The Woman's God

“He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?” — Micah 6:8 (ASV)

Early in her Okoyong years a message came from a chief eight hours' walk away. He was dying, and his people stood outside his house armed, because when a chief died his household might be killed. Everyone told Mary she couldn't go. She went, through rain so heavy that she lost her boots, her stockings, her umbrella and most of her clothes, which the women escorting her carried in calabashes. She later learned that nothing ever won the hearts of Okoyong like that walk. The chief recovered. No one died.

Later, word came of a war about to start at dawn. She was ill and was told the forest would be full of armed men firing at anything. She asked a chief for a man to beat the Egbo drum before her. He sent back a polite non-answer, adding that a woman who went into a war only proved her ignorance. She sent back a reply that's still remembered:

“In measuring the woman's power, you have evidently forgotten to take into account the woman's God.”

At the enemy village a silent wall of armed men stood waiting. An old man stepped out and knelt at her feet, asking her to help make peace. It was the chief she had walked through the rain to heal.

At palavers she knitted. It kept her from showing fear, and the needles clicking calmly in the middle of the shouting calmed everyone down.

Then British power arrived. In the 1890s Britain declared a protectorate over the region, and where treaties were refused it sent gunboats and soldiers. People in Okoyong came to link the consul with “big guns and burnt towns.” The British commissioner, Sir Claude Macdonald, respected Mary, and asked her to run a native court in Okoyong. She did it unpaid.

A British official watched her court. He found “a little frail old lady” rocking a baby. Suddenly she jumped up, grabbed a rude chief by the neck, boxed his ears and threw him out, then sat down again. In one case a man won a debt, and Mary ordered him caned in front of everyone anyway, for neglecting his mother and children and much else. The official loved it. But be honest about it: he was beaten for things he hadn't been charged with, with no appeal. Her justice depended entirely on her being right. Often she was. Not always.

She also lived with a hard tension. Some chiefs, after a funeral passed without killing, told her, “Ma, you white people are God Almighty. No other power could have done this.” They weren't wrong about where power lay: behind her stood the consul, and behind him, guns. In 1901 a British army invaded the Aro country to the west. In the middle of that, Mary wrote something rare for a European then: “After all we are foreigners, and they own the country, so I always try to make the law fit in, while we adjust things between us.”

Later, at Itu, she sat as a magistrate, refusing any salary, mainly to protect women. “God help these poor helpless women!” she wrote after a day of cases of chained, branded and beaten wives. Husbands who had deserted their wives for bearing twins were summoned, and every one agreed to take his wife back. (She's often called the first woman magistrate in the British Empire, but that's never been proved.)

Micah says God wants three things: justice, kindness and humility. Mary had plenty of the first two. Humility towards the people she governed grew more slowly. Power, even used for good, is dangerous, and she didn't always handle it well.

You'll have power over someone: a younger sibling, a team, a group chat. Use it to protect people, and remember you can be wrong.

One thing to do this week: next time you're in charge of anything, ask Micah's three questions: Is this fair? Is this kind? Am I being humble? Change one thing if the answer is no.