Foot Notes

By Joyce Scott

Joyce had 28 years in Kenya with the Africa Inland Mission, under the Africa Inland Church.In her last 12 years the Church leaders assigned her to work with Kenyan church musicians, to encourage composition of hymns and songs using indigenous music styles, languages and instruments, in 13 of the language groups where the church worked.

/she was a consultant on indigenous music for ministry in Sudan, Ghana, Algeria, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and the Comoro Islands, and taught courses at Daystar University, Nairobi and six other Bible collegess, including four years at Evangelical Seminary of South Africa Pietermarizburg.

Joyce has been awarded International Scholar status with the International Council of Ethnodoxologists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joyce Scott
• Release date: Aug 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393293613

Book preview

Foot Notes

Joyce Scott

About the Book /Author

A person smiling and posing for a photo Description automatically generated

Joyce is a follower of Jesus, a missionary with a love of music who grew into a pioneering Musicologist and an understanding friend of thousands of non-English speaking people. (Rev Tom Houston.)

Joyce had 28 years in Kenya with the Africa Inland Mission, under the Africa Inland Church.  In her last 12 years the Church leaders assigned her to work with

Kenyan church musicians, to encourage

composition of hymns and songs using indigenous music styles, languages and instruments, in 13 of the language groups where the church worked.

She was a consultant on indigenous music for ministry in Sudan, Ghana, Algeria, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and the Comoro Islands, and taught courses at Daystar University, Nairobi and six other Bible colleges, including four years at Evangelical Seminary of South Africa, Pietermaritzburg.

Joyce has been awarded International Scholar status with the International Council of Ethnodoxologists.

Reviews

Tim Stafford: I've known Joyce Scott for forty years, and nobody can match her for curiosity, enthusiasm, passion and intensity. What a remarkable life she has led!

Dr Dick Anderson: Joyce loves her Lord and delights in sharing his good news by spoken, written and sung word - especially with her Kenyan friends. 

Rev. Tom Houston:  Friends of Joyce will be thrilled to get and read Scotty's book. They could not do other with this witty, sincere, wise, original, true memories included in these freshly written, eminently readable, original reflections.

Joyce our Friend

What a privilege to have experienced Joyce for over 68 years.We have laughed together, cried together, lived together and we have experienced God’s gentle hand on us together.

Joyce is a person who has seen life in many different aspects. Through her compelling relationship with God through Jesus when she was still young, came to know His saving grace, His forgiveness, His companionship, His guidance, His joy in seeing others realising their faith in Jesus, through the spoken Word and through inventing songs God’s way in their own culture – all of this sums up the total commitment which Joyce has had in her life time.

Life hasn’t always been easy for Joyce - there have been disappointments, mistakes, blunders but having lived with her for almost 10 months you get to know

that person, warts and all and her contact with the Lord has always been uppermost in her life.  Everything she has achieved or done has been for His Glory and for

His Kingdom – she is just a person like

us, wanting God’s best.

Jock recounts his memories of Joyce, personally as well as being a member of the AIM committee whilst she was in Kenya :When I first met Joyce through Val and her circle of friends, it was no secret that she had heard the Lord’s call to Mission work and was preparing herself to be obedient to His call.  Having a personality which is strong willed and decisive, she nevertheless had the grace to learn from the people she was working among and it also included a significant ministry of indigenous music.  This record is a testimony to her Lord.

To sum up – Psalm 25:10 (LB) says – And when we are obedient, every path He guides us on, is fragrant with His love and truth.  We have seen the fragrance of Jesus in her.

Jock and Valmai Schoeman, April 2020

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Acknowledgements:

I am so grateful for the help, skillful editing and kindly encouragement given to me by many people in writing these memoires, but chiefly to two marvellous editors: 

Jean Knighton-Fitt who arranged the script into something a bit more readable (I hope!) and became more of a dear friend in the process.  And to dear Ev Els for working with the photographs – a really imaginative and careful labour! – and getting the whole thing all properly printed.  Bless you both!

Special thanks to my favourite cartoonist, Gavin Thomson*, for designing the front and back cover to make it ‘smileable’ and to give you some idea of what I mean by Foot Notes.

