Альфред Сейкер: британский миссионер в Камеруне и на острове Фернандо-По

British missionary

Alfred Saker (21 July 1814 in Wrotham, Kent – 12 March 1880 in Peckham) was a British Baptist missionary of the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1858 he led a Baptist Mission that relocated from the then Spanish island of Fernando Po and landed in Southern Cameroons. According to the record, he bought land from indigenous Bimbia chiefs, established a seaside settlement christened Victoria after the reigning British Empress. The settlement was renamed Limbe by decree in 1982 by President Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon. Alfred Saker wished to be known under no other designation than a "Missionary to Africa". He was a leader of the early British Baptist missionaries that established churches on Fernando Po Island and Cameroon. His 1844 1876 mission work included translation between 1862 and 1872 of the Bible into the Duala language.

In Jamaica, there was an end to slavery. A number of ex slaves who had become Christians decided to become missionaries in Africa. So began the Jamaican Baptist Missionary Society work in 1843, in Fernando Po, today Equatorial Guinea near the coast of Cameroon. In 1849, Saker founded Bethel Baptist Church. In 1853, the Spanish government, instigated by the Jesuit missionaries, insisted on the departure of the Baptists from Fernando Po, and suppressed all Protestant worship. The converts resolved to accompany their teachers, and the whole Baptist community removed under Mr. Saker's guidance to Amboises Bay, on the mainland. He purchased a tract of land on the coast from the Bimbia chief, and mapped out the new colony of Victoria. Under his energetic superintendence and untiring personal labor the ground was soon covered with houses and gardens for the exiles. Mr. Saker's influence upon the native chiefs and their people was most successfully exercised in suppressing many of their cruel and sanguinary customs. Indeed, if he had chosen, he might have made himself their king in the later years of his residence among them. Although he lived so long in a climate deadly to Europeans, he suffered greatly from fever and debility. Shortly after his arrival at Fernando Po, the headquarters of the Baptist missionaries, he visited the tribes on the mainland at the mouth of the Cameroons River. Here he built a house suitable for the work, with his own hands, and gradually acquired acquaintance with the language of the people. Within two years of the commencement of his labors he had reduced their language to writing and prepared a lesson book for the school which he had formed. With the printing press and material sent to him by the church at Devonport he printed schoolbooks for the use of his scholars and portions of the New Testament. In 1849, the church at Cameroons was formed, and a Christian civilization began to spread itself there through Mr. Saker's efforts. He induced the people to labor with something like regularity in agriculture, introducing various plants, such as bread fruit, mangoes, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables for daily sustenance. These productions, moreover, enabled them to obtain manufactured articles from the ships frequenting the river, and in the course of a few years a civilized community was established. He taught his converts the industrial arts, and soon found himself surrounded by artisans of all sorts, carpenters, smiths, bricklayers, etc. The more forward scholars soon became helpful in the printing office work, and aided in the translation and printing of the Scriptures in the Duala tongue, which was his lifelong task. In 1851, the mission was reduced by death to such a degree that not a single fellow laborer remained of those who went out with him, except one or two colored brethren. All his European colleagues were gone, and he was left alone. Hitherto he had been in a subordinate position, but now from necessity he was obliged to take the lead. In 1858, the Spanish authorities expelled the Protestant missionaries from Fernando Po and Alfred Saker returned to the mainland with a group of liberated slaves, and bought a large tract of land (16 km x 8 km) from King William of Bimbia. The small group built a school, a church, and other buildings for the mission, thereby founding the city of Victoria, now Limbé (since 1982). They also faced problems of health or the hostility of the population. They opened churches, dispensaries and centers of care and trained a great number of Cameroonian pastors, tailors, shoe makers, masons and carpenters who helped them build the Church of Béthel in 1860.

In 1847, the Jamaican Joseph Merrick had completed a translation of the Gospel of Matthew into the Isubu language. A year later Saker himself started a translation in Douala. In 1872 he had the whole Bible translated in this language and 200 copies were printed at his own press. In the meantime, Saker established a European settlement named Victoria. The Protestant missionaries were forced to leave the Roman Catholic Spanish island of Fernando Po and could now join forces with Saker from this settlement.

One of the fascinating things in the work of Saker was working with people from Jamaica. Joseph Merrick can be seen as the pioneer of the work in Cameroon. He had a talent for learning languages and within a short time he preached in Isubu and Douala. He died on the way to Jamaica in the year 1849.

Alfred Saker first went to Africa in 1844 as part of a missionary team on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko). He was, in the opinion of David Livingstone, the most important English missionary in West Africa. He envisioned great possibilities and tried to convince the English government to make this area a Crown Colony. Alfred Saker The Pioneer of the Cameroons, (1908), London : Religious Tract Society
Jaap Van Slageren. Les origines de l'Église évangélique du Cameroun