Sir, - May I add a footnote on missionaries to your report of Prof Donal Akenson's presentation at the September 25th session of "The Scattering"?
Eugene Acham Chem, Minister of Foreign Affairs for China, received his secondary education at the college run by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Trinidad. Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott (Nobel Prize winners) received theirs from the Presentation Brothers in St Lucia. Julius Nyerere is a practising Catholic, product of the missions (Tanzania) and the mainly Catholic Ibo in Nigeria were better poised for modernisation at independence than the Hausa who had maintained Islam.
In the English-speaking Caribbean it is the country with the largest Catholic population - Trinidad - that creates the popular festivals of Paraug and Carnival and the music of the steel band and calypso.
Not too bad a record for the derided missionaries, most of whom were Irish. - Yours, etc.,
Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago.