SETTLING IN 
31 
of the various articles. I had been promised a corru- 
gated-iron building as a hospital, but it was impossible 
to get its framework erected, as there were no labourers 
to be had. For several months the timber trade had 
been very good, and the traders paid the labourers 
wages with which the Mission could not compete. In 
order, however, that I might have ready at hand, at 
any rate, the most necessary drugs, Mr. Kast, the 
industrial missionary, fixed some shelves in my sitting- 
room, the wood for which he had himself cut and 
planed. One must be in Africa to understand what a 
boon some shelves on the wall are ! 
That I had no place in which to examine and treat 
the sick worried me much. Into my own room I could 
not take them for fear of infection. One arranges at 
once in Africa (so the missionaries impressed on me from 
the beginning) that the blacks shall be in the white 
people’s quarters as little as possible. This is a 
necessary part of one’s care for oneself. So I treated and 
bandaged the sick in the open air before the house, 
and when the usual evening storm came on, everything 
had to be hastily carried into the verandah. Treating 
patients in the sun was, moreover, very fatiguing. 
* 
* m 
Under the pressure of this discomfort I decided to 
promote to the rank of hospital the building which my 
predecessor in the house, Mr. Morel, the missionary, 
had used as a fowlhouse. I got some shelves fixed on 
the walls, installed an old camp-bed, and covered the 
worst of the dirt with whitewash, feeling myself more 
than fortunate. It was, indeed, horribly close in the 
