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The worse the people are, the more they need help. I should go to the Ibibios." Meanwhile the Mission committee in Scotland decided to build a hospital at Itu. Dr. Robertson was to be the head of it. The Mission committee chose a name for the hospital. They named it, "The Mary Slessor Mission Hospital." The people in Scotland gave the money so the hospital could be built.
They were led by a circuitous route to Arochuku, and housed in a village. Batches of from ten to twenty were regularly taken away, ostensibly to the Juju, but were either sacrificed or sold into servitude, only a miserable remnant of 130 succeeding in reaching the hands of Government officials. Of a totally different type were the people living to the south of the Creek, called the Ibibios.
Then the lads pushed her chair out to Ibam, two miles distant, where she met the headman and his followers. These were an arrogant, powerful sept not Ibibios who had been allies of the slavers of Aros, and were disliked and suspected by all. She told them that she wanted the question of Gospel entrance settled. They looked at her indulgently.
The gateway to the Aros and the Ibibios, holding the Enyong, and being just a day's journey from what must ever be our base, namely the seaport of the ocean steamers, having waterway all the year round and a good beach front, it is the natural point, I think, at which our up and down river work should converge.
They agreed to let Mary go into the new territory. She did not have to go back to Akpap. This made Mary very happy. Now she could work full time among the Ibibios. She offered to pay for the building of a mission station among the Ibibios if there was no money in the homeland treasury.
I would like Miss Wright to help me with some work among the cannibals, in some places, so that I will have more time for pioneer work in the places farther away. Itu should be our main station. We can reach the various tribes best from it. It is the gateway to the Aros and the Ibibios and near many other tribes. That is why it became a slave market. It could be reached so easily.
Some time in the dim past a raiding force had swept down from the mountains to the east of Calabar, entered the triangle of dense forest- land formed by the junction of the Cross and Calabar Hirers, fought and defeated the Ibibios who dwelt there, and taken possession of the territory.
She had adopted many black children whose parents had thrown them out. But money never bothered Mary. She had a little bit saved up. She was happy that she could go to cannibal, land and win souls for Christ. "But where shall I work now?" Mary asked herself. "Shall I keep on working on upper Enyong creek or shall I go south to the Ibibios? The Ibibios are the worst heathen in this part of Africa.
"It seems like a fairy tale," said Mary when she was told about it, "and I don't know just what to say. I can just look up into the blue sky and say, 'Even so, Father; let me live and be worthy of it all. It is a grand gift and I am so glad for my people." Now that Itu was taken care of, Mary had all the more reason to go south to the Ibibios.
The Ibibios seem to me to wear the deepest crape in the form of accumulated dirt, and all the African tribes I have met have peculiar forms of hair cutting shaving the entire head, not shaving it at all, shaving half of it, etc. when in mourning. The period of the duration of wearing mourning is, I believe, in all West Coast tribes that which elapses between the death and the burial of the soul.
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