Joop and Mieke went to Africa with the AIM, the Africa Inland Mission , founded nearly a century earlier. They had finished Bible school at EBI European Bible Institute near Paris, and had to complete a year of colonial administration in Brussels to be aware of efforts to improve Congo's situation, before being allowed to depart for Belgian Congo in 1959. Here Joop was busy, in his split-screen VW combi, administering 130 (mostly remote jungle) schools and teaching at the local African seminary, as well as providing a sermon in unadulterated Bangala on Sundays, the lingua franca at the time.
Eventually the eldest, aged five, went to Rethi mission school, but his education was interrupted, possibly permanently, during the unrest following the sudden independence in 1960, with the Soviets calling via short-wave radio to 'kill all the whites'. Some Congolese may have been ready for the change, others came with a suitcase to the local administrator demanding their 'independence'. Several siblings were born in nearby Uganda, at Dr Williams' AIM Kuluva mission hospital. My folks with many other missionaries had to leave Congo permanently in 1962. Doctor Becker eventually came back to continue his work with the Ituri Forest Pygmies, and was instrumental in finding a cure against leprosy.
Bwana Skotanussi
Read about Joop's adventures (in Dutch): 'Bwana Skotanussi, de tropenjaren van Joop en Mieke'
After the Congo period from 1959 to 1962, interrupted by several emergency evacuations to Uganda under auspicion of the UN, it was not deemed safe to go back with terrorism flaring under the utterly destructive Simba rebellion, so Joop and Mieke went to Kenia in 1964. In mountanous Kapsowar, north of Eldoret, the work was not unlike Congo: teaching at and administering local schools, and speaking in Swahili this time. The eldest two went to Hill School in Eldoret, a school managed by the British even after independence in 1964, until the Kenians were ready to take over. We did not enjoy being away from home, but getting a 'dinky toy' as present every time helped take the rough edge off it.
Here also, Joop drove a split-screen VW van, which as a 2-wheel drive would slip and slide up the wet slopes of the escarpment roads during rainy season and give us kids frightening views (and dreams) of the dark depths lurking beyond a small man-made ridge on the lower side of the road (i have vivid memories of Joop rocking back and forth behind the wheel to push the VW up just a little further). A useful symbiotic relationship developed between Joop needing people to push the VW during rainy season and those needing to go to town in the valley, for free. While at Hill School we stayed with fellow missionary dorm parents, Jack and Peggy Pienaar, who oversaw 14 children, 5 of their own. To make up for school's indignations, we delighted in the farm animals: there were chickens, turkeys, and a baby monkey, which if picked up, would latch on and not let go (especially during dinner call). Once, the parakeets flew away, but we lured them back with some seed and the old box-and-a-stick-trick. I remember three baby turkey chicks being raised in a glass container with heat lamps (outside the war-like hawks patrolled). At Hill School, our outfit was quite spectacular: blazer and bowler hat, complete with tie and khaki shorts. The daily half-hour compulsory rest period at school would do much to de-stress our corporate world today, not to mention an occasional licking with the 'tekkie' (a flexible shoe) for repeat offenders (like my older brother).
Kapsowar was on the route of the famed East African Safari, which came right by the village. These cars made it up the mountains without a push, as did the Landrovers with their amazing winches (we did not yet know what could happen, as in the movie 'The gods must be crazy'). Even then, the rally-crazy Finns were ahead in their Saabs and Volvos. The race was later discontinued when shady characters would put logs in the way of oncoming rally cars, demanding tribute for their removal. While these types may have eventually ended up in respectable African politics, the East African Safari was gone forever
At home in Kapsowar my folks employed several servants to boost the local economy, in more ways than one: one of the servants ran off with our ‘silver’ (this also happened in the dorm in Eldoret). Who knows, it may have been Obama's grandfather (who is said to have worked for Christian missionaries in western Kenia). One day, our trusted cook Samuel asked me (a six-year old), in deference I suppose, which chicken he should kill for dinner. I pointed to our fine rooster.
"Another Hand on Mine" the story about Dr Carl K. Becker of the Africa Inland Mission, by William J. Petersen
Publ. by McGrawHill 1967 / Zondervan edition 1970
Online read of Carl Becker's biography, by Peterson 'Another Hand on Mine'
"Central Africa Revisited: a 16,000 Mile Tour Throughout the Fields of the Africa Inland Mission in Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, Congo, Sudan and Egypt" by
by Miller, Daniel Morrison, Publ. by Africa Inland Mission, London, 1938
"Seeking Kenya's Treasures: The Life of Charles F. Johnston, Pioneer Missionary of the Africa Inland Mission" by Nystrom, Gertude Hill
Publ. by Zondervan 1942
"Garden of Miracles" (the story of AIM) by Kenneth Richardson
Publ. by Africa Inland Mission London 1968
"Faster beats the Drum" by Gladys Stauffacher
Publ. by Africa Inland Mission 1977, foreword by Ed Arensen
"Change, my thirty-five years in Africa" by Pete Brashler,
ISBN-13: 9780842302203, Publ. by Tyndale House Publishers 1979
"Called to Africa: Thirty-Five Years in Central Africa" by Chester Scott,
ISBN-13: 9780874832976, Publ. by August House Publishers 1993
"We felt like grasshoppers" by Dick Anderson (Dr. RJD Anderson)
Publ. by Crossway Books Nottingham 1994 (foreword by George Verwer)
"Angola Beloved" by Ernest T. Wilson, a pioneer missionary in pre-mechanised days in Angola around 1900
Publ. by Loizeaux brothers, Inc, 1967, ISBN 0-87213-961-1
'Bika Mono Ve' / 'Pass me not', by Selah (in Kituba)
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