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Then she returned to Akpap and wrote the Mission Board for permission to open a station at Arochuku. Soon the answer came back! We are sorry, but it will be impossible at this time to open work at Arochuku. We do not have the money or the workers. Among the Cannibals "The mission Board says that they cannot open a mission station at Arochuku now," said Mary.
Mary had first-hand acquaintance with the people. Refugees came to her from both Ibo and Ibibio with stories of cruelty and wrong and oppression; chiefs from both regions sought her out for advice and guidance; slave-dealers from Arochuku and Bende, with their human wares, called at Ekenge and Akpap, and with many of these she was friendly, and learned from them the secrets of their trade.
They came to Mary's hut at Akpap. All was still and quiet. Mr. Ovens looked at the other missionary. "Something is wrong," he said. He knocked loudly at the door. He knocked and knocked again. Finally Mary awoke and opened the door. The missionaries saw how tired and sick she looked. "What is wrong?" asked Ovens. Mary told them about the sickness at Ekenge. She told them of what she had done.
Then turning from the ghostly spot with its melancholy community of dead and dying, she tramped through the dark and dew-sodden forest to Akpap, where, utterly exhausted, she threw herself on her bed as the land was whitening before the dawn. Towards the village that day two white men made their way, Mr. Ovens, who was coming to build a Mission House, and Mr. Alexander who had brought him up.
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.
There with Your blessing I hope to conquer the cannibals for Christ." "I do hope," she said to herself, "that the Board will soon send an ordained minister to take over the Akpap station. I must persuade Miss Wright to go with me to Itu. I am sure God will give her courage to come with me. This Enyong creek region will give us all the work for Christ we can handle and more.
Ovens, the carpenter, who is building the mission house at Akpap, can do the work until we find someone to take your place," answered the chairman of the committee. "But what shall I do with my many black children? I don't want them to go back to heathen ways of living while I am gone. I don't like to ask the other mission workers to take care of them for me." "Don't worry, Mary.
The track from Ikunetu to Akpap was the ordinary shady bush path, bordered by palms, bananas, orange trees, ferns, and orchids, but in the wet season it was overgrown with thick grass, higher than one's head, which made a guide necessary, since one trail in the African forest looks exactly like another.
As there seemed no prospect of anything being done, she began to move quietly along her own lines. Her school lads were now old enough and educated enough to be used as advance agents, and her hope lay in these. In January 1903 she left Akpap with two boys, Esien and Effiom, and one of her girls, Mana, and canoed to Itu, and planted them there to teach school and hold services.
She held church services for the people, and many of them came to hear the white Ma teach about Jesus. At last it was time for Mary to go back to Akpap. She left the native Christians to carry on the work of the school and church. The people of the village gathered around her. They said, "Come again soon, white Ma. If you do not care for us, who will care for us?"
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