Do I Wear the Badge of an Oppressor?
by Kara Wibberding | 11 January 2025
How do I do good wearing the badge of those who have done evil?
Standing on the porch of a Kenyan elementary school, I locked eyes with a woman at the school entrance. She stood in a tiny gap between the two gates, just big enough for her to look in and watch the American missionaries play games with the Kenyan students. I saw her, and she saw me. Neither of us knew or ever will know each other’s stories, but we knew the story of the white missionary and the African.
I waved to her and she left.
It was March of 2023, and my school took a spring-break mission trip to Kenya. We were to build a new dorm for the Girls’ Rescue Center in Kajiado. Being raised a feminist, I’m not one to pass up an opportunity to help girls my age get their education before their marriage license.
Missionaries all want to do good. Building wells for communities is good. Raising schools for kids is good. Providing healthcare for those who can’t afford it is good. The Seventh-day Adventist church is a champion of mission, and that should be celebrated. But the history of mission is littered with casualties as large as the Spanish Inquisition.
A mission trip is an opportunity to learn many things. Beforehand, our teachers and mentors prepared us for spiritual growth. I was told I would learn a lot about God and about myself. I was not told how to handle walking a path made for me by colonizers. I watched every day go by while my own classmates seemed rather at ease saying to one another how “hospitable” and “friendly” everyone was—not noting how much more hospitable the environment was to us than it was to those who lived there.
Every morning we woke up in a five-star Kenyan hotel and were served freshly made omelets and the most amazing fruit. We sat in our own outdoor tent and were served by friendly Kenyan chefs. I have seen this image before. I have seen it in Out of Africa, when a young Meryl Streep sits in her dining room in the mansion she’s just moved to in Nairobi, being served by Mike Bugara in white gloves. The British colonizers in Eastern Africa being served by Kenyan individuals is different from a group of missionaries there to build a dorm, but the tableau looks exactly the same. And I sat there and pretended everything was perfectly natural.
The first day of work I joined the Vacation Bible School crew, as my skill set pertains more to people than to laying brick. As we were planning our program, we didn’t realize how much mud we’d tracked into the classroom. We asked someone for a broom so we could clean it up, and the principal came in and started cleaning it for us. We insisted we should clean it up because we made the mess. It took a lot of insisting to get her to hand over the broom.
In the afternoons we would go to elementary schools in the area near the Girls’ Rescue Center and do Vacation Bible School programs. We had the most fun there, singing songs with the kids, acting out Bible stories, and leading them in games. The students at these schools were just as excited about us as we were them. We would talk to them and ask their names and their grades.
During a game I asked a little first-grade boy what his name was, as I had with everyone else. He said “Go home” with a giant grin on his face. I’m rather fond of that kid. I think his anger has potential.
It was later that afternoon I saw the woman at the gate. I cannot say what she thought or why she was there, but I felt a message hanging in the air.
My group and I were not there to do any harm. We did not come in to change the culture or disrupt the environment. We did not exploit the residents. Yet we were the representatives of a long history of people who did more harm than good to those we were there to help. Mission is essential and good. I believe we have a responsibility to help whomever we can at any opportunity we get.
My mission experience was good, but it was mostly good for me. Being an educated traveler means more than protecting yourself from pickpockets. Missionaries need to be extremely sensitive to how the past is absolutely affecting the present, or else there will be no better future.
How can I be prepared to recognize my history of being the oppressor? If I struggle to recognize my privilege at home, how can I recognize it overseas? When I went on a short-term mission, my mentors prepared me to learn something. I learned how easy it is for me to stand on a platform built by bad behavior.
But how do I do good wearing the badge of someone who has done evil? As the family of God we have to keep entering these spaces and doing what we can to aid those who didn’t choose to be there. While we do so, we have to keep asking ourselves questions. The past is not in the past. Every time we don the missionary’s badge, we have to fight to redefine what it means.
The mission is not just to raise buildings; it is also to apologize. It is to apologize over and over, as we humble ourselves to serve, rather than be served.
