Problems faced by Missionaries in East Africa 1. Harsh climate. Thetropical and hot climate made travelling difficult and risky which confined missionary work to just a few areas The conditions were very unhealthy for missionaries who were used to the cool temperate climate of Europe. The pioneer missionaries had died and that had scared other interested societies to come to Africa 2. Diseases For a long time, west and central Africa were considered as the "white man's grave" because of malaria and other tropical diseases that claimed the lives of the whites in the area The death toll of missionaries was high and this retarded the progress of their work. e.g. the death of Dr. David Livingstone brought an end to his adventurous travel in central Africa. 3. Political problems and insecurity This was also a major obstacle to the missionary work in Africa especially due to the fact that it was thetimewhen slave raiding was still widespread especially in East Africa.These strongly hated missionaries because of their preaching campaign against slave trade e.g. It was due to this hatred that some missionaries were attackedby slave trading societies. 4. Lack of proper transport and communication systems. Africa being in the tropics, its geography is characterized by swamps, lakes, rivers, rift valleys, forests and mountains which hindered the movement and creation of necessary infrastructure e.g. roads, navigation systems that wouldn't facilitate missionary work in East Africa. 5. Lack of supplies - It should be noted that missionaries were operating faraway from home. It would often take many months and at times .years for them to receive assistance from home, the difficulties of transport and hostilities of the environment in which they worked made it difficult for them to receive supplies in time of need, it was often risky for a small group of missionaries to travel from the interior up to the coast and other places to look for food, medicine, clothes, and sometimes amidst hostile tribes 6. Language barrier This limited the missionary work as in some cases missionaries spent long time trying to learn African languages or would find it necessary to teach their European languages to the local people if they were to get converts in Africa. For example in East Africa, they tried to speak Luganda and Swahili. They had to
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