Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

Wariboko

'The missionaries were not expected to aim higher than Africans. Because they were to be treated as typical Africans, the Caribbean missionaries, unlike their European counterparts, were not given a medical chest containing quinine and anti-malarial drugs, nor were they given sleeping bags.'

The contributions of Jamaicans to the growth and development of churches in Africa during the 19th to early 20th century is not a well-known story in many local congregations.

But the evidence of these contributions is an auditable trail - one which Dr. Waibinte Wariboko has followed and which has culminated in the publication of his book Ruined by 'Race': Afro-Caribbean Missionaries and the Evangelisation of Southern Nigeria, 1895-1925. This paperback, 278-page work, was published by Africa World Press in July 2006.

Dr. Wariboko, a Nigerian, is a senior lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. His book was officially launched in Kingston last December.

The book tells the story of how the Anglican Church in Britain recruited Caribbean persons, mainly Jamaicans, to work in southern Nigeria to work as missionaries. These missionaries felt they were being ill-treated by the Church Missionary Society (the missions agency that acted on behalf of the Church of England), and accordingly, they returned to Jamaica in short order.

The book covers the period 1898-1925. Dr. Wariboko's work confirms that 38 persons from the Caribbean went to southern Nigeria, of which there were one Barbadian and 37 Jamaicans.

Speaking with The Gleaner, Dr. Wariboko gave a chapter-by-chapter overview. He stressed that religious conviction was not a motive for writing the book, but his own scholarly interest in the contributions of these Caribbean persons to the growth and development of the church in southern Nigeria.

Two-year fellowship

The book's genesis can be traced to information that came to his attention when he was putting together a book on the evangelisation of New Calabar - one of the trading states of the eastern delta of Nigeria. He read what was available here on the work of these missionaries, and scholarly investigation took him to Birmingham, England. He secured a two-year fellowship and this culminated in Ruined by 'Race'.

The book has six chapters.

In chapter one, Dr. Wariboko explained the reasons offered for European interest in the evangelisation of Africa, and in particular West Africa. He said that "At the end of the slave trade, Europeans were intent on correcting the wrong afflicted on African conscience, African mind and the African body."

The recruitment and placement of Jamaican missionaries, he said, was the product of collaboration among the Church Missionary Society, Church of England in Jamaica, and the Niger Mission which was based in Nigeria. The Church Missionary Society, he said, recruited missionaries at a time when the 'Back to Africa Movement' was strong.

The historical evidence, he said, shows that the Church Missionary Society did not show the recruits their contract of employment until they got to Africa. In Nigeria, they were told that having arrived there, they could not return to Jamaica, not even for vacation.

Contract document

The recruits were told that they had to make Africa their home. The contract document, Dr. Wariboko said, was negotiated by the then Anglican Bishop of Jamaica, Enos Nuttall, after whom the Nuttall Hospital in St. Andrew is named.

"The trick was that if they made Africa, their home, then the Church Missionary Society would pay them like an African, which was much lower than their Caucasian missionary counterparts. The pay for one European missionary could pay for 20 African missionaries, excluding health benefits, transportation. However, the Jamaican missionaries, insisted on being treated like their white European counterparts," Dr. Wariboko said.

The UWI academic concluded that the missionary programme was intrinsically built on race sentiments. The Church Missionary Society, he continued, mistakenly assumed that blacks in Jamaica were of the same mindset and temperament as those in Africa.

By 1923, all who had left Jamaica to go to Nigeria as missionaries had resigned. Futhermore, those Jamaicans who were preparing to go on the Nigerian mission field, on learning of both the contractual obligations and the experiences of those who had gone before them, flatly refused to go, Dr. Wariboko said.

The book's second chapter deals with the actual training given to the missionary recruits.

Training

"The training programme was to convert them to black Englishmen," Dr. Wariboko said. The training was done at Mico Teachers' College and later at the Church Theological College located then at Caledonia Avenue, St. Andrew. The training, he said, sought to impart European values to the West Africans. The trainers of the missionaries had little regard for anything that was uniquely African. Christianity was equated with civilisation.

