Good Sense

A SISTER missionary describes the following family episode which took place in Congo:

Strong stalwart Bateke who had recently married came looking for me one morning with a very dejected appearance, or perhaps, disgusted would be more correct.

“Well now, my friend, what’s the matter? Aren’t things going well? Is your wife sick?”

“Oh no, Sister, she’s not sick” (this in a very dry tone)

“What’s the matter then?”

“Ah, that one (meaning his wife), She doesn’t have any sense.”

“Nothing to eat! She’s always outdoors talking. Nothing is good in the hut. She needs . . .”

“Well, bring her here,” I interrupted to show myself willing to help.

“I will scold her and remind her of her duties.”

“Oh no, that’s not enough!”

“What then,” I asked slightly worried.

“That one, (still referring to his wife) ought to come here for at least a month to get a head on her shoulders!”

“All right! Bring her.”

The next day my Bateke came back pulling “that one,” who looked very sheepish, after him.

“How is it my daughter,” I asked her reproachfully, “that you don’t understand your new duties better? If you do not know how to keep house or prepare a meal for your husband, it would be better to come back with us for several days, maybe a month. Do you want to?”

“Oh yes,” she sighed.

“That is fine,” beamed the happy husband.

Obediently the young wife began her new apprenticeship to learn how to prepare good cassava and fish with oil dressing, the staple food of her lord and master.

Bateke came to see his recluse before the month was up.

“You can take your wife back now,” I offered, “she will be wise and capable from now on.”

“No, No,” protested the obstinate husband. “She must stay the thirty days.”

And at the end of thirty days, the couple was reunited. The last news of them was good. My Bateke is satisfied.

“That one has sense now.”

What is possible in Congo is scarcely possible among us. A husband cannot send his wife back to school for a course in Home Economics or back home to her mother to be instructed in her duties . . . As a consequence his home is run in helter skelter fashion. Nothing is ready on time, the food is spoiled, the clothing is not properly cared for, the bills are not paid, the accounts are not kept straight, the children are not dressed on time—there is general hubbub. How can there be peace in such a home where a woman has no sense?

Sometimes it is the man of the house who lacks sense. He manifests no business ability at all; wastes time and money; has no feeling for organization or sense of value; invests foolishly on the word of others and is an easy mark for wily and scheming confidence men. He is hesitant; can never make up his mind or if he does make a decision, he corrects it the next moment; begins everything but finishes nothing; undertakes a profession in which he expects to move mountains and work marvels only to abandon it several months later through lassitude or because he ambitions a career more to his liking and more lucrative.

This changing humor makes him choose one school after another for his children; none of them are ever exactly what he wants. Naturally the children suffer from it, they can’t profit by their classes, lose out on grades, and are in danger of becoming changeable too.

For a man, above all the qualities of the heart can never replace solidity of the mind. He has to have a head on his shoulders, quick discernment, accurate knowledge, the power to decide, if not promptly in delicate matters at least always firmly, the ability to revise his decision when advisable and when the evidence demands it, because obstinacy has no value and reveals even more than indecision that a person lacks sense; but he must also have the power to hold his own against wind and tide, even when the odds seem against him, provided of course, that what he looks upon as opposition is not some difficult obligation of the moment he should be meeting rather than fighting.