(An excerpt from Edward Corcoran's Mombasa Mission 1888-1990 Part One)
Let’s start at the very beginning
- a very good place to start". So, Maria tells the Von Trapp children in
the musical The Sound of Music. Why not let us do the same? And for our history
of the faith in modern Kenya, with special reference to the Diocese of Mombasa
which corresponds to the civic region of the Coast Province, we find the
beginning in the second verse of Genesis. There we read: "...God's spirit
hovered over the waters". And, of course, part of that vast expanse of
water was what we know today as the Indian Ocean, the only passageway from the
outside world, until comparatively recent times, to that strip of Coastal East
Africa we call the Kenya Coast. God's Spirit hovered over this stretch of ocean
for centuries, watching the comings and goings of the earliest seafarers
through it. Among these were possibly Assyrians as early as 3000 BC; Jews and
Phoenicians around 2000 BC; Azanian settlers from the southern end of the Red
Sea. It is interesting to note in passing that Mama Ngina Drive along the
seafront in Mombasa was originally called Azania Drive.
Every Kenyan school student
learns that the first written account of trade along the East Coast of Africa
was the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, dating from the latter half of the
first century AD. Mombasa is not mentioned by name, but very likely it offered
a haven to these early travellers even if it had not yet become a trading
centre worthy of mention. The inhabitants of this part of the Coast at this
time were probably African tribes, not of Bantu origin, among whom had settled
people of the Arabian Peninsula, principally from Yemen and the South Arabian
Coast.
THE ARRIVAL OF ISLAM
God's Spirit, still hovering over
these waters, had not yet directed seafarers who believed in the One True God
as far as Mombasa. It would seem that the first knowledge of the the God of
Abraham was brought to these shores by Muslim traders in the ninth and tenth
centuries AD, a period which saw a great upsurge in trade with Persia and Oman.
Mombasa is mentioned in an account of a visit to these parts by Ibn Batuta
about 1330 and is described as a large city abounding with banana, lemon and
citron; the chief food was fish and bananas; the inhabitants were Shafite
Sunnis who were "religious, chaste and virtuous". The town's mosques
were solidly built of wood. Islamic culture at the Coast reached its height
from 1200 to 1500, during which period Mombasa became, after Kilwa further
South, the second most important town in East African coastal waters.
CHRISTIANITY COMES TO MOMBASA
The first sight of the emblem of
Christianity in these parts was that of the huge cross emblazoned on the
mainsail of the flagship of Bartholomeo Diaz who rounded what he called the
Cape of Storms with a small Portuguese fleet in 1487. The King of Portugal, who
had not had to experience such storms, rechristened it the Cape of Good Hope.
Diaz is not mentioned in connection with Mombasa - the more famous Vasco da
Gama appears to have been the first Portuguese to call there. This was in
April, 1498.
After an apparently friendly welcome
accorded them, the Portuguese learned of an Arab plot to seize their fleet in
retribution for Portuguese action against their brothers earlier on at Mozambique.
This friction was the beginning of the hatred that existed thereafter between
the Arabs and the Portuguese right up to 1729 which saw the end of the latter's
influence in East Africa. Vasco da Gama continued on his journey and made a
brief stay at Malindi. He was well received there, and on his return trip from
Goa, was allowed to erect a large cross on the seashore. This cross, bearing
the coat of arms of the King of Portugal, is still standing today, although not
on the original site. Vasco da Gama made a second trip to Goa in 1502, and on
this occasion stayed some time at Kilwa. As he made ready to sail, he
discovered some two hundred Muslim women who had been smuggled on board the
ships by his sailors, declaring that they wished to leave their husbands and
embrace Christianity instead.
Da Gama would have none of it,
finding the women "of slender virtue" and finding his crew's motives
suspicious to say the least of it. When he started repatriating the would-be
converts, he found himself landed with some forty whose husbands refused to
take them back. And so these ladies of Kilwa were accepted by the Portuguese
and kept on board becoming, doubtlessly, the first known "converts"
to Christianity in East Africa. Coming back to our home waters, we find the
Portuguese making their first permanent settlement - or factory, as such
settlements were called - at Malindi, and not Mombasa, in 1505. At this,
Kilwa's power began to wane, and until the building of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in
1593, Malindi was the only important settlement of the Portuguese north of
Mozambique. That is why we find the name of our next Portuguese in this journey
of faith, St. Francis Xavier, associated with Malindi, and not with Mombasa.
St. Francis Xavier sailed up
along the East African Coast on his way to Goa in 1542, and, in a letter to his
Jesuit superiors in Rome, he describes his stopover there in April of that
year. "We visited a city inhabited by Moors (i.e. Arabs) who are at peace
with us", he writes. "We learn that Portuguese merchants were usually
found there, and that the Christians who died there were interred 'in tombs of
great size with crosses on them' " . He mentions the Vasco da Gama cross as
"gilded and very beautiful". It is with great pride that he writes:
"The Lord God knows what comfort it gave us to see it, conscious as we are
how great is the virtue of the cross, standing thus solitary and victorious in
a Moorish land".
St Francis buried a sailor who
had died on board and said that the Muslims were greatly edified with
"...the way we Christians have of burying the dead". Before
continuing his journey, he had lengthy discussions with some of the leading
members of the Muslim community, at the end of which he tells us that ". .
.their point of view remained unchanged. . . and so did mine". Mosque
attendance was a worry for one of their religious leaders. He told Francis that
the faithful were attending only three out of seventeen mosques in the town,
and to those only a handful went regularly. He wanted to know if Christians had
the same problem.
From Malindi, Francis headed north
again and describes a visit to the island of Socotra (to which we shall return
later on), and then ends his letter suddenly with the words "we reached the
city of Goa on 6th May, 1542 (over a year since they had sailed from Lisbon).
Francis was only thirty-six years old and had but another ten years to live.
This great pioneer missionary went to the East Indies and Japan, signed his letter
with the utmost humility: "Your useless brother in Christ".
"Useless" as he may have been in his own estimation, he remains today
patron of missionaries; and on a more modest scale his feast is celebrated with
special devotion in Kenya by his spiritual children, the Goan Catholic
community.
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