THE REBELS .....................................................................

We did not start out our missionary career with the thought of being "rebels", but as it turned out I guess we sometimes appeared to be just that!  You have to realize that we got to Africa at "the changing of the guard".  It had been the colonial era up till that time since the very early days.  The official posts in the government, the positions in banks and European stores and thus the leadership in much of the evangelical church were all staffed by white Europeans.  The French army was there in some force, the Africans were gradually being changed to take their place. 

One of our early memories of the significance of all this was one day when they held a large Independance Day parade in the city of Bobo.  The law of the land was that women had to dress with "le sommet des genoux"  covered - no short skirts!  During the parade one of the head medical doctors from the Bobo hospital (a French lady)  was standing in the front row along the parade route - she was wearing a very stylish French outfit, with the skirt just above the knees.  They pulled her out of the crowd and took her off, admonishing her for her short skirts which the new African government would not allow - even for doctors! 

We started in right away to learn the local language. There had been some new missionaries who had not learned language well and Grandma Kennedy was so afraid that we would have a hard time with Bobo and not learn the language properly - and I guess thus bring shame upon the family name!  Grandpa was in charge of our language study, and basically we just purred along in the language and did just fine. I kept ahead of Dad (as I learned it through Jula) and wrote out exercises for him to learn the things that I learned before him, and thus we continued on until we passed all of our language exams in plenty of time and the family name was saved and my mom relaxed! 

We had not been there long when we also realized that the mission had certain unwritten rules that we were expected to obey.  In thos days no one entertained Burkinbe in their American homes.  We were invited to eat with the Bobos and so we started to have the Bobo pastors and elders have a meal with us. I had all my lady friends from the village come for a meal one night. They all accepted with alacrity, but at first we fixed American food for them. Soon we realized it was best to stick with rice and sauce, salad and French bread. With a sweet cake for dessert and lots of coffee.

During our first term we decided to entertain beyond our own people group and invited the Komite Ba and missionaries meeting with them to have their meeting at Santidougou and I cooked for them, with the big help of Yusufu.  Again this was a first, but was picked up by other people after that. 

Some people could never get the message and continued to shun West Africans in their social contacts in their homes.  This was, of course, a carry over from the old colonial era.  One evening - long after many of us treated the local people on a common footing socially - some missionaries returned to Bobo from furlough on the evening plane. The then field director had invited all missionaries in town to gather in his living room to have refreshments and have a time to welcome back our missionary colleagues.  While we were all seated around the living room, a knock came at the front door - it was our local Pastor, a wonderful gentleman who had had these missionaries as his profs in Bible School and wished to greet them for their arrival.  Instead of inviting him inside to join us, the field director went to the door and called out the returning missionary in order to greet him on the porch, thus avoiding including him in our little party.  Dad was so furious - we left soon after that and he stewed all the way on the trip home to Santidougou!   Old customs die hard, and we rebels just kept pushing and doing our part to change things!

Polygamy was very much a fact of life in West Africa when we arrived, and there was a rule in the missionary manual which said, " no polygamist shall be baptized".  As young rebels we wondered if that meant no polygamist can be saved?  Should the extra wives be sent back to their original families as prostitutes?  What about the children of such unions?  This subject was hotly debated on the conference floor during the time when the mission was in charge and laid down the rules for the developing churches.  In later years, the church made the rule that women taken as second or third, etc. wives before conversions are wives and all can be baptized. But that all are encouraged in the one man, one wife principal of the New Testament and polygamy was a no-no for Christians. 

Speaking of missionary conference, we had one once a year, and only missionaries were invited.  When some of us young folks got to be senior missionaries, we instituted the principle of invited a couple of national church delegates to our annual conference. They were honored by us - we took turns translating for them what was being said. And this gave a good impression to the church that we were not doing anything behind their backs.  For many year we attended their annual conferences and their delgates attended ours.  This greatly aided an understanding between mission and church.

Another rule of baptism was that the candidate had to know how to read (ostensibly so that he could read the Word and thus grow thereby).   This hit us pretty hard our second year on the field. The Santidougou district wanted to baptize some young people, and Grandpa Kennedy (as field director and our senior missionary) came to Santidougou to question the candidates.  Imagine our shock when Grandpa was questioning one candidate (this young man spoke no Jula - the language in which the questions were asked - and so everything had to be interpreted as Grandpa spoke no Bobo!)  The young man was asked if he knew how to read!  At that time we had not gone far enough in our language learning to prepare reading primers or have anything in print in the only language this young man spoke - Bobo Madare.  Of course, he could not read - there was nothing to read in his language....but he was turned down for baptism!  That ruling was later changed.

It also took a very long time for the mission to ordain West African pastors!  This meant that missionaries had to serve communion and baptize, as the rule was that only an ordained pastor could assist at such functions. George Constance, who was the regional director for Africa, put an end to that on a visit in about 1956, and that was the beginning of having ordained pastors in our churches.  However, the church followed the mission's ruling, and would wait for years before they would ordain a man to ministry.  As the years went by, this changed.  And of course we now have hundreds of ordained men in that part of Africa.  We also have a few women who were consecrated in some way to ministry. 

Those were interesting years.....years of change in the mission and the church.  We were privileged to have lived through that time and also lived there to see the church come into its own and help to educate the leadership of today and tomorrow for the church of Jesus Christ in West Africa.