Hetherwick is so often remembered as the venerable elder statesman that it is easily forgotten that he began his life and work in Malawi as a slight young man of twenty-three, fresh out of college. His university education, which he had completed with distinction, played a vital part in his formation. Yet he had much still to learn if he were to fulfil his ambition to become a successful missionary. Both Scott and Hetherwick were fond of quoting an aphorism that originated with James Stewart of Lovedale, who played a leading role in the movement that led to the establishment of both Livingstonia and Blantyre Mission, and who pointed out that ‘Africa is an education’. Towards the end of his long career, Hetherwick was still recalling Scott's insistence that, ‘When anyone comes out here to start work among the natives he has to go to school again.’

In Hetherwick's own case, the ‘school’ was Domasi where he was sent to begin a new mission station in 1884, the year following his arrival at Blantyre. His appointment was a strategic decision on the part of the Mission, taken with a view to establishing a bridgehead among the Yao people with whom it had been in contact since it first began its work in the Shire Highlands. Some Yao chiefs had connections with the Arab world and participated in the slave trade. Inspired by the vision of David Livingstone, Blantyre Mission was determined to counter the slave trade by introducing Christianity and ‘civilisation’ to its sphere of influence. The vision behind the mission station at Domasi was nothing less than a transformation of the political, cultural, social, economic and religious landscape of the Shire Highlands. It was also seen as a strategic point from which to stop the spread of Islam, a major preoccupation of the Christian missionary movement at that time. David Bone notes that, ‘The most enthusiastic proponent of the use of schools to try to cordon off the spread of Islam was Dr Hetherwick of the Blantyre Mission. He saw a chain of mission schools in the area north of Zomba as an effective barrier to its southward advance.’ The fulfilment of the vision of transformation that had been cultivated at Blantyre Mission was entrusted to the now twenty-four-year-old newcomer who would cut his teeth as a missionary in the development of the Domasi station.