"Buck's Report for the Third Quarter of 1878"

The report is on tie Boarding School, and in this case intended for publication: The boys do not play actively as boys in Europe do, but they love the singing they learn with Catechist Aneba. They go to the hand work with a will (mostly cleaning the compound and farming) and are visibly a very healthy group, especially when compared with the average disease-ridden heathen boy, Concerning the ‘inner life’ of the boarding school, he writes that you must not judge the place by European standard. ‘{They come) out of the deepest swamps of heathenism and sin; in their impressionable years they have seen nothing but the fruits of heathenism, envy and brawls, conflicts and hatred and all sorts of filth, and have heard nothing but the most shameful words, nothing but scolding and insults and the master having no idea of mother love. 'They have never heard the sweet word of a mother’. Whoever wants to make a true appraisal of an African Boarding School must decide which is better: that, or a German borstal. It can be demonstrated however that the boys are attracted to Christian truth those who were baptised recently had a better grasp of their baptismal instruction when all the candidates were examined, than their adult counterparts.

25.09.1878

25.09.1878

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