The Saving of Aissa

Abstract

The events in Aissa Saved arise from the sincere and enthusiastic but woefully mistaken efforts of a group of African converts to Christianity to spread their new religion. The missionaries who are nominally their leaders, Mr and Mrs Carr, cannot control them and in the riot that results from their attack on the pagan ju-ju a great deal of blood is shed and many lives lost. Aissa, whose major concern is to reunite herself and her baby with the man she regards as her husband, is the touchstone for what happens. Her age is not given, but she is always described as a girl and is clearly very immature. When her husband, a ‘worthless fellow called Gajere’, is imprisoned, she demands he be ransomed; and because her baby, Abba, is sickly she demands medicine she cannot pay for. She insults those who will not satisfy her demands, is beaten and put in the stocks and eventually, weak from fever and starvation, is found and taken to the Carr’s mission by two of the converts.