Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 128
Ghwa'a as perpetrators, and the representatives of indirect British rule in Gwoza, represented
by the unfortunate 'unlawful' killing of lawan Buba, as victims. However, our history from the
grassroots shows that the montagnards were the real victims here, and that the new Muslim
elite in Gwoza, with support from Bama, had indeed used physical force to intimidate the
bulamas to earmark candidates for resettlement. The British in turn closed both eyes, as they
had done before when they allowed Hamman Yaji to carry on for far too long.
The process of Christianity
Wahili Taɗa Nzige mentioned in his oral account that Dr Chandler treated the injured
bulamas from the so-called Johode affray of 1953 at the Gwoza general hospital. Laurie
Chandler was a missionary doctor who lived with his wife, Florence Chandler, in Gwoza in
early 1954. During the affray, Dr Chandler was still based in Bama, and there was no hospital
in Gwoza in 1953, but perhaps Mr McClintock had asked for him during the incident, in case
things were to turn nasty. We also know that Chandler had an interest in the Gwoza hills
much earlier. Florence Chandler describes in her Memories (1999) how, on tour during 1942,
Dr Chandler 'had a first glance on the forbidden Gwoza Hills':
He had tried to get permission from the British District Officer to travel [from Bama] on to Gwoza
but the Gwoza Hills had been declared an ‘unsettled area’ and he was only allowed to ride to
within fifteen miles, where he camped and then had to turn back, having seen the peaks of the
Gwoza range of hills in the distance. He saw a lot of diseases there was everywhere he stopped
and knew that the nearest doctor was sixty miles or more away at Maiduguri. There was then only
one Mission Station in the whole of Borno, our own S.U.M. Leper Colony at Molai. Six miles
south of Maiduguri, the capital city serving an area of the size of England, with probably two
million people, mostly Kanuri Muslims, and almost none had heard the Gospel. What a challenge
that was.
The Chandlers’ motives were clear. They wanted to bring the 'gospel', and developing
medical services was the most suitable way to do that. One could preach and treat the sick at
the same time and this is what they did. In 1950 the Sudan United Mission... (ibid 36):
…received permission to open an Outpatient Clinic for patients suffering from leprosy in the town
of Bama… and Rev. & Mrs Ernest Killer were sent to start a Mission station… The leprosy work
there grew steadily and a segregation village was opened to treat about thirty of the patients who
were of the lepromatous (very infectious) type. Ernest was also keen that the Gwoza Hills should
be reached and he obtained permission to go there once a week in the Dry Season. A large round
hut, which at first had no windows, was put up on the edge of Gwoza Town near the market and
visits were made taking two African ‘dressers’ in the kit-car with appropriate medicines. At that
time the Sulphone drugs for leprosy were not known and all the treatment had to be done by
injections, boiling up the needles on an oil stove in the windy climate of Gwoza. The treatment
was appreciated and the numbers grew. As we heard all about the new outreach we longed to be
free to go there ourselves.
Florence Chandler informs us that the mission station in Gwoza was built by Mr Peter Turner
in April 1954 and writes that (ibid 51):
The Government had ordered that a strong house with iron-barred windows should be erected as a
protection against the unruly hill tribes. It was the first time a white woman had been allowed to
live there and they were taking no chances. I did not realise this at first but when we found we
were not allowed to go more than 200 yards outside the compound unless we first went for a
police escort, it made me think.
This was only a few months after the 'Johode affray' and the decision to bring medical
services might well have been influenced by it. Florence Chandler also tells us that a
dispensary was built as part of the station, while one had to go to Bama for hospital treatment.
Florence Chandler describes how she remembers Gwoza in the mid-1950s (ibid 53):
The town of Gwoza was half a mile away from our compound and most of the townsfolk were
Pagans who had embraced the religion of Islam while the great mass of the people who dwelt in
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