Introduction
In general, missionaries are noted to have played significant roles in developing almost every aspect of African societies. As we acknowledge, it has become significant for African agency to be portrayed as an equally major factor that contributed to the missionaries achieving their aims and objectives in Africa. In her TED Talk presentation, “The danger of a single story”, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie, emphasized the need for “a balance of stories” to enable a better appreciation of a person, an activity, or an event. She reiterates that “the single story creates stereotypes and the problem of stereotypes is not that they are untrue but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”[1] This is a reason why African studies scholars have been assertive about the decolonization the field since the 1950s.[2] By this, there are specific calls from African studies scholars to move away from the stories of how Europeans “developed” or “underdeveloped” Africa and highlight African agency. This way, we work towards achieving “a balance of stories” for African societies as Chimamanda Adichie advocates.
I attempt to portray “a balance of stories” of the medical activities of the Basel Mission (BMS) by focussing on the role of African medical assistants.[3] The employ of African medical assistants was an arrangement that occurred together with the BM medical missions on the Gold Coast and other African societies, for instance in Cameroon. As such, the objective of this essay is to examine African assistants as an example of African agency in the history of the BM medical missions on the Gold Coast. The Basel medical missionaries have been reported to have relied quite heavily on their African assistants mainly for the purposes of language interpretation and translations as well as rendering of medical services. During the excursion, a visit to the ruins of Dr Rudolf Fisch’s hospital at Aburi did indicate that the memory of his work remains with the people and that is why, perhaps, the remains of the structure keep standing within the premises of the Presbyterian Women’s College of Education, Aburi.
Writing on African medical assistants in rural colonial Fort Victoria, Glen Ncube describes this group as front-line medical auxiliaries that pioneered “black medical care work in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)”,[4] and by extension, Africa. I attempt to put forward a similar argument pertaining to the work of African medical assistants associated with the BM medical missions on the Gold Coast.
The Birth of BM Medical Activities in the Gold Coast
Medical health was a major challenge that Europeans faced in their expeditions to Africa. They were continuously exposed to the harsh conditions of tropical Africa, which resulted in frequent deaths. This situation was no different when the first batch of Basel missionaries landed on the Gold Coast in December 1828 to begin their independent missionary work. By the first twenty years in operation, about half the number of missionaries who had arrived on the Gold Coast had succumbed to death, including the German doctor Christian Friedrich Heinze.[5] As an attempt to overcome their health challenges, the missionaries advocated for the presence of organized and professional medical missionaries. After a series of debates, the Home Committee in Basel appointed and posted Rudolf Fisch to the Gold Coast in 1885, which served as the beginning of a formal BM medical mission.[6] His duties were, however, not limited to the healthcare needs of the other missionaries and coverts, but also included medical research on African tropical diseases.
Who Were the African Assistants and What Did They Do?
African assistants supported the European Basel medical missionaries to deliver healthcare on the Gold Coast. Many African assistants were recruited from among former patients who had received health care from the medical missionaries, may have become converts, and stayed around the mission compound after they had been healed. In addition to the former patients, the Basel missionaries trained African pastors and school teachers who were equipped with basic knowledge in the treatment of basic ailments to enable them to attend to their fellow Africans in their communities, villages, and towns whenever the need arose.[7]
The tasks of the African Assistants included translation during consultation hours. For instance, an African pastor known as Nathanael Asare is known to have acted as a translator for Dr. Fisch during his consultation hours until Dr. Fisch became competent in speaking the Twi language.[8] Furthermore, Ratschiller Nasim described some of their activities to include the treatment of wounds, operation of dispensaries, weighing of medicines, mixing of ointments and the rolling of pills.[9] For instance, Dr. Fisch had some patients who suffered from neglected wounds and the task of dressing and bandaging these wounds was laborious enough to require the help of medical assistants. Therefore, he trained two African assistants to help him with that.
Conclusion
African Assistants played a major role in the medical missions of the BM. For Ncube, they were “culture brokers” or “intermediaries” who facilitated the “exchange of ideas, concepts and therapies between European and African models of healing” having experienced both models of healing.[10] Perhaps, their knowledge of African models of healing in addition to the new European model of healing acquired from the Basel medical missionaries enabled them to occupy a “strategic position” as front-liners and intermediaries who helped other African patients to “understand and navigate the process of access to, and understanding of [biomedical] care as they facilitated communication between two alien cultural and linguistic systems.”[11] Hence, African assistants can be said to have popularised mission medicine in their communities, towns, and villages. Symbolically, they served as “testimonies” to the outcomes of the works of the medical personnel as former patients who had received satisfactory healthcare from the missionaries, and further served as witnesses to the many African patients who were treated daily. Consequently, they referred their neighbours to access the health care of the medical missionaries.
Likewise, these African assistants can be said to have had a direct influence on the development of the nursing profession; though not exclusively. For instance, on the Gold Coast society, they could be labelled as a part of first-generation African nurses who acquired the profession through the system of apprenticeship.[12]
Much memory about the BM’s African assistants may be unavailable, as I did find not any evidence contrary to that during the excursion, but the recognition of their work by the medical missionaries through photographs of the missionaries available on the BM online archives is worthy of mention. They allow their work to be accessed in an attempt to achieve “a balance of stories” of the medical activities of the BM in Africa.
