The Syrian Christian Diaspora Teachers in Africa

Prof. Philip Koshi

Fifty-five years ago, when I first entered the portals of St. Thomas Residential School, Trivandrum, as a student, I was given the customary handbook on which was found the motto of the institution- ‘Thamaso maa jyotir gamaya (Upanishad).’ It translates to ‘from darkness lead me to light.’

Even Now, this immortal one-liner continues to inspire me as a citizen, parent, teacher, and member of the global community. All through my twenty three years as a college teacher, this celestial line gave me the strength and power to fulfill my duties as a teacher.

Kerala has produced many unsung teacher heroes, with a sense of adventure, who looked to different parts of the world, not just to earn a living but also to provide quality education, with their expertise and talent, based on Christian values, scientific temper as well as love and compassion for one’s fellow men. These teachers were blessed with faith in God and in themselves and exuded selfconfidence and a sense of dignity.

Teaching, or as we call it, the ‘Guru-Shishya Parampara’ has deep roots in the culture and heritage of India. In Indian tradition, teaching and learning are regarded as the noblest of all pursuits.

The former President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, said: “Teachers are the backbone of any country, the pillar upon which all aspirations are converted into realities.”

To quote the words of the late Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI: “Life is not just a succession of events or experiences. It is a search for the truth, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom.”

One of the more interesting places to teach, is Africa. Its cultural heritage and unique landscape seem to be more than enough to spark an interest to experience it firsthand. Working in Africa could give a chance which would be hard to come by anywhere else – to make a difference to people’s lives in a significant way.

The intent and purpose of this article is to dispassionately examine the role of the Syrian Christian Diaspora teachers in the continent of Africa, beginning from the late 1940s. The lives and experiences of a few teachers will be examined at some length. These teachers showed grace and resilience in even the most difficult of situations. We are constantly challenged by the world and though we may fail, we all have the capacity to be exceptional.

Ethiopia

Malayali teachers started moving to Ethiopia in the 1940s, thanks to Robert N. Thompson, a Canadian academician who was impressed with the quality of the education system in Kerala and the English language skills of those who completed their matriculation in Kerala.

In 1944, Thompson was sent to Ethiopia to serve as the founding commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force and Head of the nation’s Air Force Academy. He became a confidant of Emperor Haile Selassie and after the war, became Deputy Minister of Education and helped to rebuild the nation’s public school system.

Emperor Haile Selassie had initiated a scheme by which thousands of Indian teachers, mainly from Kerala, were to teach in almost every school in Ethiopia. One in three teachers in Ethiopia’s secondary schools were Indians, with a large number of them being Malayalees. Today, many dignitaries in Ethiopia recall their Malayali science and mathematics teachers in school. During the era of Emperor Haile Selassie, no Ethiopian who studied in secondary school would graduate without being taught by Indian teachers.

Afsa-Wossen Acerate, great nephew and biographer of the emperor, says: “I think our relationship with India started because the Indian teachers had the two components that were needed at that time. On the one hand, they had a good English education and many of them, though not all, also had the plus point that they were Christian Orthodox teachers.”

The fact that the Malayalees and Ethiopians shared the same faith influenced the emperor.

In November 1956, Emperor Haile Selassie came for a three-week state visit to India. Personally received by President Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Ethiopian monarch had a soft corner for Malayalees and was eager to visit different parts of Kerala.

Paul Varghese

By that time, he had developed a particular fondness for a teacher from Kerala whom he met in 1949 at the Agricultural College in Ambo, a town in west-central Ethiopia, west of Addis Ababa – Paul Varghese. The Tripunitharaborn English and Math teacher impressed the emperor when he acted as Mark Antony in the school’s production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Following the play, Varghese made a speech in flawless Amharic. Haile Selassie was shocked that an Indian who had been in

Ethiopia for little over a year could be so fluent in the country’s language.

After this meeting, the emperor called for the teacher to be transferred from Ambo to the prestigious Haile Selassie I Secondary School outside Addis Ababa. He was asked to teach Amharic, despite not being a native speaker.

During his 1956 state visit to India, the Emperor requested Nehru to persuade Paul Varghese, who left Ethiopia in 1950, for the United States for further studies and returned to India, to go back to Ethiopia. When a representative of Nehru asked him to consider the Emperor’s request, the humble teacher replied in a manner that shocked the Indian official: “I am deeply honored by His Majesty’s offer. And I thank the government of India for communicating it to me. I regret I am not able to accept it. I am a simple worker of the Christian Church. I am getting a salary of Rs. 75 per month. And I am quite happy with my salary and my work.”

