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Trinitarian Bible Society – Quarterly Recordupon much by others—several historiesof African mission and Christianity eitherignore him or make only passing reference.His first ten years supposedly saw onlytwo converts. His linguistic studies areperhaps a better legacy, giving the firstSwahili grammar and a Swahili dictionary;he published twenty-five books, includinga comparative vocabulary of six Bantulanguages. He certainly gave inspiration forlater labours in both Kenya and Tanzania,and his house at Rabai near Mombasabecame a museum, the place whereChristianity and modern learning in Kenyastarted. The Anglican Church of Kenyacount him as their founding father, andthe building housing the German Embassyat Nairobi is called ‘Ludwig Krapf House’.Through Krapf, in differing ways, Anglican,Lutheran and Methodist mission and Biblework were settled in Kenya. There weresome remarkable African evangelists fromvery early in the work and a first Africanmartyr in East Africa, David Koi, in 1883.…and ContinuanceKenya seemed a magnet for missions.Krapf’s vision of a mission chain unitingEast and West Africa became part ofPeter Cameron Scott’s commitment forthe Africa Inland Mission (AIM), begunin 1895. The Philadelphia MissionaryCouncil was formed to support the work,and Arthur T. Pierson was an influentialcouncil member. 11 In October 1895 AIM’sfirst mission group, consisting of Scott, hissister Margaret, and six others, arrived inEast Africa. The mission had four stations,all in Kenya, and more workers arrivedfrom Canada and the United States,making the group fifteen. In December1896, Peter Scott died and the missionalmost disintegrated. Charles Hurlburt ofthe Pennsylvania Bible Institute becamedirector of the mission, moving with hisfamily to lead AIM from headquarters24established at Kijabe, Kenya.After, this, the canvas becomes toocrowded for detail. Pentecostal groupsappeared within AIM, and these havebecome inseparable from the Kenyanscene, splitting, merging, realigning withone or another, and shading into thedeveloping indigenous churches. Forexample, the Gospel Missionary Society, aPentecostal group within AIM, constituteditself a separate mission in 1902. During1940 to 1945, when this Society was tryingto close down its work, some missionariesrejoined the Africa Inland Mission, whilethe Society itself joined the Church ofScotland Mission, which later became thePresbyterian Church of East Africa.Thomas Wakefield, ‘Bwana Wakfili’, servedas a Methodist missionary in Kenya fortwenty-seven years from 1861 to 1889.Although he made Bible translationsinto local native languages he remainsbetter known as an explorer, botanist andmap-maker than as a missionary: a notinfrequent bypath meadow for Europeanworkers. United States missionaries startedthe work of the Church of God in westernKenya in 1905 and one of their first workerswas Yohana Mbila, a black South African.Most Western church bodies, sound orunsound, were soon replicated in Kenya.There can be no simple understanding ofmission work based on Biblical principles inKenya: think of any ‘churchy’ organisationthat you might find in the Western worldand be assured that they are all to be foundin Kenya, inseparable from the social,political and ex-colonial issues, seeking,and finding, their own proselytes there.And that is before we have remarked on……The Indigenous Churches.David B. Barrett 12 in Schism and Renewalin Africa strongly suggests that Americantraditional culture and American religion aswell as missionary paternalism, the colonial