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 This early experience prepared her for a lifetime of hard labor.
She knew from early childhood that she was called to be a missionary in West Africa, and her missionary zeal was evident at an early age. When she was eleven, a local gang tormented her by swinging a metal weight on a chain closer and closer to her face. But she made a deal with them, saying if she could endure their torture without flinching, they would all attend Sunday School with her. She stood her ground, won the bet, and they all came with her to church.
Mary accepted a teaching position at a new mission in Calabar, Nigeria, in 1875. The average survival rate for Westerners in Nigeria was around two years. When Mary arrived at 28 with her red hair, blue eyes, and slight frame, most thought she would be lucky to make it through the year.
She arrived in Nigeria during one of its most turbulent times. Witchcraft and superstition abounded in a country decimated by the slave trade. Human sacrifice and ritual murder were common events. Women were considered less valuable than cattle.
Mary thoroughly identified with the people she was called to reach, becoming fluent in their language, culture, and customs. She was so successful in integrating into Nigerian society that the Governor asked her to fill an administrative position as a Member of the Itu Court.
She was constantly urging the Foreign Mission Board in Edinburgh to finance extensions of her work in the interior. The trading markets which she had enthusiastically encouraged attracted people from far afield, and her attempts to reach out to them were the natural consequences of these contacts. Gradually the money was forthcoming and, as new missionaries took over responsibility for the posts vacated by Mary, she was able to move ever further into the heartland. Her courage in braving the hostility provoked by these incursions is legendary. (From, Mary Slessor: Mother of all Peoples, www.dundeecity.gov.uk/centlib/slessor/mary.htm)
Mary Slessor’s influence in Nigeria went far beyond the thousands she led to Christ. She attracted foreign markets to trade with local Nigerians. She raised funds for roads into the interior. She set up medical clinics and mission hospitals that provided the first vaccination against small pox in West Africa. She changed the face of a nation in a few well-lived years of love and dedication.
Often ill with malaria, she finally succumbed to a long battle with fever in 1915. The finest tribute was from those of her own who knew her best. To them she was “Mother of All the Peoples.”
She was given a full state funeral at her death in 1915, and then in 1953, she was given a second state funeral when the newly crowned English monarch Elizabeth II made a pilgrimage to her graveside.
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