Study Of African History

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 2

Study Of African History

Much work was being done in the United States in the study of Africa and Negro students’ Unions were demanding that “black history,” as they called it, be taught, said Miss Jocelyn Murray, who has been studying at the University of California.

The word Negro, was not used; the students were calling themselves Afro-Ameri-cans or blacks. Feeling rejected by white America, they were undergoing a great search for identity.

Miss Murray, who is a graduate student in African history, is doing a post-graduate course in Los Angeles and will return to the United States at the end of September. Interested in student work in Africa, she has already spent 13 years as an Anglican missionary in Kenya and hopes to return after she has finished her university study. At present. Miss Murray who comes from Lower Hutt, is attending the Church Missionary Society’s spring school at St Margaret’s College. Before going to America,

she was doing Christian literature work in Nairobi. There were not enough book shops in East Africa and she was concerned with the distribution of literature, she said. , Where, at one time, only Protestant churches distributed Bibles and other Christian books, the Roman Catholic Church was now taking part and the sales of Bibles had risen remarkably in the last few years. Another reason for the increase in Bible sales was the new translation published in African languages There was a need for books by African authors and Miss Murray helped start an experimental writing course young Africans could take by correspondence.

Kenyan Progress

After going to Kenya in 1953, Miss Murray taught for six years at a girls’ boarding school. The girls attending were in from their fifth to eighth year of education and were aged from 14 to 18. However, children were now going to school at the age of six. Previously they did not start until they were 10 years old.

Kenya which gained independence at the end of 1963, had gone ahead, she said. In the Anglican Church, there were four African and two

European bishops in Kenya; when she arrived, there was only one missionary bishop, a European, for the whole country. Miss Murray did some social work, including helping set up a girls’ hostel in an industrial town 25 miles front Nairobi. There are now about 40 girls there, under the care of a warden.

The need for such hostels was great, she said. Many girls were going to the towns to commercial schools or to work in factories, and housing was overcrowded in Kenyan towns. One of the biggest problems was the training of Africans to take over jobs in many fields, including government.

“There are not enough graduates to go round and there is great pressure on the young who do graduate. They get to the top very early and this places quite a strain on them,” she said.

The greatest problem in the church was the lack of communication between the old people, many of whom were illiterate, and the educated young, a high number of whom attended universities overseas.

Personal relationships were generally good, and the young people remained attached to their families, but

they did not, literally, speak the same language as their parents, she said. Patience and tolerance were needed on both sides. Missionaries in Africa were now doing mainly specialist work in education and health. Schools were being set up for deaf, blind and crippled children and, rather than start new hospitals, missionaries were going ahead with a variety of health projects.