This post is to make you know that you can work against the odds and achieve.
Meet, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. He was born in 1809, he is the first African Anglican bishop of West Africa, a clergyman and a linguist.
He is a Nigerian and was born in Osogun (in what is now Ado-Awaye, Oyo State, Nigeria).
At a time of Yoruba civil wars, notably the Owu wars of (1821-1829), his village Oshogun was tackled and Samuel Ajayi Crowther and his family were captured by slave raiders when he was about twelve years old.
Ajayi was later on resold to Portuguese slave dealers, where he was put on board to be transported to the New World through the Atlantic.
1864, Crowther was ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church; he was consecrated a bishop on St Peter's day in 1864, by Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury at Canterbury Cathedral.
The licence from Queen Victoria for his consecration as a bishop authorised and empowered him "Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in the said countries in Western Africa beyond the limits of our dominions.
He had continued his studies and later received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford. He later met Queen Victoria and read the Lord's prayer to her in Yoruba, which she described as soft and melodious.
Crowther had begun to work in languages other than Yoruba, but he continued to supervise the translation of the Yoruba Bible (Bibeli Mimọ), which was completed in the mid-1880s, a few years before his death in 31 December 1891.
Against the odds indeed.
ReplyDeleteBack then when racism was at its peak and segregation was the order of the day.