“Mish Kids”
Who was I traveling with to Kasai?
Missionary kids (“mish kids”) are the children of missionary parents who grow up in the field. All of the mish kids in the group I traveled with are white Southerners (though we traveled with a few Congolese folks, including one who lives in the US). The American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) was all white from 1941 to 1958; the African Americans who served from the 1920s to 1940s were all, with one exception, appointed during Sheppard’s tenure, which ended in 1910. In a future blog (and eventually a book), I’ll have more to say about what I see Presbyterian missionaries doing today and what I think Sheppard’s legacy may be.
In the case of the APCM, there were several stations, spread out and difficult to access, where missionaries were stationed. Their kids boarded at Central School (CS) at Lubondaie, one of the mission stations. The school served other Protestant denominations, but the enrollment was always small and continued to decline after Congolese independence in 1960. Eventually, CS eliminated its high school and soon thereafter shut down; The American School of Kinshasa (TASOK), which still exists today to serve diplomatic and other anglophone communities, absorbed the students. When the mish kids were transferred to TASOK, the Methodists and Presbyterians built a hostel where their students could board while their parents were in the field. Children saw their parents at Christmas, in the summer, and sometimes for Easter.
The people who have grown up in this environment developed extremely close relationships with each other, frequently described to me as family-like. And as an outsider allofasuddeninthemiddleofit, I got to see some of this dynamic firsthand. Very intense relationships seem inevitable when some classes have only 3 students. It was extremely insulated, but enabled the development of a fascinating, if also troubling, subculture. One observation: All of the folks I traveled with have pretty strong southern accents (the church was the Southern Presbyterians), which I find amazing for folks who grew up in the Congo in the 1950s and 1960s.
This missionary culture allowed the development of a school in the middle of the Congo with no Congolese students or teachers. The Presbyterians did build schools for the Congolese (such as Katubue which I mentioned in yesterday’s posting), but the students were not going to school with Americans. To say the least, it was a problematic arrangement. Our trip back to the CS campus was extremely emotional for the mish kids; as many people do when reflecting on their childhood, they had strong and sometimes romantic memories of their time there. They were disappointed by the deteriorated state of the buildings, many of which continued to serve their original purposes of housing and classrooms. To some of them, the Congolese have squandered this glorious bequest.
According to one church history I read, CS was a contested site between the mission and the Congolese communities. The church defended itself by pointing out that there were Black American students (one family, whose parents were not missionaries, is all that I have been able to uncover) and that “Any Congolese who […] can afford the price, may send his child to Central School. […] No Congolese have yet taken advantage of the opportunities at Central School.”
The Congolese people who I interviewed told me a much different story. They told me they were prohibited from riding their bicycles on the mission stations, and not being allowed to play on the basketball courts after a certain age. The mish kids tell about a few renegades among them (all older) who spent time in the villages. But several told me they remember being prohibited from spending time with Congolese (except on Saturdays when they could go to market), and the prohibition was especially strong for teenage girls. The notion that CS prevented children from interacting with the folks who the mission claimed to be serving seems to contradict even the stated ideals of the mission. The mish kids expressed some regret about this way of doing things; growing up in post-independence Congo, their beliefs were significantly different from their missionary parents. And there were some exceptions--missionaries occasionally accused of “going native.” Nonetheless, the mish kids I spoke with felt that security may have warranted the policy though, when I asked, nobody could cite any specific incidents.
These security concerns for the wellbeing of the missionaries were tragically misdirected. This close-knit group of CS students have an active alumni association and in the late 1990s at one of their reunions, several women disclosed that they had been molested by missionary Bill Pruitt, now deceased, though at that time he was in his 80s and still working in a church in the US. Pruitt served in Congo from 1946 to 1970, and there are documented cases of abuse of 22 victims, with the actual count clearly much higher. There is no evidence that any Congolese girls were his victims, though such evidence would be more difficult to acquire.
I am trying to get my head around this tragic history. While sexual assault exists in all segments of US society, I can’t help but thing that there is something about the insularity of Congo mission subculture that either nurtured this violence or allowed it to continue as long as it did. Pruitt is not an isolated case. There is evidence of molestation at Presbyterian missions elsewhere in Africa. There was another very similar case that took place under the Methodists at TASOK simultaneous to Pruitt’s crimes. Less is known about the Methodist case because the church has been less forthcoming than the Presbyterian Church (USA), which, to its credit, has recently acknowledged the sexual assaults, strengthened its policies to prevent them in the future, and provided funds for survivors to receive counseling. The mission’s misguided security efforts, based on their perception of their Congolese neighbors/constituents, devastated several generations of mish girls, who continue to suffer in unspeakable ways from this terrible history of abuse.