Then my loving thanks to many friends and relations who have pushed me to get this finished ‘before it finished me’, especially for help in what it cost – emotionally as well as financially.  Bless you!  If you find yourselves in the script I ‘hope you’ll recognize my thankfulness for your friendship. The problem is, of course, that there are hundreds more wonderful people who have touched my life in amazing ways, whom I have not mentioned.  Poets, mountain climbers, book lovers, music makers, writers, counsellors and teachers – all part of the undeserved bundle of blessings that have been God’s gift to me. So I thank God for them with all my heart.As the old hymn written by Isaac Watts says :

"I’ll praise Him while He lends me breath;

and when my voice is lost in death,

praise shall employ my nobler powers:

My days of praise shall ne’er be past,

while life, and thought, and being last,

or immortality endures."

- Joyce

* Gavin is ‘a cartoonist and children’s book illustrator, probably best known as the cartoonist of Treknet and Mama Taxi. I work from my home studio in the beautiful Noordhoek and when I’m not at

my drawing board, I love to ride my bicycle up and down Chapman’s Peak. You can follow me on my Facebook page, Gavin Thomson Cartoons

and Illustrations or Instagram at gavin_thomson_cartoonist (www.gavinthomson.co.za)’

Table of Contents

Introduction: 

Earliest memories – influences – singing along life’s road – music touching all I did 

1. Living on the Farm in the Orange Free State – 1931-1937:

Early childhood – animals – games – life lessons

2. Moving to the Coast, Port Alfred – 1938-1946:

More games – beach memories – school holidays – Dan’s fall – WW2 – shot in the knee – falling in love with music – elderly house guests – ‘Wits End Corner’

3. People and Pets:

Bull Purdon – Grandpa Scott – cousins – family animals – Dad’s heart attack

4. Independent in Grahamstown – 1947-1950:

First job – junior typist – boarding house – softball, swimming, dances – first serious romance – first commitment to Jesus, reverted

To Cape Town – 1950–1955:

Firgrove Easter Camp – YMCA Mountain

Club and Bible Study – Metropolitan Methodist Church, Greenmarket Square – definite choice for Jesus – serious romantic relationship – Sunday School teaching – bad cough – Pinelands Methodist – kidney stone – healing prayer – baptism

6. Overseas Travel & Study – 1953–1956:

Call to Missions – hiking in UK and Paris – work in London – study at London Bible College

7. Kalk Bay Bible Institute & Off to Kenya – 1956–1961:

Back to SA – Kalk Bay BI – Application to AIM – deputation work – Matric study – St. John’s Parish Secretary work

8. Orientation to a New World – 1962-1964:

Learning Swahili – adapting to fellow missionaries – Kijabe bookshop – seven months at home after Mom’s heart attack – the dilemma of solitariness

9. Nairobi – the farewell to Mother & Dad and Home – 1964–1966:

Two special American friends – Robert Frost poetry – A year away from Kenya: Mother’s heart attack and death – caring for Dad – dispensing with household belongings and selling the house 

10. Back to Kenya – 1966–1969:

Possibility of work at Lokori – floods – Kesho book shop, Nairobi – working with students – developing multicultural sensitivity – music group: Nairobi Associates – YFC and Christians at Work – Africa Enterprise, Crossroads City Mission – climbing

Mt Kilimanjaro – Graduates Christian Fellowship – Singleness

11. Youth Work in Nairobi – 1970–1972:

Africa Christian Press conference – YFC conference in Liberia – Charismatic movement – personal culture

recognition and multicultural worship styles – Philia friendship explored – six months home leave – secretarial work at UCT – SCA and Hans Burki

12. Kapsabet Bible Institute and a new vocation – 1973-1977:

Teaching music – discovering African music scales are different from

Western – cultural worship style tensions – setting up the AIC School of Music

13. P.AC.L.A. – Flashback to December 1973:

Two special speakers: Sam Kameleson and Dawid Bosch

14. England, North America and South Africa – 1977-1978:

Mennonite experiences – Messianic Shabbat – ‘my own heart music’ – Kalk Bay BI reunion – Grahamstown and indigenous music development

