Page 41 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

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After the thunderstorm, the chief dismissed us in the company of two young warriors each of whom carried a big piece of meat for us to the station.
The two boys Dunge and Nyamane learnt very well and understood well and were really a part of us so that my father intended baptising them. When he informed the parents, the mother of the one boy came to us with some other women and made a dreadful noise in front of our house – father wanted to take her son away, she would rather kill herself with a knife etc. This made such an impression on the son that he ran away during the night and after a few days the other one also disappeared for good!! One of them, Dunge, I met incidentally in the years 1901 – 1903 at Mr Reiche near Wartburg, Natal, as a man!!
In 1863 Emhlangane and its church and houses were in good order,
my father had spent weeks in the bush near Hermannsburg and had
cut down trees, sawed the wood, laid the bricks and thatched the roof together with kaffirs and the missionary work under him and the second missionary, Missionary Röttger, his assistant, was in full swing. In
about September 1863 Superintendent Hardeland came together with Missionary Karl Hohls from Hermannsburg and took father with them on an investigative journey to Transvaal. When they returned from there, Missionary Hohls was deployed in Hermannsburg and was consecrated for the office of superintendent of the mission in Africa and my father was consecrated on the same day as president of the mission in Bechuanaland. I was present.
Hardeland was very strict and unpopular and sickly and travelled back to Germany.
At the beginning of 1863 father sent me and my sister Marie to the school in Hermannsburg and he, together with mother and sister Christine travelled to Transvaal at the end of 1863. Together with them Kaiser, Lohann and Jensen. It was after Pentecost and they left us behind at the school.