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Now, at Shoshong the chief was Sekhome, who, you remember, in our last story, was father to Khama. So when they were at Shoshong, Shomolekae, the young man who was cook, and Khama, the young man who was the son of the chief, worshipped in the same little church together. It was not such a church as you go to in our country but just a little place made of mud bricks that had been dried in the sun.
These were the days that you heard of in the last story, when Khama, seeing his tribe attacked by the fierce Lobengula, rode out on horseback at the head of his regiment of cavalry and fought them and beat them, and drove away Lobengula with a bullet in his neck. For two years Shomolekae, learning to read better every day, and serving John Mackenzie faithfully in his house, lived at Shoshong.
One hundred and twenty more miles of desert travelling brought the party to Shoshong, the residence of another chief and his tribe. Thence after groping their way for eighteen days in a region new to them, without guides, they reached a village containing some natives who were subject to the Matabele king. For some days Moffat and his companions were not allowed to advance.
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.
Sometimes Shomolekae took long journeys with wagon and oxen, and at the end of two years he went with Mackenzie a great way in order to buy windows, doors, hinges, nails, corrugated iron, and timber with which to build a better church at Shoshong. When Shomolekae came back again with the wagons loaded up there was great excitement in the tribe.
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.
As an instance of the power which Moffat had obtained over this despotic chief of a fierce African tribe, it may be related that he prevailed upon Moselekatse to grant deliverance to the heir to the chieftainship of the Bamangwato, a large tribe living at Shoshong, to the north-east of Sechele's people. It was after a long conversation that the thing was settled.
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.
So he went to the father of Shomolekae, whose name was Sebolai. "Sebolai," said John Mackenzie, "I want to take your son, Shomolekae, with me to Shoshong." Sebolai replied: "I am willing that my son should come to live with you, but one thing I desire. It is that he should be taught his reading and to know the stories in the Bible and such things."
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.
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