15. The School of Music – 1978-1986:

Pioneer work – ‘mobile’ School of Music courses – encouraging indigenous worship styles – visiting remote areas – enjoying bush hospitality – Maasai church planting breakthrough

16. Invitations to Other Countries:

University of Algiers with Ginger Johnston, 1981 – Arabic musical instruments – converts from Islam – Taposa people in Sudan 1883 – twice stuck in the mud

17. Switzerland, writing teaching manuals – 1981–1985:

The strain of working alone – worn out – ‘Three colours of hate’ – Rasa in Switzerland – back in Kenya writing teaching manuals – 10 months home assignment – making a harp with Andrew Tracey 1982 – disappointment about third upgrading course – Government invitation to take part in new school curriculum re: music-training courses – John Kitala  joins the team – detached retina 1985

18. Footnotes under various events of 1981-1990:

Switzerland with Hans Burki – LEARN Programme with Tom Brewster – Scotland explorations and Oberammergau 1984 – Osteoporosis – John Freeth – farewell to Kenya 1990 – return to SA – Mandela released

19. Home for Good – 1990–1992:

Changes and fear in SA – visit to Comoro Island – staying in Khayelitsha – visit to Namibia – invitation to work in Pietermaritzburg

20. Good Years at EBSemSA – 1993-1996:

On the staff – new SA constitution being prepared – 1994 elections – sharing grief with close friends – differences between African and Western singing re repetition – Taize –starting a new book – retirement from AIM – tumour near brain – trips to Singapore, Taiwan 1997 – Showalters’ house investment offer

21. Three months in USA & Canada – 1997:

Many trips with many friends!

22. Home hunting, surgery & Heartache – 1997:

England –back to Cape Town – finding a house – brain surgery – Namibia for Christmas – Dan’s death – house-building – settling into Fish Hoek Presbyterian

23. Inside Stories from 1997–1999:

Living near the sea – difficult relationship break-up – Singleness stress: beholding God and being enfolded by Him – Finishing ‘Tuning in to a different Song’ – turn-of-the-century fun on the mountain

24. Numerous worship training workshops – 2001-2002:

Book selling – challenges in being truly multicultural in worship – George Whitfield College – ESSA Seminary – Wycliffe Bible Translators, Ghana – making explanatory video with YWAM – heart-aches about friends – broken foot – Poetry group

25. Home and abroad – 2003:

Good Friday mime at church – home group Bible study – SIL Global conference in Texas – formation of ‘Global Council of Music for Missions’ – visits in the States and Canada – Teaching at the Wesley Theological seminary, Washington – New York – New Hampshire Shaker Community visit

26. Back Home, Fear, Intimacy with God – 2004:

SA travels – Quiet days – fear –intimacy with God – ‘prayer’ as a main missionary calling – six weeks in Kenya –– time with John Kitala – teaching at TIMO headquarters – some time in Malawi – ILAM Conference in Grahamstown

27. New Muizenberg home & church; another trip to Kenya -2004-2006:

Showalters’ house sold – CHS: Church of the Holy Spirit – to first Africa-based Orientation held in Kenya – the running-down ‘Propeller’ – Chronic Myelotic Leukaemia – move to new home in

Marina da Gama – The Freeths’ commitment – Philip and Jan Yancey visit CT

28. Of Comets and Books – 2007-2009:

Reprint of ‘Tuning In...’ – McNaught Comet – starting new book: ‘Moving into African Music’ – tragic closure of EBSemSA – 50-year reunion of BI class – Jacob Zuma for President – the privileges of being single – much-valued books

29. Some Silence and Some Songs:

Songs that have been meaningful

30. Last Safaris – 2010:

Diminishing strength – training successors – workshop in Tanzania – last teaching trip in Malawi – Chichewa and Yao worship styles contrasted  – Singapore International Council of Ethnodoxologists – Soccer World Cup and the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism

31. The Frail Trail – 2019:

Moving into frail care – downsizing – last Table Mountain climb – present Table Mountain view – statement of personal faith – each day one step nearer home.