It was his dedication to his job as a teacher and understanding the language and culture of the Ethiopians in the 1940s that brought him to the attention of the emperor. This paved the way for several Malayalees and other Indians to move to Ethiopia as teachers. After many distinguished theological and philosophical achievements and appointments, Revd Dr. Paul Varghese was consecrated as Bishop Paulos Mar Gregorios of the Orthodox Church and was in charge of the Delhi Diocese.

Dr. Genet Zewide, Ph.D., former Ambassador of Ethiopia to India (2005- 2015), remembers her fifth-grade teacher with a smile: a man with a booming voice and a knack for making the naughtiest students in class pay attention. It was the 1960s in Ethiopia, and her teacher had come a long way to teach there – in fact, from the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Zewide, who is also the former federal education minister, estimates that between 1960 and 2012, more than 200,000 Indians taught in her country. Through the 1960s and 70s, more than 6000 Indians were teaching in the country at any given time. Some came and left within weeks, while others stayed on for years. “It was a flood,” she says.

In an article, Once Upon a Life, that appeared in The Guardian (10, April 2010), Dr. Abraham Varghese, American physician and author, had this to say: “Whenever I hear the phrase ‘geography is destiny’, I think of my parents, George and Mariam, schoolteachers from India arriving in the misty mountain empire of Ethiopia in 1951, within two weeks of each other and not knowing a soul.” Haile Selassie knew of the legend of Saint Thomas’s arrival in South India, on Kerala’s shores. Saint Thomas made converts of the Brahmins he encountered. Their descendants, the Syrian Christians, are the community to which my parents belong. The emperor wanted to see those first churches and his motorcade happened to drive through Kerala at the hour when the roads were thronged with legions of schoolkids in uniform. That sight, so my parents say, so impressed Haile Selassie that he recruited 400 of his first batch of teachers for the new schools he was building, from this one state in India.

To this day, almost every Ethiopian you meet abroad who is over 40 years of age will tell you of an Indian teacher in their school, someone with an Old Testament name as Thomas or Jacob or Zachariah or Varghese. A change in their geography allowed Mariam Abraham and George Varghese to meet a few weeks after they arrived in Ethiopia and they eventually married. But it all began with what the emperor saw on a morning drive. The world turns on the smallest of things.”

Teachers are arguably the most important members of our society. They give children purpose, set them up for success as citizens of our world and inspire in them a desire to do well and succeed in life. The children of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and teachers are that critical point that makes a child ready for the future. In reality, teachers have the most important job in the world. “Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honor than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensured a good life” –Aristotle.

Kochukaleekal John Kurian

No account of the Malayali teachers in Ethiopia will be complete without the mention of an extraordinary man from Kottayam – K. John Kurian. A man with a B.A.B.T degree, he had moved from Chengannur to Kottayam as he secured a job as a teacher in the CMS High School Kottayam. In 1949, he left for Asmara, Eritrea which was then part of Ethiopia. A man of great faith in God, he labored hard to teach the subtleties and nuances of the English language to his Ethiopian students. He was a hard taskmaster and spared no efforts to teach grammatically correct English.

In all, he spent eleven years in Ethiopia, first as a teacher, then a headmaster and later in charge of a teacher’s training college. He returned to Kottayam in 1962 to spend the rest of his life as an evangelist, water diviner and social worker. At the age of 96, the Kottayam Municipality honored him with the title – Grand Old Man of Kottayam.

Nigeria

George Kurian and Susie George reached Nigeria in 1960. They taught Biology and Chemistry respectively. Mr. George was also given the responsibility of being the

Physical Instructor and football coach on account of his accomplishment as football captain of St. John’s College, Agra.

When the Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967 for a separate country called Biafra, the couple moved on to the western region, Ondo. In 1981, as a token of appreciation and excellence as expatriate teachers, they were both conferred the title of Chief. They were thereby addressed as Chief George Kurian and Chief Susie George! The installation ceremony was an elaborate and grand affair. To the best of one’s knowledge, no other Malayali teacher has had this rare honor.

Subsequently, there was a large influx of Malayali teachers in Nigeria during the 70s and early 80s. Most of them held graduate and post-graduate degrees in Science, Math, and English. Their contribution helped to boost the educational standard in Nigeria.

In the like manner, Malayali teachers, especially the Syrian Christians, took up teaching positions in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Botswana etc. Wherever they went they approached their tasks with great responsibility and quickly earned the confidence of the native officers. Many of them recall how they went without proper electricity and drinking water and lived through adverse climatic conditions. In Romans 8:25, Paul encourages us that “we should look forward to something we don’t have yet and to do so with patience and confidence.”

Most of the Syrian Christian Diaspora teachers in Africa have called it a day and have returned to their homeland. Many of them are now community leaders and continue to impart their knowledge and recall their experiences. This has served to kindle hope and encouragement in the present community.

“For man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walk up the stairs of his concepts and emerges ahead of his accomplishment” –The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck.