The Scent of Eucalyptus: a missionary childhood in Ethiopia.

The Scent of Eucalyptus: A missionary childhood in Ethiopia Daniel Coleman Published by Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, NB, 2003 pp. 254, ISBN: 0-86492-374-0 $24.95 CAN

Written by an Ethiopian-born Canadian of missionary parents, this book weaves together the personal stories of the author's childhood and adolescence with ideas about the role of religion in public life, our responsibility toward developing nations and our view of history.

This book will help its readers transcend the left-right, imperialist vs. underdog-colonial-nation dogma the media and academics so often put forth. While the world of ideas takes a back seat during the greater

part of the book as Coleman entertains us with tales of childish mischief, the final chapter reveals a more serious, public purpose of his memoir: to reclaim the historical record hijacked by revisionists who have an agenda for the direction of society and politics today.

This chapter tells the story of a picture entered in the 1990 exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, "Into the Heart of Africa" and one that was not. The image entered is of a white missionary woman gazing down on black women as they wash clothes. The caption reads, "Mrs. Thomas Titcombe offering 'a lesson in how to wash clothes' to Yagba women in northern Nigeria about 1915." The picture not entered shows the same woman holding twins she has rescued from certain death, since in Nigeria at that time, twins were regarded as a bad omen. The solidarity depicted in this image challenges the desired interpretation of the first image of "condescending white woman who imagines black women had never heard of washing clothes before the Europeans came."

"It's easy," writes Coleman, "to snicker at the condescension in teaching Yagba women to wash European-syle clothes ... but that's not all these European-style missionaries did. They worked themselves to the bone setting up medical clinics, building schools, ..." and campaigning against the slave trade. Easy, not to mention dishonest, because the wider context in which the choice to be a missionary was made is ignored.

Coleman's memoir brings to mind another perspective on missionaries abroad. They were an important aspect of an informal foreign policy. Fuzzy memories percolated up from my own childhood of missionaries home on leave giving first-hand accounts to our Protestant congregation on their efforts abroad. Slide shows acquainted the listeners with the faces of people helped and gave evidence of schools and hospitals built with the money listeners had contributed with their after tax dollars.

I took issue with Coleman as he described the life of his close Ethiopian friend, Negussie. Rescued from tuberculosis by a missionary nurse as a small child, he grew up a hunchback, was later imprisoned and tortured for his faith under the Mengistu regime, only to die of typhoid fever a few brief years after his release from prison. Coleman could not understand why he wouldn't renounce his faith as demanded by his torturers, "... all that Negussie needed to do was sign a statement that he would no longer speak about religion and that he repudiated his foreign friends. Then he could go free. It was so simple. He could always believe whatever he wanted in his heart. This statement was just a formality."

Horrific as the torture was, this response struck me as unsatisfactory. Perhaps Coleman was merely expressing his anxiety for his friend. But the Protestant notion that belief and behaviour can be separated must surely encourage regimes bent on silencing people with faith.

The author's sincerity about this and other stories, such as the more troublesome aspects of growing up--self-esteem, sex, relationships with adults--interwoven as they are with the broader story of life in Ethiopia in the 1960s and '70s make this a stimulating book.