months before he arrived, we practiced a special assembly in his honor.
The assembly had to be put off several times. Bad sailing conditions meant that Doctor Livingstone only reached India a month after we had first begun to expect him. When finally he did arrive, he was accompanied by the bishop of Calcutta. Then the Reverend Isenberg gave us news that lifted my spirits. The Doctor was not only passing through our school: he had come to recruit from among us Nassickers. He was to select from our number ten of us to accompany him to Africa.
I dared to entertain the great hope that I might be among the chosen, that I might be among those who would learn at the feet of the great Missionary, and be fired and filled with the Spirit that moved him to travel across the land and sea. Like him, I would cut through the forests and jungles of my dark natal land and light it up with the Power of His Shining Majesty.
Here was my chance at last, to go back to my own land as a missionary. This thought occupied me above all others, that here was the path laid before me that would take me back to my own people, to my mother and sister if they are still living, and that I might forgive my uncle for his Sin in selling my brothers and me and killing my father. I would bring to all my people the Salvation that I had found and place them firmly within the Loving Embrace of my Lord Jesus Christ.
On the day after the great assembly, twenty of us were asked to stand before him. He had with him two men of our Race. My eyes took in every aspect of their appearance. The younger was dressed in English clothes, and the older in Arab dress of the Suaheli type. They were presented to us as James Chuma and Abdullah Susi, his long-serving companions. As our eyes met, Susi winked at me. I looked away.
As for the Doctor, he was, I must confess, a disappointment. He held his left arm rather stiffly, a result, he told us, of a ferocious lion attack in which he had almost lost both his arm and his life. It was hard to equate this small, wizened man before me, with his graying hair and stiff left arm, with the picture I had in my mind of a towering giant opening up a continent to Christ. Why, he was barely taller than I was, and I was only fourteen. In his gray frock coat and black trousers, he could have been any of my schoolmasters. Absent from his head was the cocked hat in which he appeared in all illustrations. Altogether, he was a much smaller and less prepossessing man than I had been given reason to expect.
I believe I made a better impression on the Doctor than he made on me, for I was introduced to him as a most promising lad. I had been practicing for this moment. At first I thought I would stun him with the power of my memory for Bible verses. In the end, I chose to impress him with his own words, words that I had memorized from a speech he had made in the months before he sailed for India. It had been published in the London Illustrated Times. Now that I remember the words that I recited to him, in the sorrow of what has come to pass, they seem strangely prophetic.
I said to him, “ ‘I beg to direct your attention to Africa. I know that in a few years I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open; do not let it be shut again. I go back to Africa to make a path for commerce and Christianity.’ ”
The Doctor laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. When he laughed, his whole face became animated, and his eyes twinkled with humor. I was a bright young lad, the doctor said, but I was too young, much too young for the work to be done.
I was crushingly disappointed. With great envy, I watched the chosen ones go: Abraham Pereira, Richard Isenberg, Andrew Powell, James Brown, and Simon Price. I could simply not understand why the Doctor had taken these unworthy fellows instead of taking me, or, if not me, then at the very least, William Jones, who, though not as able a student as I, was at least more gifted than all the others.
I swallowed my sorrow and instead vowed to work harder than ever I had. I read my Bible through, and read also the small stock of books in our humble library. And I prayed that I would grow both in my Spirit and in my body, so that when a similar opportunity presented itself, I would not be found too young or in any other way wanting.
I little thought that I would see the Doctor again.
My prayers were answered seven years after I met the Doctor. It was then that another opportunity presented itself. I was now approaching the age of twenty. The prediction that the Doctor had made in London had come all too true: he was shut off in Africa, lost to the world. Five of us from the school were sent for. We were to join a Lieutenant Dawson and the Doctor’s own son, Mr. Oswell Livingstone, on what they called the Livingstone Relief Expedition. Our one and only mission was to follow all reported sightings of the Doctor in the African interior until we found him, whether he be in this world or in the next.
The chosen five are the same Nassickers who are on this present Expedition: Matthew Wellington, John Rutton, Benjamin Rutton, John Wainwright, and I. We left Bombay on the SS Livinia in February in the Year of Our Lord 1872. The crossing was mostly in good weather, but there was a terrible storm in our second week.
