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In far too many works of fact and fiction, missionaries have long suffered from a
somewhat unhappy and demeaning image - the sad priest in Maugham's Rain is only
too typical; the few excepted from either condemnation or mere faint praise (hiding a
number of damns) are the Roman Catholic Fathers. I have found that while the good
fathers generally deserved this warm appreciation, most of the priests of every other
variety of Christianity were equally worthy and hard working men and women, carrying
out what was often a thankless task on a minute salary, and frequently in conditions of
considerable discomfort. As an administrative officer in Africa and the Pacific I have had
much to do with missionaries, and have never received anything but hospitality and good
advice (this last not always taken) from them all. There have been the occasional
exceptions, but then not all colonial officials or traders were paragons of virtue,
hospitable manners or honesty.
Among the missionaries I have known there are too many to particularise, but I have
especially warm memories of the ever helpful Bob Murray, of Nguna Island in the New
Hebrides, who managed to combine his parochial work with membership of the
Condominium's Advisory Council with the immense labour of translating the
Testaments into the local language. He and his splendid wife, Jessie, always provided a
haven of welcome when one visited their island. Wherever one went in the
Condominium (and later in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands) one found both missionaries
and mission-provided or trained teachers and volunteers in lonely spots, and all doing
their very best. Today's crop of Vanuatuan English speaking politicians, business people
and officials owe much to the labours of these sterling people. It was on Bob Murray's
Nguna that I came across a practical example of the value of church initiative. On this
island, where there was no standing or running fresh water, the foundations of the church
near the mission had been built as a huge water cistern, fed from the church roof - a
highly practical solution to the water problem that I doubt came from the brains of any
government official or imported expert.
From my earliest days in Nyasaland I had dealings with several varieties of
missionary, for the country was well covered by them. One of my earliest encounters
was salutary in inculcating a high opinion of them. On Christmas Eve in 1950 I drove a
number of friends up the mountain to a service at the Protestant Mission at Chididi
above Port Herald in my Jeep Station Wagon. This four-wheeled monstrosity was my
first motor vehicle and the least successful, being an unhappy compromise between a
jeep and a young bus, with neither the four-wheel drive and gearing of the jeep nor the
comfort of a car. It showed that its true allegiance was to Old Nick when it snapped its
front spring halfway up the mountain. This spring - believe it or not - was also the front
axle, so that when it broke the wheels splayed outwards and any form of progression was
impossible. I therefore spent Christmas morning trying to fit a replacement; fortunately
the American pastor in charge of the mission was a passable mechanic and he did most
of the work, which was extremely Christian of him, on this his busiest day of the year. It
was the Seventh Day Adventist Mission near Cholo which ran the most up-to-date
hospital in Nyasaland and their skilled care was widely sought, though a young woman
friend of ours found it a little disconcerting as she lay on the operating table when the
surgeons asked her permission to pray for her!
In Nyasaland many missionaries stand out in my memory, and two quite different
missions are vivid in it to this day. One was the Roman Catholic Mission at Utale, in the Shire River valley. This was some miles deep in the bush from the little trading centre of
Balaka, a singularly hot hell-hole, whose ground water supply was of a particularly
infamous hardness and taste. Utale was a large mission of the Montfort Marists (the
White Fathers did not operate in the Southern Province), an order based in Algeria and,
though largely French, had a remarkably cosmopolitan make up - Father Schmidt at
Chiradzulu (who made powerful cigars) was German, another father was Russian, while
Bishop Hardman at Nguludi near Zomba was a tough character from Lancashire. Utale
Mission was in two parts, the mission proper and an adjacent leper colony. The dominant
figure here was the retired Bishop Auneau, an awe-inspiring figure who allowed our little
son to play with the tassels of his belt and then fixing us with an eagle eye, observed that
"Ze best playsing for a child is anuzzer child". We hastened to reply that we agreed with
him thoroughly but refrained from adding that indeed were doing our best to oblige him.
The priest I most admired was Father Bossard, who was in charge of the leper
settlement at Utale. A jovial white bearded Breton with the brightest eyes you ever saw
and hands like hams, he did everything - he made the bricks, built the quarters, drove the
tractor and did the ploughing and always, above all, cared for and comforted the sick and
dying with a loving and cheerful compassion. Though an elderly man, his physical
strength was remarkable - he was said to have lifted the tractor out of the mud it was
bogged down in all by himself with a mighty heave, undoubtedly assisted by both
appeals to the saints and some good Breton oaths. He was the nearest thing to a saint
himself that ever I came across, and I have known some fine men and women in my
wanderings.
