Dini Ya Msambwa
Stu,—As a medical missionary in Kenya from 1906-1937, and as one who re-visited Kenya in 1948, I read with deep interest the article which appeared in your issue of August 11th with the above title. To all interested in Africa, and to many others working for right racial relations everywhere, the article must have produced doubts as to the conditions under which Europeans live in East Africa today, as well as inevitable questionings as to the future. The author obviously writes with a deep knowledge of the African ; he is sympathetic to the Africans, and desires to find reasons. which lie at back of actions such as he describes.
He seems to lay the blame in the main at the door of Christian missions. One wonders, however, if he has had direct knowledge of missionary endeavour or if he has enquired as to his missionary facts through, say, such a hod/ as the Kenya Christian Council. This is a body which embraces European, African and Indian members of Protes- tant Churches, and its membership includes non-missionary representa- tives of Church life in Kenya. The writer speaks sympathetically of missionaries as being those " to whom Central Africa [presumably he includes East Africa] owes so vast a debt for service and enlightenment"; but he doubts whether they do not drive their African Christians " too hard and too rigidly." He also makes assertions as to missionary teaching which are not founded on fact. Further he leaves out many influences which are the result of European settlement. Chief among these is the fact that, after British East Africa became a British protectorate in 1895, the Government failed to protect adequately African interests as regards land tenure.
As to missionary teaching, it is true that missionaries have attacked evil customs and sensuous practices. In 1909, at the first Missionary Conference held in Nairobi, polygamy was one of the subjects ,discussed. There were missionaries of long experience from Kenya, Uganda and Nyasa ; only one, a Kenya non-Britisher, advocated the baptism of polygamists. The practice of the missionary societies in Kenya has been to refuse the sacraments to polygamists ; they may become " adherents" of the Church, and their wives and families admitted to the sacraments. As regards bride-price, missionary -societies have never interfered with this matter, as it is not in their opinion a moral problem. In regard to the recognition by British law of " pagan plurality of wives" and also the Christian rite of marriage, no case of action for bigamy was ever taken out because the courts would not consider it.
Reference is made to the circumcision of boys and girls ; that of boys is nowhere forbidden, and in tribes where it is customary tfft rite was performed hygienically in hospitals, and now is usually done by African Christian dressers. The circumcision of girls, however, has been dis- couraged by all missionaries, and in some Churches a law"tnade against it. This is a brutal form of mutilation, endangering mother and child at first births. Medical men, government and missionary, condemn the practice because of its harmful effects psychologically at the time, and by endangering life later at child-birth. In 1930, as a cloak to political agitation, there was a dangerous movement among the Kikuyu. Today, hundreds of Kikuyu girls and women are grateful for the protection afforded them ; but it was at the cost at the time of one American woman missionary murdered.
Similar movements to that described in your article have been stirring among the Kikuyu since 1920. A prominent South African missionary remarked to me once that something seemed to affect the Bantu at times in this way. The Kitosh and Suk tribes are Nilotic in origin, and with what has happened among them and in other parts of Africa, it looks as if the problem was not confined to the Bantu.
We should not however be despondent. We remember with thankful- ness that though these movements for a better life are initiated by missionaries, yet when laws came to be formed for African Churches, it was African leaders who made the laws and carried them out. Strong, indigenous, self-governing African. Churches exist in Kenya today and are a tower of strength. The main body of Africans everywhere is sound. The administrative officials, backed by sensible chiefs, many of whom are now Christians, have done gieat things for the Africans. The majority of the white community in Kenya are hardworking people possessed like ourselves of the innate desire to play the game and to see the African progress to the best of his abilities. Only by strong endeavour on the part of men of good-will of all races, and, I believe, based on a Christian foundation, can good race-relations be built up. We need not despair of a better day for Kenya and all its races in the days to come.—Yours faithfully, 13 Woodburn Terrace, Edinburgh, 10. JOHN W. ARTHUR.
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