James Chuma (d. 1882) and David Susi (d. 1891) were men from central Africa who took part in the second Zambezi expedition led by the explorer David Livingstone, and were employed by him in his last expedition. They had significant roles in organisation and were the first to greet Henry Morton Stanley when his search party made contact.
They supported Livingstone on his last travels, and after his death they played a leading role in taking his body to the coast for return to Britain. In 1874 they went to Britain, visiting his family and friend and benefactor James Young, and helped Horace Waller with his task of transcribing and editing The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, contributing their own memories for notes of clarification and for the period after Livingstone's last journal entry.
Background David Livingstone, missionary doctor, explored the Zambezi and crossed the continent to Luanda. He was fluent in Tswana language, and king Sekeletu assigned Kololo people to assist and guide him along established caravan routes. He returned in 1856 to acclaim from the Royal Geographical Society, and his Missionary Travels published in 1857 was a bestselling travelogue with exceptionally sympathetic descriptions of African people. He raised public demand for missions and "legitimate commerce" by river into central Africa to end the increasing horrors of slave trading.
The East African slave trade dated back thousands of years. Arabs mingled with Africans along the Swahili coast, and their caravan trade routes extended over across the country. Many traders were Afro-Arabs, notably Tippu Tip, operating from Zanzibar. In addition, Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese landowners exported slaves to Brazil. Livingstone noted slave trading by "Manganja" (Mang'anja) and "Waiyau" (Yao) African people, but this "strange idea of property in man that permits him to be sold to another" was not held by others such as the Xhosa, Zulu and Tswana people.
Zambezi and Shire In December 1857 the Foreign Office proposed an expedition. Livingstone had envisaged another solo journey with African helpers, in January 1858 he agreed to lead a second Zambesi expedition with six specialist officers, hurriedly recruited in the UK. The prefabricated river steamer Ma Robert was quickly built and on 10 March taken with the expedition on a Colonial Office steamer which arrived at the Zambezi on 14 May. There were delays getting up the shallow river, Ma Robert had to make repeated slow journeys with supplies, getting hauled across shoals. The riverbanks were a war zone, with Portuguese soldiers and their slaves fighting the Chikunda slave-hunters of Matakenya (Mariano), but both sides accepted the expedition as friends.
Abdullah Susi Susi worked on the Zambezi at Shupanga as a riverman. Livingstone referred to him as a Shupanga man, he has been described as being of the Shupanga tribe. Around 1858, he was employed in the service of Major Tito Sicard, the Belgian Commandant of Tete, who was stationed in Shupanga during the Mariano war. At Tete in 1856, Sicard and Captain Nunes had given generous assistance to Livingstone (and his Kololo men) who became starved getting there.
The Ma Robert reached Shupango on 4 August 1858. This was the first time Susi met Livingstone, who had been welcomed by his old friends Sicard and Nunes, after they "put their good-will into action, by cutting wood [as fuel] for the steamer and sending men to help in unloading." The steamer, with Livingstone, left for Tete on 17 August.
Chuma Chuma (also written as Chumah or Juma), was born to Chimilengo, who was a proficient fisherman, and Chinjeriapi, Yao people who lived in Kusogwe near Lake Nyassa. While still only a boy, he was sold for two bundles of fish to become a Portuguese slave. Livingstone understood that Chuma had been sold by his own "Waiyau" (Yao people), but in 1866 Chuma believed that he had been caught and sold by the Mang'anja, and disputed that others had been sold by their own Yao relatives.
In July 1861, when Chuma was around 11 years old, he was freed from slavery by Livingstone's expedition and the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) led by Bishop Charles MacKenzie.–Abdullah Susi, James Chuma.
The Colonial Office had provided the expedition with Pioneer, a new wooden paddle survey vessel. Both the Bishop and Horace Waller of the UMCA helped energetically in getting the ship up the Zambesi and Shire River to Chibisa's village. On 15 July they set off on foot for the Shire Highlands. Next day, they reached the village of Mbame, where they were approached by "a long line of manacled men, women, and children" being marched along by black slave-drivers who scattered when they saw the Europeans. The leader, "a well-known slave of the late Commandant at Tette", had served Livingstone there on the previous expedition. He claimed to have bought the slaves, but most said they had been captured in war. The expedition freed the slaves, including Chuma, and told them they could now go where they pleased. All chose to be attached to the Mission.
MacKenzie set up a Mission Station at Magomero as an interim measure until he had more local knowledge, he "commenced learning the language, Mr. Waller began building, and Mr. Scudamore improvised a sort of infant school for the children". The expedition left them and Livingstone extended exploration to Lake Nyassa, but found increasing problems of Portuguese and Zanzibar slave raiding, and conflict between Yao, Kololo, Mang'anja and Ngoni people. In January 1862 MacKenzie lost his medicine kit and, without quinine, caught malaria and died. On 6 May the UMCA moved its Mission back down to Chibisa's.
Shupanga to Shire and Bombay
Susi and his friend Amoda joined Livingstone's expedition at Shupanga in 1863, to cut wood as fuel for the Pioneer.
