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Updated: May 1, 2025
But Shomolekae desired always to go further and further, even though it was dangerous and difficult. So he got a canoe and launched it in the river by the village and paddled further and further up the stream, under the overhanging trees, and sometimes across the deep pools in which the big and fierce hippopotami and crocodiles lived.
At last the time came when Mackenzie himself left the tribe at Shoshong left Khama and all his people and travelled southward to build at Kuruman a kind of small school where he could train young black men to be missionaries to their own people. And Shomolekae himself went to Kuruman with Mackenzie.
He paddled up the River Okanvango, though many times he was in danger of his life. The river was not like rivers in our own country, deep and with strong banks; it was often filled all over with reeds, and as shallow as a swamp, and poor Shomolekae had to push his way with difficulty through these reeds. Always at night the poisonous mosquitoes came buzzing and humming around him.
But our Heavenly Father, Who loves you and me, went with him every step of the way. When Shomolekae taught the boys and girls to sing hymns in praise of Jesus, even in a little mud hut, He was there, just as He is in the most beautiful church when we worship Him. Now God has taken Shomolekae across the last river to be with Himself. Shomolekae was a negro with dark skin and curly hair.
To this John Mackenzie quickly agreed, for he too desired that the boy should read. So the sixteen oxen were yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward to Shoshong.
So he got up into the wagon, and away they went day after day northward on the same journey that Shomolekae had taken when he was a boy. So Shomolekae served Mackenzie for years as wagon driver at Shoshong.
But at such times one of the natives always led the two front oxen through the river with a long thong that was fastened to their horns. So, in order to drive a wagon well, Shomolekae needed to be able to manage sixteen oxen all at once, and keep them walking in a straight line.
Again Shomolekae went away by wagon, and this time he travelled away by the edge of the desert southward until at last he reached the garden at Kuruman where as a boy he used to frighten the birds from the fruit trees. He was now a very clever man at driving wagons and oxen. This, as you know, is not so easy as driving a wagon with two horses is in Britain.
While he was living at Kuruman a man came to him one day and said: "John Mackenzie is alone at Shoshong, and there is no one who can drive his wagon well for him." The man who told him this was, as it happened, going by wagon to Shoshong, where John Mackenzie lived. "Let me go with you," said Shomolekae.
On the banks at night the lions would roar, and then the hyenas would howl; but Shomolekae's brave heart held on, and he pushed on up the river to preach and teach the people in the villages near the river. So through many years, with high courage and simple faith, Shomolekae worked.
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