"Müller's Report for the Year 1890"

Much of this report is published as an appendix to the 1891 Annual Report, pp 52ff. Additional material: Botoku, like Kpando, is pressing hard for a school. Summarising his assessment of the significance of development, Müller writes that this does not develops anywhere out of a longing to the truth, or quieten an inner unhappiness. But people often say that their children must learn something. Indeed they feel a need to know precisely the things they do not need - the outer characteristics of school training are what appeal to them. In the Anum area, 13 adults were baptised in Anum (including some wives of Christians) and 3 adults in Tsate. They have had a series of problems during the year – marriage conflicts (between partners), conflicts between families, and the restraining of an Anum Christian fail marrying a 14 year old daughter to a Boso man (the order of the community gives 16 as the minimum age for marriage). These were mostly settled, but in Boso one of the elders, indeed, the first in time, most gifted, and best known of them, was excluded from Communion and deprived of his office on account of his revealing himself as a betrayer of the Christians. Müller offers a rather disillusioned description of the Christians - they have inherited apathy and the phlegmatic character. For example, few of the awakened who were baptised as boys or youths and have learned to read, take trouble to read the scriptures for themselves in their mother tongue regularly. They have also few assistants who do not teach their baptismal candidates superficially, or who teach with a view to bringing them to the experience of spiritual power. Most teach the articles of faith, the Ten Commandments, the Lord as Prayer, and the Baptismal Declaration, by rote. There is no urge to explain among their assistants, nor an urge to know among their ordinary members. They do have an urge to pray - and after the prayer hours you can it be asked 'Master did you hear me pray? Was it right how I prayed’?' He wonders how this state of things could be bettered - have the people suffered too much under one kind of preaching or have they not been properly trained or is their childhood experience in their families, with its little intellectual stimulation responsible? Reporting on schools, he writes that all their schools in Anum and the north have to spend their first year teaching Twi. 6 boys from the Anum-Boso area are in Akropong, most supported by their families. Changes in local personnel have occurred - Mesak Gyadu died, and Herman Amaning is seriously ill in his home town. Benjamin Adae has started work as teacher in Ntwumuru. Gottfried Martin joined the ranks of missionaries on the station while Brother Lieb had to be repatriated very much weakened by yellow fever.

18.02.1891

18.02.1891

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