God's Calling

I was five years old when I discovered that Abrahamu could tell me what to do. He was a very black man, but I never thought about things like that then. You see, I was only five years old and had just started boarding school at Rethy Academy. Every morning we would hear the clang of Abrahamu’s iron rod on the school bell. The other kids told me it was time to go to school when we heard him ringing the bell. It was really a rusty old brake drum that hung by a wire from a pole nailed between some tall cypress trees out behind the school. It wasn’t just the clanging that called us. Abrahamu would also chant in Kinguana, the trade language in Northeast Belgian Congo.

“Kengele, Kengele Analia, kuja Ku Kisomo sasa;

Kengele, Kengele Analia, kuja Ku Kisomo sasa.

Kuja, Kuja, Mbio, mbyo, mbyo!

Usiwaiya-waiya

We knew he was telling us:

“The bell, the bell, is ringing, Come to school now

The bell, the bell, is ringing, Come to school now!

Come, come, fast, fast, FAST

Don’t you dawdle!”

He sometimes began chasing us as we scampered ahead of him. We could hear his keys jingling. We obeyed fast. I think he thought of us as his kids.

I didn’t have a watch, but I didn’t need one because Abrahamu was never late. He must have wound up his clock every day and set it to match the principal, Mr. Miller’s, watch. Abrahamu rang the bell twice. After the first bell we always fooled around a bit, with him using a slender switch to chase us to school as we children tried to steal his rod so he couldn’t ring the second bell. But then we would hurry to class because we would be marked late by the teacher if we weren’t seated in our classroom when the second bell rang.

Rethy Academy was a school for missionary kids (MKs) located at 6,800 feet in the northeast of the Belgian Congo, later called Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was often cold there so every room in the school had a fireplace. Abrahamu was the school’s janitor.