On to the Central African Republic

Along with other missionaries, I was assigned to the Central African Republic. French was the country’s official language, but in order to be able to preach to most of the people, we had to learn Sango. We were sent to open a missionary home in the town of Bambari, nearly 200 miles [300 km] from the capital, Bangui. Bambari had neither electricity nor running water, but the two congregations needed our help. My wartime experiences in Europe made it much easier for me to cope with living conditions in Bambari, as well as in other places that followed.

After serving for two years in Bambari, I was assigned to visit congregations as a traveling overseer. There were about 40 congregations in the country, and I spent a week with each one to which I was assigned. I had a small car, but when dirt roads became too bad, I used public transportation.

Bangui was the only place in the whole country where vehicles could be repaired. Since my ministry required extensive traveling, I bought some vehicle-repair books, got some tools, and did most car repairs myself. One time the housing of the universal bearing on the drive shaft broke, and the car couldn’t move. I was about 40 miles [60 km] from the nearest human dwelling, so I cut a piece of hardwood from the forest and fashioned it into a housing for the bearing. Using plenty of grease, I secured it to the drive shaft with wire and managed to continue on my journey.

Serving in the bush, or country areas, was especially challenging because usually few people there could read or write. In one congregation, only one person could read, and he had a speech impediment. The lesson in The Watchtower was unusually difficult, but it was faith strengthening to see the congregation making a sincere effort to grasp the points under consideration.

Afterward, I asked the group how they benefited from lessons they could not fully understand. The answer given was beautiful: “We receive encouragement from one another.”​—Hebrews 10:23-25.

Even though many of my Christian brothers were illiterate, they taught me a lot about life and living. I came to appreciate the value of the Scriptural counsel to ‘consider others as superior.’ (Philippians 2:3) My African brothers taught me much about love, kindness, and hospitality and about how to survive in the bush. The parting words of Brother Nathan Knorr, then president of Gilead School, on my graduation day came to mean much more to me. He had said: “Keep humble, never thinking we know it all. We don’t. There is so much for us to learn.”

Life in the African Bush

I stayed with the local brothers as I went from congregation to congregation. Usually the week I visited was a festival of sorts, especially for the children. This is because the host congregation would go hunting or fishing and made a special effort to have plenty of food for everybody.

Living with the brothers in their huts, I ate everything from termites to elephant meat. Monkey was on the menu regularly. Wild pig and porcupine were particularly delicious. Of course, every day was not a banquet. Initially, it took a while for my body to adjust to the diet, but when it did, my stomach was able to digest almost anything I was served. I learned that eating papaya along with the seeds is good for the stomach.

All kinds of unexpected things can happen in the bush. On one occasion I was mistaken for a mammy-water, which is said to be a white spirit of a dead person that lives in the water. People believe that it can pull a person down and drown him. So once when I climbed out of a stream after bathing, a girl who had come to fetch water saw me and started screaming as she ran away. When a fellow Witness tried to explain that I was a visiting preacher, not a spirit, people wouldn’t believe it. They argued, “A white man would never come way out here.”

Often I slept in the open because the air was fresh. I always carried a mosquito net, since it was also a protection against snakes, scorpions, rats, and other things. Several times I experienced an invasion of army ants, and it was the mosquito net that protected me. One night I pointed my light at the net and saw that it was covered with them. I quickly took to my heels because the ants, although small, can kill even lions.

While I was in the southern part of the Central African Republic, near the Congo River, I preached to Pygmies, who really live off the land. They are expert hunters and know what one can and cannot eat. Some speak Sango, and they were happy to listen. They would agree to a return visit, but on returning we found that they had migrated to some other place. None at the time became Witnesses, but I learned later that some Pygmies did in the Republic of Congo.

For five years, I served as a circuit overseer in the Central African Republic. I traveled all over the country, for the most part visiting congregations out in the bush.

[Picture on page 20]

While in the Central African Republic, I stayed in villages like this one