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In the cooler winter months, Nan and I would go to our favourite place in the river bed, where the sand was warm and when we were comfortable, she would begin her story.
“As you know, I outlived our lovely daughter Sarah, who would have been your grandmother had she not succumbed to cancer not long after having her second child. But this story began when she was a little girl and the missionaries arrived. It seemed they came like the monsoon, although unlike it, they stayed. Our people were unprepared for the emotional onslaught, and assumed it was just another short stay to conduct a ‘mission’ as the missionaries called them. They had been coming through on and off for years, and if they came with a nurse or a doctor, it was a very good thing.
My people assumed they had a right to be there, just like all the other white people who had settled on our land. We can appreciate it now, but the strange thing was, my father, and much later Fritz, had foreseen this might happen, and had serious misgivings about the missionaries coming. Nonetheless, one day they just arrived. They made several trips in with an enormous truck. They brought with them building materials, a piano, stoves, showers, folding furniture, blackboards, and so on. We watched it happen; they set up a mission school and then began to teach the children to sing and clap their hands in time with the music, as young ones love to do. I felt overwhelmed, not only by the preaching, but by the subtle bribes of toys and games aimed at the children.
I have to admit that our Sarah had a wonderful time at the mission school, until one day she came home in tears, very upset by a frightful story about how God, the father of Jesus, had allowed his son to be nailed up on a wooden cross because she and all the other children were wicked sinners. Fritz and I had discussed all this long ago, but I let this go on for too long; how absurd it seemed to fill their fragile minds with such guilt? That was the last straw, and so the next day, I sat quietly at the rear of the hall while the evangelist told the white man’s version of the creation stories.
‘Children, God made the earth, the trees, the clouds up above, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sunshine, and the rain. Our Almighty God,’ at this, his eyes looked up to the sky, ‘created everything, children, everything, the birds, wombats and kangaroos; did you know that?’ With his arms outstretched, he proclaimed, ‘God made everything on the earth and in the sky?’ I was furious. The evangelist had the most frightening glassy-eyed stare as he made a mockery out of everything I had taught. I listened as the little ones clapped their hands in time to the music.
‘Since the Lord saved me,
I am as happy as can be.
My cups full of running over.
Running over.
Running over.
My cups full of running over.’
An accompanist slammed away at the piano, the children sang gustily and followed the evangelist’s actions. When the music stopped, I collected Sarah, loudly announcing, ‘Come along, darling; we have our own spirits and we don’t need theirs.’ The missionaries were taken aback, and the other children giggled as we walked out. But this spiritual independence had its consequences, as they simply saw me as another soul to be saved. Not immediately, mind you, the visit came quite unexpectedly some months later; it was around mid
