What Stanley really said.

The press are quick to spot a good line and render it more immediately resonant to local audiences. So it is with Henry Morton Stanley's famous quote of which Dr. Livingstone was the recipient.

In fact he said, "Father Schynse, I presume” when his Emin Pasha Relief Expedition stopped in the neighbourhood of Bukumbi Mission in September 1889 to pick up linen, shoes and donkeys from the priests. Lacks impact though, since nobody has any idea of who Fr. Auguste Schynse was, hence the alteration.

Bukumbi belonged to the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa of Algeria better known as the "Pères Blancs" or "White Fathers", founded to feed and indoctrinate the many Arab orphans left after the Algerian famine of 1867. Unusually their vows insisted that they dressed like locals and ate the local cuisine.

In 1878 ten missionaries left Algiers to convert the Arabs and negroes of Central Africa. A couple of previous attempts had ended in the guides massacring the caravans, but this time they got through, establishing posts at Lakes Victoria Nyanza and here by Lake Tanganyika. Unlike other missionaries who did everything they could to stop the valuable slave trade across Lake T and soon got forced out, the White Fathers bought as many as they could; and released them. Whether manumission was conditional on submission to the Pope I leave for you to decide.
This ruin by Kipili was one of their centres as far as I can tell. It was closed over 50 years ago and abandoned. The local Bishop who owns the land wants to make it a tourist attraction but I think it is too far gone as nobody has even weeded the place since the priests left.

More trivia to amuse and divert you.
· the Pere Blancs are not a religious order according to Vatican rules. Individuals can own their own property; but they may use or dispose of it only at the direction of the superiors.
· in their Rule, each house must contain not less than three members, which means you need many brothers to set up strings of missions across Africa.
· they never changed from wearing Algerian Arab clothing: white gandoura, (cassock,) and burnous, (mantle).
· rosary and cross are worn around the neck in imitation of the mesbaha of the marabouts.Read more