Introduction

Earliest Memories and influences – singing along Life’s road –

music touching all I did

It is said that in a child’s first three years more is learned than at any other time of life – language, walking, relating to those around you – for better or worse – and how to survive.  I was one of the fortunate few born to parents who loved one another deeply and made each of us children feel that we were special gifts.  Maybe that was because they married late – Dad was 48 and Mother 36.  They were engaged for 10 years while Dad, an immigrant soldier from Ireland, worked and saved enough to buy a farm.

We lived on this farm in the Free State with all the privileges that this gave to adventurous children.  I was the last-born of three.  My brother and sister went to a farm school together so I was left alone to invent my own playmates.  I’m told that the earliest of these was a piglet whose mother and siblings perished in a

storm so was hand-reared in our house.  Piggie used to follow me everywhere, so they say, but I suspect when he grew up he was moved to the sty with the others and ended up as home-cured bacon and sausages.

By far my most loved ‘friend’ was a low branch of the big peach tree in our garden that I could swing on and ride like a horse.  I called her Mary and would spend endless hours with her, singing songs for her.  When I was six we had to sell the farm and move to the Eastern Cape coast because of Dad’s heart problems.  I shed many tears saying goodbye to Mary.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on Mother’s knee in our Cape cart, Dad driving our two fine horses Bles and Nugget.  My sister Molly sat between Dad and Mother, and big brother Dan sat on the luggage shelf at the back, with the cream cans we were taking to sell to the dairy in town. 

And we were singing – always singing!  All kinds of songs that we had learned as Mother played the piano or our little pump organ at home.  Dad’s rich bass and Mother’s mezzo soprano blended in a natural harmony and we learned the words by heart.  Later on we graduated from our Cape cart to a car – a dreadful old blunderbuss Austin with celluloid windows and a leaky canvas roof.  It lasted a few years, and then Dad bought a really cool 1934 Plymouth. 

Through all these changes our singing tradition remained.  I still remember many of those songs – wonderful Scottish folk songs, Afrikaans volks liedjies, lots of hymns and a sentimental song that she and Dad used to sing in the 10 years they were unofficially engaged before Dad had saved enough to buy the farm!  We loved this one:

There’s a long, long trail a’winding into the land of my dreams,

Where the nightingale is singing and the pale moon gleams;

There’s a long, long trail a’waiting until my dreams all come true,

And the day that I will walk along that long, long trail with you.

I guess singing while on a journey is not unusual, and certainly helped to pass the time cheerfully for us on some of the rough roads of long ago.

Many years later in Kenya I heard a rather corny signature tune to a radio programme, Singing I go along life’s road, which will maybe serve as a theme to follow as I write.  Even up to my doddering old age songs will never fail to move my feet and become ‘foot notes’ to all the experiences of my life.  Sometimes it is the rhythm that makes a song memorable for me, or the tunes.

Other times it’s just the words that have the power to move me deeply.  Some even mark an Aha! moment for me, a still turning-point, instrumental in changing my life’s direction, or moving me into some timeless truth. 

Music seems to touch everything I do. 

It’s a background, a subconscious beat through my day.  Even as I wake there’s some song there, just below the surface.  Sometimes it surfaces and I hum along with the tune or move to its rhythm.  I find myself keeping time with it as I walk, or stir food in my kitchen, or knit, or even as I brush my teeth.  Sometimes something someone says, or an otherwise trivial incident, will remind me of a song and off I go, enjoying the connection for a while.  Am I weird?  Do other people relate to this?  Does it happen to you?  Maybe not, but as I share some of the ‘turning points’ in my life and make ‘foot notes’ of where my feet have gone, you’ll share the dance with me. In T.S. Elliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ there is a recurring phrase that captures what I want to say: 

...at the still point of the turning world...

at the still point, there the dance

So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.

Chapter 1

Living on the Farm in the Orange Free State – 1931-1937

Early childhood – animals – games – life lessons

Let's start at the very beginning, A very good place to start...

The Sound of Music

Childhood is a wonderful thing to reflect on, especially from an ageing perspective.  It’s a whole world of experience and discovery, of finding awesome things without really looking for them.  It’s learning by just watching, wondering and asking questions.  And believing the answers!  The build-up of knowledge and experience just happens, but as I look back and let the memories of my childhood slide into my mind, it is astonishing to realize how rich those years were.  I guess that is why they’re the most interesting part of anybody’s autobiography – whether good or bad. 