This training was aided by the fact that those being trained had significant sympathies to the Eurocentric view of Christianity as being the essence of civilisation. Hence, he said, that which was peculiarly African, the black heritage meant little to both the missionary recruits or those who were training them.

The social background of the missionary recruits is the focus of chapter three. Dr. Wariboko said most of the recruits came from solid middle-class backgrounds. Most were born into Christian families and were pupil teachers. Most also belonged to the St. Andrew Brotherhood (men's fellowship of the Anglican Church) or a humanitarian/civic organisation that was affiliated with the Church of England.

Some of the recruits got interested in a missionary life because of parents who had discussed their African heritage. For others, the drive to become missionaries was in part born by their curiosity about Africa, which had been piqued during formal elementary schooling. The chapter, Dr. Wariboko said, also describes some of the ideological baggage that the missionaries carried with them to the continent.

Grounded in race

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the contract that the missionaries were given was grounded in race, said Dr. Wariboko. He makes that case emphatically in chapter four of his book. According to the contract document itself, missionaries to southern Nigeria were required to be black, and to ensure that such was the case, each applicant had to submit a photo of himself.

The contract, Dr. Wariboko said, "explicitly excluded persons of mixed blood. They felt that being of the same complexion as the Africans would make absorption much easier."

The missionaries were not expected to aim higher than Africans. Because they were to be treated as typical Africans, the Caribbean missionaries, unlike their European counterparts, were not given a medical chest containing quinine and anti-malarial drugs, nor were they given sleeping bags.

The fifth chapter identifies some of the activities and legacies of the Caribbean missionaries. According to Dr. Wariboko, it mentions several churches these Caribbean missionaries built. But it also notes some of the ills done by black missionaries which were similar to that of their European counterparts.

Doing harm

The major difference, Dr. Wariboko said, was that the Caribbean missionaries thought they were doing good when, in fact, they were doing harm. Among the major accomplishments of the Jamaicans who went to southern Nigeria was the establishment of the first teacher training college in that section of the country, Dr. Wariboko noted.

The chapter cites examples of the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of the missionaries, who creatively raised funds in Jamaica, Nigeria and England - notwithstanding the disapproval of the Church Missionary Society - to support their labours - in the mission field.

One missionary, Walter Brown, "raised £200 in Jamaica for St. Mary's Church in Nigeria and raised in Jamaica £100 to build a school - all against the advice of the Church Missionary Society that he should not do so," Dr. Wariboko noted.

Another missionary, called Blackett, was responsible for revising the education code of the Church Missionary Society, and worked to restore high educational standards in colonial Nigeria. He did this at a time before colonial Nigeria became particularly interested in education.

Dr. Wariboko said that a lot of the work of Caribbean missionaries was credited to their European counterparts in official records of the Church Missionary Society. But, he said, the Caribbean missionaries' contribution can hardly be disputed, as they left a trail in the letters that they wrote seeking funds in the Jamaica Times newspaper, The Daily Gleaner, and the Anglican Diocesan magazines.

Socioeconomic realities

In chapter six, Dr. Wariboko seeks to place the legacy of the Caribbean missionaries in perspective. His conclusion is that Africa consciousness is not homogenous, especially in the diaspora. He said, too, that any massive move to settle in Africa from the diaspora is dependent in the main on socio-economic realities there, and less on ideology that drives such a desire.

"The study has implication for race consciousness, Africa consciousness, and the whole concept of Africa being a homeland. It deals with how socio-economic conditions can affect how one defines race," Dr. Wariboko said.

Dr. Waibinte Wariboko may be reached at waibinte.wariboko@uwimona.edu.jm Send feedback on Mind&Spirit to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.

EDITOR's NOTE: See also 'A Ghanaian church built by Jamaicans' at http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/ gleaner/20031007/mind/mind1.html for another tale of the contribution of Jamaicans to the building of the church in Africa.