Faithful Hands

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” — John 12:24 (ASV)

His last company numbered over sixty people. At its heart were Susi and Chuma. With them were young men from the school in India, among them Jacob Wainwright, Carus Farrar and Matthew Wellington; a boy named Majwara who slept at Livingstone’s door; women including Halima, who cooked for him; and porters from the coast. In the coming months, these people would decide what happened to David Livingstone, living and dead.

From January to April 1873 they waded through the flooded swamps around Lake Bangweulu, often waist-deep, in rain, with leeches. Livingstone was bleeding badly and could no longer walk. The men carried him on a litter. On 27 April he wrote his last entry: “Knocked up quite, and remain—recover—sent to buy milch-goats.” Two days later they carried him to the village of a chief named Chitambo, in what is now Zambia, and built him a hut.

What we know of that night comes from the men, as they later told it. Around midnight he called Susi, asked for his medicine chest and chose a dose. Then, Susi remembered, he told him all was well and he could go. Before dawn Majwara saw him kneeling by the bed and thought he was praying. Later, frightened that he hadn’t moved, he woke the others. Matthew Wellington laid his hands on Livingstone’s cheeks. They were cold.

Hold that picture carefully: it is loved testimony, not a recording. Even the date is uncertain; his grave says 1 May 1873, but the men carved 4 May. If he died kneeling, it was in a position he had taken thousands of times.

The men could have buried him there and gone home. Instead they met, chose Susi and Chuma as leaders, and decided to carry his body and his papers to the coast, so his people could bury him and his work wouldn’t be lost. Nobody ordered them. They chose it.

Farijala, who had once watched a doctor work, and Carus Farrar removed his heart, and they buried it under a mpundu tree. Jacob Wainwright is said to have read the burial service, and he carved Livingstone’s name and the date in the tree. They dried the body in the sun, wrapped it in bark and sailcloth, and set off.

It was about a thousand miles. Several of them died on the way. When villages refused to let a corpse pass, they disguised the body as a bale of goods. When a British officer they met advised them to bury it inland, they refused. In February 1874, nine months after his death, they reached the coast.

Then most of them were paid off and sent home. Only Jacob went to England. He walked among the pallbearers at Westminster Abbey, beside Stanley. The grave says, “Brought by faithful hands over land and sea.” The hands over land were theirs. Later Susi and Chuma came to England and told the story that fills his last journals. Susi was baptised in 1886 and took the name David.

A month after he died, on 5 June 1873, the Sultan of Zanzibar signed a treaty closing the great slave market. A church now stands where people were sold. Missions in Malawi and Zambia grew into large churches, built mostly by African evangelists, as Livingstone had once said they would be. But his name was also used to justify British colonial rule, with its seized land and forced labour, which he would have hated. Africans have every right to make up their own minds about him.

He baptised one known convert. He was brave and stubborn, honest and unfair, devoted and costly to those who loved him. He gave himself to Christ at twenty and again at sixty. Like a grain of wheat, he bore most of his fruit after he died, through people like Sechele, Susi and Chuma.

One thing to do this week: find out the name of one person who quietly serves in your church or school without credit. Thank them by name, and ask God to help you be faithful even when no one is watching.