How Father Nicholas Stam was starved out of Kisii

President Jomo Kenyatta during a tour at Maryhill School in Thika in 1969. [File, Standard]

Although Father Nicholas Stam had been in Kisii for some years, he had a rough time sustaining the Mill Hill Catholic mission at Nyabururu, and found himself using his gun to fight the locals.

Father Stam arrived in Kisii in 1915 as the First World War raged, and at some point had to fight the very people he was trying to convert to Christianity.

Even before World War I, the conversion of locals to Christianity had been difficult and slow. At the time, there were only seven Catholics in the whole of Kisii.

These had bolted as soon as they were baptised and the missionaries had to borrow four readers from Asumbi, who helped in completing the church that is today Kisii Cathedral. Kisii had suffered a string of military expeditions and treated Germans as friends when they invaded the area and fought the British.

After the war, the Germans were driven out of Kisii and the locals were heavily punished by the government for fraternising with the enemy. Father Stam, who the locals called Mogaka, faced open hostility. His house was constantly raided. He, however, stood his ground and fought off his attackers using his pistol and the dogs he kept in his compound.

He shrugged off numerous death threats, but locals devised a way of defeating him. At some point, they conspired not to sell him food.

Starved and demoralised, Father Stam temporarily closed down the mission and relocated to Mumias. After the war, a messenger was sent to Mumias in 1918 to tell the priest that he was free to return. However, Stam declined and instead a colleague was dispatched to Nyabururu in 1919 to reopen the mission.

Despite the initial hostility towards the church, the people later embraced Christianity, inspired by one of the most popular priests, Father James Doyle, who took charge as the superior of Nyabururu mission in 1923.

Instead of treating Kisii opposition to the white man as childish, Father Doyle is credited by scholars for appreciating their culture and traditions of the people to a point that he allowed converts to circumcise boys and girls without dismissing such practices as primitive.

In less than two months, the Catholic Church will be celebrating 110 years in Kisii land, and the pioneer missionaries will be remembered for laying the foundations of Christianity and development. The sons of the African chiefs, who ran away from Stam but later pursued education, have left huge footprints in all spheres of life in Kisii and beyond.