They are unique and yet they can spark a

response of You too? as we read about others’ memories.  So let me share some of mine and hope you’ll enjoy them.

It is hard to believe, but I was just 2 years old when my Grandmother died, and I have this vivid memory of sitting on the stoep with my sister, making a wreath out of wild cosmos flowers we had picked in the veld.  And watching men carry out a mattress covered with a blanket, to a strange car at the gate – presumably Granny’s body under that blanket, on its way to the funeral parlour.  It couldn’t have been a later event – a photograph of Granny’s tombstone shows the date.

Another early memory crowds in:  being carried on my mother’s back, African style, wrapped in a pure wool red shawl (we called it the 'shally', which came from some great-grandfather or uncle who fought in the Crimean war!).  I had run into the sharp corner of a zinc table outside our ‘bywoners’ family home and gashed my eyebrow.  Mercifully it missed

my eye but bled profusely and Mother slung me on her back and hurried home.  I was about 3, but the scar remains even now.

The bywoners were the Klaasens family, given squatter rights by my father, plus a few animals and land for growing food.  It was a common practice at that time to help Afrikaans families destitute after the Anglo Boer war.  On Granny’sfarm, next to ours, was another bywoner family, who had four little boys.  When their mother was expecting the fifth child she was sure this would be a girl.  But – another boy appeared and when my Mother went to visit her she just smiled and said "Amper reg geraai!" (Nearly guessed right.)

Many of the farming activities were opportunities for us kids to join in. Sheep shearing time was great fun.  In this clicking and kicking atmosphere we were given the chance to climb into the huge sacks, held in place in wooden frames, and tramp down the sheared fleeces until they were packed tight, covered and the sacks sewed up tightly for transport to the wool market. I loved riding on the tractor with Dad ploughing the mealie fields.  And helping with the hand-rearing of new-born calves was a special privilege.  You had to put your hand into the bucket of fresh milk, get the calf’s head down to feel your fingers – like it’s mother’s teats – till the sucking got going and it was weaned into drinking straight from the bucket.

Mealie threshing time was a yearly bonanza when the hired threshing machines came to our farm.

Our Basotho farm workers were joined by the visiting mechanics and it was go-go until the job was done.  I remember carrying lunches and teas out to the men in cunningly packed containers, and watching in awe as the precious yellow maize kernels spouted from the maw of the rattling machine, and the dry stalks and cobs flew off to pile up in another direction.  The cobs,

at the still point, there the dance is...

So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.

change into frogs and hop out of the little dams we had made for them – and how female crabs hid their eggs under their little shell-like flaps and could hide away from us so quickly – sideways!  We made paper boats to race down the stream after good rains.  And there we found just the right kind of clay to make clay oxen with our Basotho kwedin playmates.  They were really neat little oxen with thorn horns and they ‘pulled’ a wagon we made from a cigarette box with sucker-stick axles for the cotton-reel wheels.  And oh! The smell of such a stream!  Rupert Brook captured it well:

the thrilling-sweet and rotten,

unforgettable, unforgotten river-smell!

There was a windmill too in the little valley that pumped water up to our reservoir for the house.

I remember the rhythmic suck-clank-swish of its smooth work as the wind moved the sails that moved the water.  Beautiful!

Winter times came and the dam water froze enough for us to see how much weight the ice could carry – like our cat.  Unfortunately, she sank through and had to be rescued with a plank.  But come summer when the dam was filled it was fun making a slip-sliding place on the sloping wall.  I couldn’t swim then, so was scared of slipping into the deep water.  But one day I decided to try what I had seen my brother and sister do.  So in the afternoon I went there on my own – and sure enough I slipped into the water and couldn’t get out.  I hung onto some grass to keep my head above water but could not get out of the slippery wall.  Now what?  I cried and yelled but nobody heard me. I don’t remember how long I

was there – I was really frightened.  Then I saw Mother, Dan and Molly setting off down the road for a walk.  I yelled even louder,