Livingstone had raised funds for a replacement river steamer, Lady Nyasa. It was shipped out in sections and assembled at Shupanga. When Pioneer returned in December 1862 from investigating the Ruvuma River, they paid (in cloth) their "Mazaro men" who left and engaged replacements. On 10 January 1863 they set off, towing Lady Nyasa as its engine was incomplete, and went up the Shire River past scenes of devastation as Mariano's Chikunda slave-hunts left corpses floating downstream. They reached Chibisa's and the Murchison Cataracts in April, then began dismantling Lady Nyasa and building a road to take its sections past the cataracts.
On 26 June, Bishop William Tozer arrived as the new head of the UMCA. He brought government orders ending the expedition, so Lady Nyasa was reassembled and its engine installed. The mission and Waller moved to Tozer's new base downriver on Mount Morrumbala, then learnt that the mission was moving to Zanzibar, taking only some "teachable boys", abandoning 13 women and children, and 25 young men. Waller resigned to look after them, and when the river became navigable in January, Livingstone collected them as he brought the ships downriver. At the Zambesi mouth the ships were towed to Mozambique. Pioneer took Waller and most of the party to Cape Town.
Rather than sell Lady Nyasa where it could be used by slave traders, Livingstone took the tiny river steamer on to Zanzibar, then on 31 April 1864 set off for the voyage under sail to Bombay. The small crew included Susi and Amoda, as well as the two boys Chuma and Wakotani. Remarkably, they made it to India on 12 June, a day's sail from Bombay. Livingstone arranged education for the boys and some of the crew at John Wilson's Free Church College, and got jobs in the docks for other crew members including Susi. He then went back to Britain to organise another expedition.
Livingstone returned to Bombay to recruit expedition members. He was present on 10 December 1865 when the boys were baptised by John Wilson, and Chuma became James Chuma.
Search for the source of the Nile Livingstone's reputation had been damaged by reports of failure, but he still saw himself as a missionary using exploration to spread Christianity and commerce, and thus end slavery. He still had a lot of public support, and in Britain took up the suggestion from Roderick Murchison of the Royal Geographical Society of exploring water systems, hoping to establish the source of the Nile. Government support was minimal, but he was given significant funding by his friend since university, James "Paraffin" Young.
He returned on 11 September 1865 to Bombay, where he recruited four of his previous crew members; "two Shupanga men" (Susi and Amoda), and the "two Wayaus, Wakatani and Chuma". From the Nassick African Asylum for freed slaves, he engaged nine lads recommended by Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay. Frere also provided 12 sepoys of the Bombay Marine Battalion under a havildar (corporal), and use of a ship to Zanzibar. Helped by the British Consul at Johanna, Livingstone hired ten Comoro Islanders he referred to as "Johanna men". Their leader, known as Ali Moosa or Musa, had been a crew member on Pioneer during the Zambesi expedition.
Mikindani to Ujiji He had 36 men; expeditions at this time usually exceeded 100. A Royal Navy ship landed them at Mikindani near the Ruvuma River on 24 March 1866, and he hired more porters there. As previously, Livingstone focussed on his own interests and neglected organisation. "Mazitu" (Ngoni) raids left food scarce, and corpses marked the route of Zanzibar slavers. On 11 June the Mikandam porters refused to go further, the increasingly undisciplined sepoys were paid off in July.
Wakatani and Chuma translated for Livingstone at a Wayau village, where all had "heard of our wish to stop the slave-trade, and [were] rather taken aback when told that by selling they are part and part guilty" of the deaths – "If they did not sell, the Arabs would not come to buy." A Zanzibari slave trader whose large caravan stopped at the next village gave Livingstone and his men food, and asked about English efforts to end the trade. He helpfully took correspondence on to the consul. Livingstone came to be on good terms with several of these traders, while openly trying to end slavery.
Livingstone wrote to Waller "Chuma and Wikatani are very good boys but still boys utterly". Around 16 years old, they were showing "excessive levity", as when laughing so hard at jokes that they did not notice the villagers telling the jokes stealing "fork, kettle, pot, and shot-pouch", most of which were recovered for the expedition by their chief. Livingstone's attempts to train them as domestic servants met "an inveterate tendency to lose my things & preserve their own", and they had to be shouted at to prepare breakfast on time. Wakotani, if not giggling or smoking bange and screaming, "was sure to be singing Dididey dididey or Weeweewee".
Their caravan passed to the south of Lake Nyassa in late September. At M'Ponda's village, Wakotani said he had met a brother, his father who sold him into slavery was dead, and he wanted to stay with his relatives. Livingstone had told the Waiyau chiefs that slaves he liberated "never became our slaves, and were at liberty to go back to their relatives if they liked; and now it was impossible to object to Wikatani going without stultifying my own statements." Apparently Wakotani tried to persuade Chuma to join him, but Livingstone advised Chuma that this could be a trick to enslave him. A few days later, after passing Cape Maclear, a woman questioned Chuma about his family, then persuaded him that she was his aunt. "He wanted to give her at once a fathom of calico and beads, and wished me to cut his pay down for the purpose. I persuaded him to be content with a few beads for her", and he gave her some other valuables. "It shows a most forgiving disposition on the part of these boys to make presents to those who, if genuine relations, actually sold them."