6/12/98: Ruth and I went to the National Museum and were quite impressed. Small, but excellent presentations. One display there was particularly interesting to me…
NOTE: The photo above is the display on the 19th century missionary Robert Moffat at the National Museum in Bulawayo.
6/12/23: One of the reasons I had first dreamed of taking that trip around the world to work with missionaries was because I had seen a documentary about David Livingstone. I had already read biographies on him in school, but the film focused exclusively on his legacy as a “great European explorer” and social reformer, and seemed to take pains to avoid any reference to his primary work as a missionary. Yet it was his Christian faith that was why he was motivated to explore Africa as well as to critique the European practice of colonialism and oppression of Africans. I was so bothered by the obvious bias against Christianity and the missionary movement, that I decided I wanted to go on my own adventure to work with current missionaries and write about the missionary movement in a more even-handed way. That is why I wrote the blog in 1998.
That is why I was particularly surprised to see a display about Robert Moffat at the National Museum. Like that documentarian who told only part of Livingstone’s story, it seems to me that often public museums leave out parts of history that relate to overtly Christian historical figures and their work. Moffat (1795–1883), like Livingstone (1813–1873), was also a Christian missionary from Scotland. In fact, Livingstone was his son-in-law! In 1820, at 25 years of age, Moffat joined the recently established Kuruman Mission Station in what is now South Africa and was instrumental in its work and growth.
For me, having been inspired by Moffat and Livingstone, being in parts of southern Africa where both had actually served and done work, was an inspiring and humbling experience. And having just spent 16 days with missionaries in Harare and at Karanda Missionary Hospital, our time on safari over the past few days felt strange and awkward. It became more so that evening.
Arthur and Sylvia H. hosted us for dinner at The Bulawayo Club, along with their friends Nick and Sheena B. They were wonderful and generous people, but the meal was a whiplash experience! When we visited the club in 1998 it was an exclusive and private club for members only, though in 2008 it transformed itself into a luxury hotel open to the public. A week before we were sitting down to dinner at the club, we had been eating with our fingers at the rural village home of a pastor in the bush of northeastern Zimbabwe. But on that night we were ushered into the old-world extravagance of a colonial-era gentlemen’s club.
After a short tour of the Club, we all had hors d’oeuvres in the sitting room, then dinner in the main dining room. The head waiter seated us male, then female around the table, so that each husband had the perfect view: his wife on the opposite side of the table. The waiter presented the menu to Arthur, then to each of us other men. This was completely alien to me, and in my ignorance, when I looked at the menu, I told the waiter “I’ll have the soup.” He looked at me quizzically, then showed me the menus again. I again said, “I’ll have the soup…” This was repeated a third time, and then he simply moved on to show the menu to the women at the table, starting with Sylvia. This first faux pas on my part meant that I was the only one without the first course of the meal: liver pate. I only found out later that the waiter was not asking me what part of the menu I wanted to choose, he was showing each of us the menu as a formal courtesy to inform us what courses were on the menu that evening. I was supposed to have simply replied “Yes, thank you.” Color me poorly bred! From that point on, I figured I would just keep an eye on the other two men, and do exactly what they did. When Arthur and Nick picked up their outside spoons, so did I. When they nodded to a waiter, I did exactly the same.
After the pate, then there was soup, then came the main course of steak. (I am proud to say that I did already know that I was supposed to tip the soup bowl away from me when scooping up the last drops! But no one at the table knew to congratulate me.) And after desert there was wine and cheese. I managed to avoid further embarrassing myself, though I never stopped feeling quite out of place.
Being a history nerd, it was fascinating to see and experience the vestiges of the British Colonial world. And it was an honor to be treated so generously by Arthur and Sylvia. But the disparity between dining with those in extreme poverty one week and others in opulent affluence the next, was unsettling and disorienting. To be honest, as uncouth as I am, I suppose I fit more naturally in the village mushas scooping up stewed meat and peanut butter with sadza pinched between my fingers…