Missionary kids (“mish kids”) are the children of missionary parents who grow up in the field. All of the mish kids in the group I traveled with are white Southerners (though we traveled with a few Congolese folks, including one who lives in the US). The American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) was all white from 1941 to 1958; the African Americans who served from the 1920s to 1940s were all, with one exception, appointed during Sheppard’s tenure, which ended in 1910. In a future blog (and eventually a book), I’ll have more to say about what I see Presbyterian missionaries doing today and what I think Sheppard’s legacy may be.
In the case of the APCM, there were several stations, spread out and difficult to access, where missionaries were stationed. Their kids boarded at Central School (CS) at Lubondaie, one of the mission stations. The school served other Protestant denominations, but the enrollment was always small and continued to decline after Congolese independence in 1960. Eventually, CS eliminated its high school and soon thereafter shut down; The American School of Kinshasa (TASOK), which still exists today to serve diplomatic and other anglophone communities, absorbed the students. When the mish kids were transferred to TASOK, the Methodists and Presbyterians built a hostel where their students could board while their parents were in the field. Children saw their parents at Christmas, in the summer, and sometimes for Easter.
The people who have grown up in this environment developed extremely close relationships with each other, frequently described to me as family-like. And as an outsider allofasuddeninthemiddleofit, I got to see some of this dynamic firsthand. Very intense relationships seem inevitable when some classes have only 3 students. It was extremely insulated, but enabled the development of a fascinating, if also troubling, subculture. One observation: All of the folks I traveled with have pretty strong southern accents (the church was the Southern Presbyterians), which I find amazing for folks who grew up in the Congo in the 1950s and 1960s.
This missionary culture allowed the development of a school in the middle of the Congo with no Congolese students or teachers. The Presbyterians did build schools for the Congolese (such as Katubue which I mentioned in yesterday’s posting), but the students were not going to school with Americans. To say the least, it was a problematic arrangement. Our trip back to the CS campus was extremely emotional for the mish kids; as many people do when reflecting on their childhood, they had strong and sometimes romantic memories of their time there. They were disappointed by the deteriorated state of the buildings, many of which continued to serve their original purposes of housing and classrooms. To some of them, the Congolese have squandered this glorious bequest.
According to one church history I read, CS was a contested site between the mission and the Congolese communities. The church defended itself by pointing out that there were Black American students (one family, whose parents were not missionaries, is all that I have been able to uncover) and that “Any Congolese who […] can afford the price, may send his child to Central School. […] No Congolese have yet taken advantage of the opportunities at Central School.”
The Congolese people who I interviewed told me a much different story. They told me they were prohibited from riding their bicycles on the mission stations, and not being allowed to play on the basketball courts after a certain age. The mish kids tell about a few renegades among them (all older) who spent time in the villages. But several told me they remember being prohibited from spending time with Congolese (except on Saturdays when they could go to market), and the prohibition was especially strong for teenage girls. The notion that CS prevented children from interacting with the folks who the mission claimed to be serving seems to contradict even the stated ideals of the mission. The mish kids expressed some regret about this way of doing things; growing up in post-independence Congo, their beliefs were significantly different from their missionary parents. And there were some exceptions--missionaries occasionally accused of “going native.” Nonetheless, the mish kids I spoke with felt that security may have warranted the policy though, when I asked, nobody could cite any specific incidents.
These security concerns for the wellbeing of the missionaries were tragically misdirected. This close-knit group of CS students have an active alumni association and in the late 1990s at one of their reunions, several women disclosed that they had been molested by missionary Bill Pruitt, now deceased, though at that time he was in his 80s and still working in a church in the US. Pruitt served in Congo from 1946 to 1970, and there are documented cases of abuse of 22 victims, with the actual count clearly much higher. There is no evidence that any Congolese girls were his victims, though such evidence would be more difficult to acquire.
I am trying to get my head around this tragic history. While sexual assault exists in all segments of US society, I can’t help but thing that there is something about the insularity of Congo mission subculture that either nurtured this violence or allowed it to continue as long as it did. Pruitt is not an isolated case. There is evidence of molestation at Presbyterian missions elsewhere in Africa. There was another very similar case that took place under the Methodists at TASOK simultaneous to Pruitt’s crimes. Less is known about the Methodist case because the church has been less forthcoming than the Presbyterian Church (USA), which, to its credit, has recently acknowledged the sexual assaults, strengthened its policies to prevent them in the future, and provided funds for survivors to receive counseling. The mission’s misguided security efforts, based on their perception of their Congolese neighbors/constituents, devastated several generations of mish girls, who continue to suffer in unspeakable ways from this terrible history of abuse.
posted by irad at 11:36 AM
0 Comments:
Enregistrer un commentaire
<< Home