He was also entirely and warmly human, as the following story will demonstrate:
Together with my master the District Commissioner from Zomba (John Sheriff) I had
the good fortune to be present at Utale at the great celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary
of the founding of the mission and also (I think) of the consecration of Bishop Auneau.
For the only time in my life I sat down to lunch with three bishops and seventy or so
Fathers. When the meal had come to an end and belts had been loosened, there was a
roar of "BOSSARD" from the serried ranks of the fathers and he was thrust forward,
blushing ferociously in the depths of his beard. Then, ably abetted by the Father
Superior, he launched into a music-hall act that would have brought the house down at
the Folies Bergere - it certainly had that effect at Utale. He sang, he danced and he
yodelled. He even recited a thoroughly naughty poem - of the type well known to the
army, rugby players and students, where the last word of each stanza should be low
Indeed - but the reciter does not say it. Instead of the expected obscenity, he hesitates for
a moment, and his assistant chimes in with an entirely unobjectionable word. This was
nigh on forty years ago, and Father Bossard must have long gone to his reward - and
Heaven will be a better place for his presence; he was a most lovable man.
The other remarkable mission lived at the other end of the doctrinal scale - the
Church of God of South Carolina. This was run by the forceful Rev H B ("call me Hard
Boiled") Garlock and his equally forthright wife. Her favourite expression to denote
surprise was "My dear, I nearly had a haemorrhage of green paint". With two such
delightful characters running the show, there was no doubt that the Church was a roaring
success, even in a country already heavily missionised by longer established varieties of
the Christian faith.
The Church of God of South Carolina was not only popular, but had even raised
enough money to build a fine large church in the main African housing area in Lilongwe,
to the opening of which the Town Clerk (Pony Moore) and myself (then the Town
Officer) were invited. Fortunately neither of us was the guest of honour; this invidious position was reserved for Robin Rowland, the acting Provincial Commissioner. On the
dais was a trinity of chairs, Robin looking distinctly embarrassed in the raised-up God-the-
Father position in the middle, flanked by Hard Boiled on the one side and the latter's
brother-in-law, the Rev Trotter, on the other. The church was packed with devout
Africans, many of whom had open bibles on their laps so that they could follow the
proceedings closely. I would note here that though the level of literacy in Nyasaland was
allegedly low, there were very many Africans who could read and write - in the
vernacular if not in English.
Once the service of dedication began, one of the reasons for the popularity of the sect
became apparent. There were several enthusiastic young American missionaries present,
some with cine cameras to record the scene, and the others laden down with a wide
variety of musical instruments - mostly brass. Apart from the purely religious part of the
service, there were hot gospel trios, trumpet solos, trumpet and trombone quartets - a
remarkable variety show. The top attraction came near the end, when the ceremonial
inauguration sermon was delivered by the diminutive but fiery Reverend Trotter. Having
exercised his ministry in West Africa, he naturally had no CiCewa, so he held forth in
English, each sentence being translated by a gigantic African evangelist standing one
pace to the side and one behind him. Now the Rev Trotter was an inspired and dedicated
hot gospeller, and accompanied his verbal fireworks with wide and extravagant gestures.
This was fair enough, but his faithful interpreter not only rendered the English into
equally florid CiCewa, but duplicated the sweeping histrionics, one sentence behind.
Thus, when the Rev Trotter was hoisting his hands high in the air, the interpreter would
be waving his somewhere around his knees, as the previous sentence required. The
whole effect was hilariously bizarre; poor Pony was almost hysterical with painfully
suppressed laughter, and the effort was too much for him, so that he had to be led out of
the church before he burst. All the same it was easy to understand the popularity of the
Church of God, for it had almost as much pomp and circumstance as the Roman
Catholics, and much more entertainment value!
