"Gruppe Evangelisten. Ambilyshie rechts hinten. Th. Bachmann." ("Group of evangelists. Ambilishiye on the right in the back. Th. Bachmann."). Group portrait of three standing and three seated African men wearing white clothes and two of them a cap. Ambilishiye ("He has called me loudly from far away") (around 1873-1911), indigenous name Nkovamalulu, son of a Nyika "witchdoctor" and a chief's daughter. As a child of ten he had first contact with English missionaries in the Songwe area. After the death of his father he left his uncle, with whom he had grown up, and moved to his mother in Vulambwa, where he married. Through his half-brother Bafima, who worked in Rutenganio, he got in touch with the Moravian missionaries and with written language. He taught himself the alphabet and was impressed by the first service he attended, which was held by Paul Theodor Meyer. In 1899 he moved to Mbozi. After his baptism he became a language teacher and a very important assistant to Johann Traugott Bachmann. The success of the subsidiary station Musangano / Mukoma, which belonged to Mbozi, was substantially due to his independent mission work. See: Traugott Bachmann: Ambilishiye. Lebensbild eines ostafrikanischen Evangelisten, Herrnhut 1936. -- Johann Traugott Bachmann (1865-1948) was a missionary of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine. He served in the year 1892 in Makapalile and from November 1892 to 1899 in Rungwe. In June 1899 he founded the station in Mbozi where he served until 1911 and from 1913 until his internment in 1915. He was married to Elisabeth, née Künzel (1872-1949).
Type
image
Format
color slide no. 8245 photographic prints, 8.3 x 11.2 cm. photographs
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