The waters raged around us as the boat shook about, and it was as though I were a boy again, on the terrible dhow that took me into slavery. In my great fear, I sent up a prayer of Penitent Supplication to the God in whose hands the seas are, and all the lands too and the heavens over them, and in a matter of moments, the sea becalmed itself again, and all was tranquil. So have I always been favored in the sight of the Lord.
Twenty-one days later, we landed at Zanzibar. We embarked to the Glad tidings that our mission was no longer necessary: by the Grace of God, Doctor Livingstone had been found at Ujiji near Tabora. A Mr. Henry Morton Stanley, a journalist said to be from the land of America, had been the agent of the Lord’s Merciful Deliverance.
This necessitated an immediate change of plan. We were no longer to go with Lieutenant Dawson as part of the Livingstone Relief Expedition. Instead, we were to head into the interior on the instructions of this same Mr. Stanley, along with further supplies to relieve the Doctor, and with askari and pagazi employed by Mr. Stanley. And we were to be joined by Carus Farrar and Farjallah Christie, two other Nassickers who had left the school some years previously to find work in Bombay and Zanzibar. They were both living in Zanzibar when Mr. Stanley recruited them.
The seven of us, with our askari and pagazi, reached Doctor Livingstone on 14 August 1872, in the Year of Our Lord, after three months of marching. And here I have been these nine months since.
Seven years had passed since I saw him, but it may as well have been seventeen. He was a broken shell of the man he had been. Indeed, if he had seemed unprepossessing to my child’s eye, he looked positively wretched now. His skin was sallow and toughened. The little hair on his head was now completely gray, and his remaining teeth hung yellowly out of his mouth. He had clearly suffered much, and was a most pitiful sight.
And I found, to my great satisfaction, that the Nassick boys he had initially selected had all proved to be most unfaithful and abandoned him. Here was a chance to redeem our school! Here was a chance to show that it was I who should have been chosen all along. Here was a chance to bring a Lost Lamb back to the fold, for I could see at once that his experiences of the last year had greatly dispirited him and left him most dejected.
My joy knew no bounds, for in this I saw the workings of the Lord. I know now that this was my mission all along. Especially after I started to watch him, and saw that he did not pray as often as I did, and when he did, he did not seem to have the same fervor that sometimes seized me. I saw that before I started on my larger mission to turn my people to salvation, I had this particular mission assigned to me, to shepherd this lost sheep to the loving Arms of the Shepherd. And so, here, through the Grace of Providence, I am firmly set on the course that Him Above has chosen for me.
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9 May 1873
Fourth Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, written at
Chitambo’s Village; in which Wainwright Reports on the Firm Resolution Made by the Whole Party, Recalls the Burial of the Doctor’s Heart, and Prays that All May Improve by what they are Taught in the Sufferings of Christ.
I am most pleased to report that, after some contestation, the party is finally of one mind: we are firm in our resolve to take the Doctor’s body to the coast for onward burial in England. We buried his heart in Chitambo’s village. Halima, who is the most empty-headed of the women, has been inciting the others to chortle about other parts of his body that are to be buried. I am pleased to see that Ntaoéka, who is the only levelheaded woman among them, refuses to join in Halima’s more vacuous pursuits; she has a firm mind, and I made sure to tell her what I told the others, that what we were burying, and what we would always say we buried, was his heart, and only his heart.
I said the service as we buried that sacred organ. A person whom the Lord has blessed with an abundance of talent must, perforce, constantly struggle against the twin sins of Vanity and Pride. I have struggled, and, I hope, not in vain, to overcome, from an early age, the sin of Pride. But I must admit that my heart swelled inside me to hear the sighs and sniffles of the congregation before me, if I may make so bold as to so call such a small ragtag group of pilgrims.
It seemed to me then that all my life had been in preparation for this task. As I stood before them, I felt as though I was back at the Nassick school, pledging myself into His service.
And so it was that when I stood before the congregation at the burial of the Doctor’s heart, I considered that this was perhaps the beginning of my ministry. Sorely distressing as the circumstances were, it pleased me nonetheless that I had found here my true calling, and that I was to be the Chosen Instrument by which the Lost Sheep came back to Christ, that I had been chosen to labor in the Garden of Christ. For with God, nothing is impossible. Ask anything in my Name, said Christ, and I will do it.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 11