Missionaries and leopard hunters

I like to think that I’m quite culturally sensitive and all that, but I found myself speechless on more than one occasion talking to fellow passengers on my 15 hour journey to Harare. A group of American missionaries, the youngest only 16, all in matching branded jackets with a logo of their church name plastered across a map of Africa, had flown Mississippi – Chicago – Washington – Dakar – Harare. They were travelling to a village where they planned to spend a week ‘living in the bush’ and converting people to Christianity.

‘These people have no hope. They are dying of HIV. We’re coming to tell them about Jesus – that’s the only hope they have’. True, the HIV rate here is 25% and life expectancy is under 40, but I had to really bite my tongue about a) whether this really was the most effective method to make an impact on the appalling health indicators, and b) how a bunch of young Americans could really convert people in a week with their 5 minute roleplay summary of the Bible and testimonies on why “we’ve taken an oath not to have sex before we’re married”.

They were all so earnest about their trip and clearly meant well, but the way they spoke about Zimbabweans as helpless, backward people that needed ‘saving’ – the job of college students who had never left the deep American South – made my skin crawl.

The other gang travelling all the way from Alabama to Zim, were on a leopard safari.
‘Ooh, that sounds fun!’ I ventured. ‘How does that work?’
‘Well, we’re hunting leopards. And buffalo if we’re lucky.’
‘Hunting, as in, killing?’
‘Sure thing’.
I must have looked considerably unimpressed as a guy continued to explain ‘Well, in America, we love our guns. We shoot deer at home, but here we get the real deal.’
‘I thought leopards were endangered?’
‘Oh no, it’s very sustainable. The leopards are bred for hunting’.
Oh I guess that makes it ok then. Rearing an endangered animal so it can be shot by a tourist as a holiday past-time. What could be wrong about that?