"Buck to Basel"

There is correspondence about financial administration at Kibi in March-May of this year. It is opened by a Basel Committee letter dated 14 March 1881 (presumably to find in the D-2 series). Folio 41-2 in which the points are made: 1. that the collection of money from the community for a new chapel was not done in a proper way 2. that the Kibi missionaries had done wrong in transgressing a printed rule dated 27 January 1879 that no money was to be lent to private people out of local church funds. The missionaries were to collect the debts as quickly as possible, their own salaries being held security. Point 2 is clarified by this letter. Buck takes full responsibility, since no sums had been lent out for over a year. The money was in fact lent out of the Poor Fund, specifically for Christians left naked by war, converts who in the process of conversion had lost everything and could not marry, people who were being held back from conversion by small debts they owed. All loan were made at small percentage interest, no-one was allowed more than £3, and the Presbyters underwrote every acknowledgement of debt. The debts are repaid slowly, but no-one has failed. He felt this was a proper procedure in view of the numbers of people entering the community who were more or less without possessions. Point 1 is discussed in a long letter by Huppenbauer. It appears that the contribution of the Kibi community to the Chapel-building fund was obtained by accountancy manipulations, the members of the community being themselves unconscious of what was being done.

13.04.1881

13.04.1881

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