Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 129
the hills and away out on the plains were Pagans or Animists, with a few Fulani cattle-keeping
nomadic people who were strongly Muslims. The local town council was almost solidly Muslim
and the Pagans both feared and hated these men who had the authority over them and their own
village Pagan chiefs. Many refused to let their children attend the one Government Elementary
School in Gwoza town and we remember seeing policemen driving some local children to the
school, and then after a few hours, a crowd of village men with spears in their hands, taking them
away again back to their homes. Those children who were at the school were taught by Muslim
teachers and most of them were forced to become Muslims… we had to tread very carefully and
prayerfully to avoid giving any offence. We knew how easily we could be sent away and so this
door, just barely opened to us, might be closed to the Gospel.
Christian mission was the primary motivation for the Chandlers wanting to be in Gwoza, but
Dr Chandler was also the only medical doctor, and not just in Gwoza. He not only treated the
wife of Galdima Boyi, the Muslim district head of Gwoza, but also remained the doctor of the
emir of Dikwa with whom he had built a relationship while in Bama. Florence Chandler
points out that Galdima Boyi became their good friend, and that he also supported their
missionary work. They built circular rooms on stone foundations with three beds per room for
patients and a kitchen to cook for them. Most importantly, Florence Chandler's quote also
mentions the formation of a new Muslim elite in Gwoza town, and how much the local
montagnards were living in fear of them.
During the mid 1950s the mountains remained inaccessible for the Chandlers for medical as
well as for missionary work, but from mid-1957 onwards they managed to open the first
churches in the hills, following a successful emergency hernia operation Dr Chandler had
performed on a man from 'Kuserha' (Guduf). Around this time the building of a first proper
hospital ward with 16 beds also came into planning, since a £5000 government grant could be
obtained. The Chandlers now took visitors to Guduf, always escorted by two policemen, and
it seems that Guduf became their main field of missionary activity during this time. Florence
Chandler tells us that after two years at Gwoza, they had an average of 60 attendants at the
church hospital on Sunday, which included the ambulant patients and their relatives.
The developing Gwoza hospital remains the main vehicle of early missionary activities along
the western foothills and the Guduf saddle (see Plate 6a). Florence Chandler also mentions 'a
lot of fighting on the hills between tribes and villages', and that the district officer often had to
call her husband 'to fetch in the wounded and to do post-mortem examinations on those who
had been killed'. During 1958 their missionary work extended as far as Pulka (see Figure 3).
During the same period, 'The Church of the Brethren Mission (from America) had stations
south of Gwoza, in the Margi area' and they would soon form a fellowship with the Basel
Mission in the eastern plains and hill areas. In December 1958 the new ward was officially
opened by the emir of Dikwa. The Gwoza hospital became very busy and interpreters for all
the different languages had to be found.
Following Nigerian independence on 1st of October 1960, the Chandlers continued to keep
busy at the new Gwoza hospital, and a missionary station was opened in Limankara which
subsequently developed into a primary school. We will discuss later the significance of the
Plebiscites of November 1959 and February 1961, which brought about the end of British
rule. In 1968, shortly before their retirement, Florence Chandler counts 'over a dozen Sunday
services being run in the villages, some by Nigerian missionaries from the Plateau, others by a
rota of our European sisters and the Christian nurses'. The Chandlers' work in Gwoza ended in
1969.
Christian missionary activity in the eastern plains began in 1959 with Reverend Werner
Schöni from the Basel Mission. The Presbyterian Mission based in Cameroon had asked the
Basel Mission to help out on the Nigerian side of the still mandated area, and Gava (see
Figure 3) at the foot of the eastern Guduf saddle became the centre of their activities. During
the first half of the 1960s, after the final Plebiscite, the Basel Mission developed a fellowship
with the American Church of the Brethren, which was already active in the Margi area south
of Limankara. This fellowship was eventually handed over to the Church of the Brethren in
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