Discussion Guide
About the author:
After graduating from college in 1969, I became a missionary nurse for the United Methodist Church assigned to work at the Chicuque Hospital in Mozambique and other locations in southern Africa until 1974. Twelve years later in 1986, I completed my doctoral research and published The Missionary as a Cultural Interpreter. To complete that work it was necessary to analyze documents from the beginning of Protestant missionary work in Mozambique in the 1880's and understand some of the external forces that molded programs and affected missionary publications. My personal experience as well as this research prepared me to work with Harriet Sage Bennett’s diaries and papers.The inspiration:
Carol Ann Bennett Brandt was a teenager when my family visited hers in Flint, Michigan. At the time I was nine years old and didn’t realize that we were related. Not until after our parents had died and two years prior to her death when we finally reconnected, she explained our relationship as third cousins. When Carol heard about my research and writing endeavors, she told me that it had been her grandmother’s dream to have her story published and gave me all of her grandmother’s papers and diaries.Harriet Sage Bennett had made various attempts to write her autobiography producing a thick stack of handwritten pages in pencil. Besides being difficult to read, many of the phrases and spellings common to the 1880's were no longer the vernacular today. All of the characters in Malarial Fevers refer to real people and actual events that Harriet wrote about.
Characters:
Hattie Sage Bennett is a young mother with a five year old son entering the last few months of her third pregnancy when her husband tells her that he has been called to mission work in Mozambique. (The second son died in infancy and was buried in Kansas, but she never wrote about his illness or death.)
John D. Bennett has been a pastor for a Free Methodist Church in Kansas and, in response to a presentation at a summer camp meeting, feels compelled to respond to a need in Mozambique for missionaries.
Brother Agnew requested additional missionaries to help with the work at the mission station he founded, called Nyanjele, for the Free Methodist Church in an area south of Inhambane, Mozambique.
Erwin Richards, a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the first person to initiate Protestant missionary work in Mozambique with his wife Mittie starting basic literacy programs and Bible translation.
Dalita, a Zulu missionary from South Africa, accompanied the Richards to help establish the work in Mozambique and helpful with translation.
Benjamin and Henrietta Ousley are African American missionaries from the United States and colleagues of the Richards who pioneered work in the interior at a mission called Kambini.
King Gungunyama ruled over the region of Mozambique where these missionaries worked, despite the presence of the Portuguese who claimed to govern the country as their colony.
Questions:
1. If you were in Hattie’s position what would be your reaction to taking a newborn and five year old son on a treacherous ocean voyage and live in an unsettled area of Africa? Bear in mind that brochures from this period about preparations for ocean voyages advised travelers to be well-dressed because the better dressed corpses received more appropriate treatment than those that were poorly attired.
2. What would be your react today, if your husband were posted to an overseas job? Would your reaction be different if he were sent for business or going as a missionary?
3. What was the role of women in the American West during the 1800's? Was Hattie unique or did her experience on the American prairie help her adapt to life in Mozambique more easily?
4. What to you think about John and Hattie’s reaction to the lack of financial support from the Free Methodist Church?
5. What other ways could John have defended himself from the accusations by Free Methodist mission officials that he mismanaged church funds?
6. What’s your reaction to John and Hattie’s decision to leave the Free Methodist Church and work for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission?
7. How do you compare the management of the missionary work by the Free Methodist Church versus the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mission?
8. How did you feel about Erwin Richards as a missionary when you became aware of his relationship with Dalita?
9. What are your thoughts about the special forms of address used by the Free Methodists with the titles Brother and sister?
10. Why do you think King Gungunyama did not demand a tribute payment from the Bennett’s?
11. Should Ben Ousley and John Bennett have handled the situation with Erwin Richards and Dalita differently? Is so, how?
12. What motivated Tizore Navess to return to Mocodoene?
13. Why does Tizore want the long marriage ceremony?
14. How should John and Hattie have handled the first Protestant wedding in Mozambique differently?
15. What is your opinion about the Portuguese hut tax and the way in which it was administered?
16. What factors contributed to Tizore’s desire for his country to become self-governing?
17. Do you think John and Hattie could have continued to work effectively in Mozambique after the loss of their baby?
18. What do you think about the policy to require missionaries to pass a medical examination before going abroad?
19. Why is it that issues concerning race never arise in Hattie’s description of her family’s life in Mozambique?
Topics for Further Research and Discussion:
Topic #1: International Travel in the 1880's
We take airplanes and relatively easy long distance for granted today. Taking cruises has become common place for people to vacation? What was ocean travel like for people in the 1880's? A helpful reference is THE ONLY WAY TO CROSS by John Maxtone-Graham (ISBN 0-76071-162-3).Topic #2: The Role of Women in the 1800's
Harriet’s independent thinking and decision making may not be how women of her era are viewed today. Was she atypical or following the trend of women on the frontier prairie?
A helpful reference to explore this topic further is A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN AMERICA by Carol Hymowitz and Michaele Weissman (ISBN 0-553-20762-8).Topic #3: Women in Mission
Explore the role of women involved missionary work. Is the situation different for single female missionaries versus married women? Does the church get “two for one” when a married man goes into the mission field?
What are the policies of the church you are affiliated with? Are there or should there be special policies for single women?Topic #4: Missionaries as leaders
What qualities do you associate with a leader? Are these different for men and women? Did Hattie and John display these qualities? Do Tizore and Paketi have these capacities also? Where these strengths acknowledged by the missionaries and if so, how?Topic #5: Independence movements
Do you see any correlation between Christian mission programs and independence movements? What might some of these factors be?Click to download a Word Document of this guide for printing
