The kindness of strangers

I’m writing this while I’m still feeling the feels. We had a really special experience today which has made this whole trip glow with purpose.

We headed up the hill on the crazy broken road this morning to Livingstonia. I had no real idea what we would do there but knew that there was a little museum that would probably be a good starting point. The museum was in the house that was built for Dr Robert Laws who was the head of the Livingstonia Mission. Quite a remarkable man. It was he who invited my great grandfather, Malcolm to travel from Cape Town to then non existent mission on top of a plateau in the remotest corner of Malawi. In 1894 Malcom (24 years old) took a boat trip up the coast to Mozambique, another boat up the Zambezi, another up the Shire River and yet another up the coast of Lake Malawi, where he joined Dr Laws at Bandawe, a mission on the coast just south of Nkata Bay. He then assisted with the enormous work of setting up the new mission in Livingstonia in the role of Agricultural Officer. He was responsible for establishing all the gardens to feed firstly the missionaries and then the students in the college they built. He was also given the task of ‘doing the books’ which he hated and for which I have sympathy.

A young Scottish nurse, Marie Jackson arrived at the mission in 1900. So much admiration for a woman of her time undertaking such a journey! She and Malcolm fell in love, married and had first a son, Unwin in 1901 and then, in 1902, twin daughters. They died a day later. I knew they were buried in Livingstonia so hoped I might be able to find their grave.

This turned out to be quite a complicated undertaking. Thank goodness for MacDonald. He told the lady in charge of the little museum what I wanted. Her name is Sheila. She explained that normally I’d need to ask permission from the chief to access the cemetery. Unfortunately, today there was a funeral and the chief was at it. However, the person the funeral was for (a retired priest) had already been buried and was being looked over by he townsmen while the service happened elsewhere, so she suggested we go there and ask their permission to look for the grave.

The cemetery was in a remote part of the town behind the secondary school. When we arrived there were about 40 men sitting about on graves and chatting. The area was pretty overgrown, and graves scattered about haphazardly. MacDonald and Sheila stepped in to plead my case. They spoke the local language so I could only guess what was said. The man they were speaking to kept looking at me seriously so I assumed they were doing a good job. Then happily we were called over and invited to look around.

It became clear that this was going to be difficult. Most of the headstones were missing or illegible, and after a while I started to lose hope. A few of the men watching me called out asking what we were looking for. We said Moffat, twins, around 1902.

Grant and I went off searching in the long grass when we were called back to quite a commotion. All the men had taken up the search and were gathered around a grave scrubbing away on a stone they had dug up. One brought over a bucket of water, another a cloth. They called to me - Moffat! As I got closer, sure enough, they had found it.

I was totally overcome and I’m not sure how much of it was finding this precious piece of family history and how much was the kindness of these strangers. As I stood, tears cascading, they fell silent and stood around us. What fine, good people these Malawians are. Macdonald and Sheila were also beautifully sympathetic in that moment.

Grant videoed the experience and I have attached it.

Malcolm and Marie (who I’m named after) went on to have another son, John, my grandfather.

Livingstonia has continued as a wonderful asset to the Malawian people. We visited the original church which is still packed every week, the hospital which is functioning well and supporting a huge community, and the university which has grown from the original training institute built in 1901.

I found the missionary records of both Malcolm and my other great grandfather, George Prentice who was a doctor in the Bandawe mission. They will be a great resource for the book I’m writing. I was amused to see one of the comments about Malcolm was that he ‘has a temperament that only Dr Laws can check.’ Seems to be a Moffat trait, some of which I might confess to having.

My heart is now full as the point of this trip was to try to connect with this place and its history and my goodness I felt it today.Read more