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Begging as Resistance: Wealth and Christian Missionaries in Postcolonial Zaire

This article is ethnographic in scope, describing the complex relationship between the Bira and the missionaries regarding material wealth. The Bira are a horticultural people of northeastern Zaire. Like some other indigenous peoples of Africa, the Bira came to view missionaries as cannibals and also as the wealthy favorite children of God. Embittered at the unequal distribution of wealth, the Bira used the missionaries as vehicles by which they might gain access to the material wealth of the whites. They utilized various methods for obtaining this wealth, including working, begging, and even harassing the missionaries. It is explained in this paper as resistance to the global unequal distribution of wealth. With their power to decide whom to reward with material wealth, the missionaries created a social hierarchy whereby they stood on top, followed by the church elders. The rest of the population competed fiercely along ethnic lines for scarce jobs, houses, and the goods that were available at the mission station. This situation at the grassroots level mirrored the larger relationship between Third World countries and Western nations, a relationship often termed post-colonialism.