Near my headquarters of Kasupe (when I was ADC there) was the great Anglican
Church of the Ascension at Likwenu. This remarkable building looked extraordinarily
early mediaeval with its thatch roof and entire absence of seating. The priest here was
the Reverend Rashidi, a Yao, and therefore an unusual man to find in the Church, for the
Yao were largely Muslim; it was Father Rashidi who christened our daughter here. The
Bishop of Nyasaland occasionally visited the church and stayed in the little rest house,
which on occasion he had to share with the profane and blasphemous elderly European
widely known as old man Whincup, an ex-British Army NCO who had set himself up as
a builder and did odd jobs around the country. He lived in some comfort with a small
gaggle of African girls. Bishop Thorne, an ascetic and upright man, never chided
Whincup or alluded to his far from Christian way of life, showing a remarkable restraint,
but since as a young officer the Bishop had earned an MC in the first World War, he was
presumably well used to sinners.
Another former British Army officer was a Roman Catholic father in the almost
entirely French mission in the New Hebrides, Father Albert Sacco, who was, I believe of
Maltese stock, but hailed from Liverpool and had served during the 39-45 war as an
officer in the Royal Artillery. Yet another unusual Briton in this mission was a
Frenchman rejoicing in the Christian names of Charles Edward - an ancestor had been a
Jacobite refugee. He was in a peculiar position in the Anglo-French Condominium, for
as far as the British half was concerned he was British, having been naturalised during
his long stay in Fiji, but to the French he was legally one of theirs, for at that time French law did not recognise the acquisition of foreign nationality by a Frenchman who had not
done his military service - Father Verlingue was truly condominial!
Comparatively little of the mission in the New Hebrides was entirely religious, for
since British Government financial generosity was never lavish most of the educational
and medical drive was undertaken by the missions. You could not go very far without
finding a village school, a clinic or dispensary, a District High School, or even a
secondary school, often staffed by a mixed and splendid bag of New Zealanders,
Australians, Britons, New Hebrideans, and Fijians, whose salaries would have nowhere
reached even the level of a state dole here. Onesua High School was noteworthy in its
cosmopolitan nature, in that its outstanding figure was the Reverend Galavakadua, a
massive figure of a Fijian gentleman, but even he was over-topped by the astonishingly
tall Miss Biggs, a New Zealander. She vowed that her great height came in most useful
when royalty visited her home country, as she could see over any crowd. The Paton
Memorial Hospital on Iririki Island in Vila harbour has now vanished, but in my time it
was distinguished by two fine doctor/surgeons. Dr Knox Jameson spent many years there
on a derisory salary, and went on to a senior position in Melbourne. Not only did he tend
the sick, he was also the surgeon and even the mechanic, for it was his marine
engineering skill that kept the little launch from Vila working, as well as any machinery.
His eventual successor was Dr Ted Freeman, a vital and indomitably cheerful enormous
Australian, with a brood of children as red-haired and rumbustious as himself. His later
devoted work with brain-damaged people has made him celebrated well beyond his
native shores.
Christianity in the Gilbert & Ellice Islands, where I finished up, was sometimes a
problem to the administration, but not because of any overt rivalry between missions.
The problem was in the enthusiasm of their adherents. Roughly half of the Gilbertese
was Roman Catholic and the rest Protestant, and they took their faith very seriously
indeed. The story goes that on one of the southern islands the RC bishop was not only
refused permission to land but was bodily replaced in his boat. I do not know the exact
details, but I do know that a notice board on that island in my day proclaimed "Only
Protestants allowed here". On another island, Maiana, a bitter feud (over the expenditure
of council tax money) between the two versions of the same gentle faith resulted in a
young war, with burnings, broken heads and the smashing of canoes and bicycles, and
had to be suppressed by a strong detachment of police.
Throughout the Gilberts, marriage between young people of differing sects was all but
prohibited by parents and elders - they could live together and have children - but not
marry. On another island there were separate traditional meeting houses in each village,
for there was little socialising between the two sects; this separatism was so strict that
even the tiny village stores would only deal with their fellow religionists. All the same,
one was always welcome at any of the missions, and the priests and nuns were as fine a
selection of people as you could meet, but even they had problems with the singleminded
devotion of their respective flocks.
There is no doubt that in all three countries the work of Government and its officers
would have been much harder and much more expensive without the efforts of
missionaries. Apart from the religious nature of their work, they provided education and
medical assistance, and sometimes even engineering aid that would have made the
British Government shudder to its Treasury roots if it had been obliged to provide these
services at its own cost. Most of those workers in the vineyard that I knew have retired
or gone to their reward - one and all they fought the good fight, and may they rest well.
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