As being witness to the race relations currently going on in my current country and also the child of a missionary family, I have immense admiration for Mary, and her early stance of European interference with Africa.
Mary Kingsley was born into a family who’s father thought a girl did not need an education. Thankfully Mary’s father also was easily overwhelmed by being part of the family and would leave them. During those periods, Mary educated herself in his very library. Despite this very grim outlook, Mary inherited her father’s love of adventure and interest in foreign people and cultures.
Her parents died within 6 weeks of each other, and taking the inheritance she set off to the Canary Islands for a break. While she was there she learned about white men making their living through slave trade. She felt compelled to go and see what was going on for herself as she felt of little use to anyone else in her family as a single woman.
She traveled to what was made infamous area Africa, the very part that Joseph Conrad wrote about in the Heart of Darkness. The Congo. She was warned about the murderous people, killer insects, and to make friends with the missionaries so that she could at least have a christian burial.
Mary soon picked up on the fact that traders were the links in this wild world. Bartering was a language everyone could understand, and she was convinced that the English should be working with Africa as trading partners instead of overlords. Through the use of trade, Mary was able to collect fish, insects and reptiles all for the British Museum. Her greatest contribution was her collection of West African River fish for which some where named after her.
Although unorthodox in her thoughts toward English/African relations, Mary was completely conventional in her mode of dressing. She wore her heavy black wool dress, stating “ you have no right to go about African in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.” She tramped through swamps and mangroves.
Mary Henrietta Kingsley • English Explorer • 1862-1900