David Livingstone (1813 - 1873)
A missionary widely revered and loved across Africa
David Livingstone was born at Blantyre, south of Glasgow in Scotland on 19 March 1813 and raised by his parents Neil Livingstone, a tea salesman, and Agnes who shared a room in a tenement building owned by the mill company where Livingstone started working at the age of ten. David grew under great poverty, hard work and zeal for education. He desired to train as a doctor so that he could serve as a missionary abroad but the cost of studying medicine in the university proved too high. This meant that he had to work extra hard to an extent that he had to save his summer earnings to pay for the course and this called for vigorous self-denial. In 1840 he completed his medical studies and was ordained as a missionary by the London Missionary Society.
Equipped as a doctor and as a missionary in December he set sail for South Africa and onward to the mission station at Kuruman as a missionary doctor. An account is given of when David was asked to go to the West Indies and he refused saying there were enough doctors there and that he wanted to go where his skills would be more helpful.
To accomplish his mission he focused his life entirely on evangelism, exploration and emancipation. As one old man in Tanzania would later say in 1940, “My father used to say that Livingstone was like a man that had three wives, and yet none of them were women. One was a river. The river they call the Nile. The second was the struggle against slavery and the third, religion.” Livingstone became convinced of his mission to reach new peoples in the interior of Africa and introduce them to Christianity, as well as freeing them from slavery. David spoke openly of heaven and hell but also pointed clearly to the need for civilization and legitimate commerce. On receiving his gold medal on his return to England in 1856 for his exceptional work of exploration he pointed out that the slave trade in Africa would never be abolished until the continent was opened up for trade and Christianity. In one of Livingstone's most remembered addresses, to a distinguished university audience in Cambrisge, he made his famous appeal: “I beg to direct your attention to Africa; I know that in a few years I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open: do not let it be shut again! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity; it is for you to carry out the work which I have begun. I leave it with you!” David gave himself to every challenge that lay ahead of him even it seemed an impossible a task. Meeting Chief Sechele who on hearing David intention to cross Kalahari desert remarked, “You never can cross that country to the tribes beyond; it is utterly impossible even for us Black men.” He replied, “I shall try to hold myself in readiness to go anywhere, provided it be forward.”
It is not without hardship and disasters that David Livingstone was able to accomplish his mission of presenting the gospel to the most interior part of Africa. He considered exploration as a platform from which he could tell Africans about Christ and, in his own words,, “To tell a little about Christ wherever we go, His love and coming down to save men will be our theme”. His intention was to open a “Missionary Road” – “God’s Highway”, along which other missionaries would travel after him planting the message of Christ amongst people. In combating the slave trade Livingstone spent two years after returning from Africa convincing various interests that Africa could offer good prospects in the areas of mining, agriculture and legitimate trade which, if instituted, would edge out slavery and establish civilization and Christianity, which he believed was a very broad, non-denominational Protestantism. He used his status as a national hero to convince various powers on the need to enact intentional plans to stamp out slave trade.
David pushed the British government to force the Sultan of Zanzibar to sign an agreement against the slave trade but he never lived to see that as it was signed thirty five days after his death. Many missionary would come to thank him later for opening up Africa for the course of the Gospel.
David used his medical training and skills in making a positive impact in meeting the holistic needs of the people. In doing so he did help a great deal in alleviating issues that affected the Africans then like diseases. It is recorded that for more than 30 years before Ronald Ross established the link between mosquitoes and malaria, Livingstone suggested their association: 'Myriads of mosquitoes showed, as probably they always do, the presence of malaria.' In 1854 Livingstone also observed the association between relapsing fever and the bite of the tampan (tick). Additionally his experience in Africa led him to make connections between the environment and climate and diseases such as pneumonia, typhoid and dysentery. He strongly believed in physical and spiritual healing of the body and through this people got attracted to his words and through that he was able to pass the gospel to the people.
David will be remembered for his total devotion to the word of God for spending so many years around Africa marching hundreds of miles in a month and at some point being unable to walk more than a few painful steps.
David Livingstone died at Ilala southeast of Lake Bangweulu on 1 May 1873 from malaria and internal bleeding caused by dysentery, as it was later to be established. He took his final breaths while kneeling in prayer at his bedside. Britain wanted his body returned for a proper ceremony, but the tribe would not give his body to them. Finally they relented, but cut the heart out and put a note on the body that said, "You can have his body, but his heart belongs in Africa!" Livingstone's heart was buried under a Mvula tree near the spot where he died. His body together with his journal was carried over a thousand miles by his loyal attendants Chuma and Susi, and was returned to Britain for burial at Westminster Abbey.