Emma Hillmon Haviland

Under the Southern Cross: Or, a Woman's Life Work for Africa Emma Hillmon Haviland

The special work to which I had been appointed at Fair View was the school work; although my instructions given by Superintendent Roberts on the eve of my departure for Africa gave full liberty to evangelize as well as to teach. My manual read something like this: "Do not be satisfied to be merely a school teacher. Be an evangelist. Go out to the kraals, preaching as you go. Make the salvation of souls your one and only business." -from "Chapter XIII: My School" The missionary work of Westerners in Africa is long and storied-here's another tale of the long-term attempts to convert a continent. Privately published, this is one woman's account of her Christian work in Zulu country, from her childhood-she was born in 1863-on farms in Iowa and Kansas, where she had a youthful brush with death that led to her conversion to an active Christianity, to her return home after long years doing the Lord's work. The time in between is fraught with culture shock: her difficulties in learning the Zulu language, her disdain for Zulu tradition and mythology, even a particular scorn for the food she found unpalatable. Stolid and unbending, this is a curious document of a less enlightened time, a firsthand look at the mindset of a bygone time.