Story: 1820. A Quaker woman purchases the freedom of two African men, Sandanee and Mahmadee. In return for teaching her their languages, she would give them a Christian education. A lopsided bargain demonstrating what Hannah Kilham thought they lacked and needed. She wanted to use them to continue her civilising mission of the continent. She ‘bought’ them with a convoluted idea of freedom for the sum of £47. All 3 of them live together in Sheffield. She took them to Gambia in 1823 and there they ‘reverted’. In 3 short years they went from ‘obedient’ to ‘unacceptable’. We can only imagine their time in Sheffield being surrounded by gratitude demanding people. For Hannah Kilham did not register her own reduction of them. They needed to shape their own freedom.
The recovery: Otis is a keeper of stories. A tormentor of the conventional and here with his poetry he plays with perspective, faith and dreams. Otis is seeking to give the story back to Sandanee and Mahmadee and therefore to us.
The entire piece is entitled The African Instruction, after Hannah Killham’s publishing’s of her insidious missionary conquests. The pieces depict two West African people Sandanee & Mahmadee from The Gambia and Senegal. My piece follows them on a journey from Sheffield back to West Africa, starting with Sandanee’s dream to Géwël (Wolof for griot), commencing
with 28-19-20 transgress referencing the book of Matthew: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”, which of course was instrumentalised and weaponized for the vile and evil ideological-colonisation of parts of Africa.
Notes from Sheffield City Archive:
Hannah Kilham (1774-1832) was a Quaker convert, teacher and missionary, born in Sheffield. She wrote extensively on Christian education between 1812 and her death in 1832.
In 1817 she began work on unwritten languages of West Africa, with the aim of spreading Christianity and decided to go to Sierra Leone as a missionary teacher. She aimed to produce alphabets and spelling systems for several African languages that had never been written down.
In Feb 1820 she went to the river Thames in London where a ship of African sailors had arrived from the Gambian coast. She was looking for volunteers prepared to stay in England to help her transcribe their own languages. She met Sandanee and Mahmadee - both men were enslaved. They were working as sailors and at anchor in London. Sandanee was from Goree; Mahmadee was from the banks of the Gambia. Both spoke the language now known in Senegal as Jolof and in the Gambia as Wolof; Sandanee also spoke Mandingo. They both spoke a little broken English from dealing with the traders on the African coast. The Quakers paid £46 7 shillings to secure their freedom.
In return for teaching her their languages, she gave them a Christian education. From Feb/March to June 1820, they lived in Tottenham, London. In June 1820 they moved to Sheffield, the home of William Singleton, a Quaker schoolmaster where they continued their lessons. Hannah was pleased with their progress. In 1820 Sandanee had an apocalyptic dream which he told William Singleton about. It involved stars and fire, Black and White people coming out of graves, a Bible and a man so tall his face could not be seen. Singleton was so affected by the dream, reminiscent of the Day of Judgement, he went to Africa in 1821 to further his work on Christian spirituality among African people.
Hannah and the two scholars were back in Tottenham by June 1822. They all sailed to Gambia in 1823. While in England Sandanee and Mahmadee had been ‘obedient and promising’ students but once back home the two men started to show considerable ambivalence towards the missionary enterprise. Mahmadee reportedly developed a ‘malignant disposition’ hastily leaving the mission to marry and move away rather than honour the contract to work three more years with the group. Sandanee ran a successful evening school for recaptured slaves known as ‘King’s Boys’ but his behaviour became unacceptable to Kilham. In July 1825 he was jailed for drunken and riotous behaviour. The group abandoned him and handed him over to a Wesleyan Methodist missionary in the area.
Hannah Kilham produced a number of African textbooks and paid three visits to West Africa between 1823 - 1832 to undertake missionary work and help freed slaves. She died at sea off the coast of Sierra Leone in 1832.
Copy of certificate issued by the Society of Friends (Quakers) (Balby Monthly Meeting) to Hannah Kilham of Sheffield addressed to the inhabitants of the islands of St Marys and Sierra Leone, Africa, 9 October 1823 (Sheffield City Archives: QR/64).
