Pokot and Western Christian Missions: A Postcolonial Story of Place and Perception

Abstract

In 1931, after decades of British colonial control, the first Western Christian missionaries came to Pokot, the region inhabited by the pastoralist Pokot people in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. For the past ninety years, missionaries from England, Ireland, the United States, and other Western countries, have come to Pokot with a message of evangelism and initiatives for development. Throughout the decades, the mission organizations and missionaries working in Pokot have developed their own perceptions of Pokot, place and people, which in turn informed the strategies of missions they undertook: evangelism included translation projects and negotiations with Pokot culture, and development projects focused on education, community development, medical services, agriculture, emergency relief, and water provision. The Pokot people have responded with resistance, ambivalence, and hybridized acceptance to the message and mission of these outsiders. While change has been slow, in accordance with Pokot conservatism, the contact zone of missions and Pokot shows a gradual acceptance and increase of Christianity and development as negotiated by the Pokot population. A postcolonial reading of mission records and missionary texts supplemented with interviews with missionaries and local residents of the small village of Asilong in West Pokot County, Kenya reveals the influence of the dominant socio-cultural setting, the power of discourse, and the importance of perspective in place construction. The story of this contact zone (the place where Western Christian missionaries meet the Pokot people) is told through a geographical and historical perspective through the voices of the actors in place. The layers of perceptions, strategies, and responses have helped inform the multidimensional story, history, and sense of place of Pokot.