Mercenary Missionary Misfit

There is an old saying that expatriates in Africa fall into one of three categories: mercenary, missionary or misfit. I hadn't thought a great deal about this harmless stereotyping until I recently came across the following academic abstract on the internet:

There are three stereotypes of the development worker: mercenary, missionary and misfit. The origins of this tripartite characterization of the aid community are unclear but certainly it has a currency, or at least a resonance, within the industry. ........ While there are individuals who can be recognized as approximating to each of the three stereotypes, in general people veer between them, at different points in their careers and even at different points on the same day. Finally, although these three characterizations — missionary, mercenary and misfit — appear to be contrasting, …… they are in fact variations on a common theme and a modern version of what people in the industry tend to see as the new `white man's burden'.

Well, well. The ancient stereotype is now the subject of academic discourse.

In general, the least interesting of these categories are the missionaries, though they still come in abundance to this most religious of continents. Mercenaries have always been attracted by Africa’s wealth – first they came for the slave trade, then, and now, for Africa’s minerals and natural resources. Most recently Simon Mann failed in his alleged attempt to lead a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, eerily reminiscent of Frederick Forsyth’s humdrum novel The Dogs of War, except that his plane, so to speak, failed to get off the ground.

Expatriation to another culture, where rules and customs are not the same, is fertile ground for misfits, who relish the apparent freedom they have to be themselves, liberated from the social and behavioural constraints they are subjected to at home. And they make the most interesting stories. Because of my experience in Sudan, it is probably not surprising that of all the misfits that litter the British relationship with Africa I find Gordon the most fascinating. It is impossible to do justice to Gordon in a few words. His extraordinary career spanned the Crimea, the Taiping rebellion in China (where he led the wonderfully-named Ever Victorious Army in support of the Manchu dynasty), to his anti-slavery campaigns in Africa, before he lost his life to the Mahdi's Ansar in ill-fated British support of Ottoman control over the Sudan.

But it is Gordon's character that is even more interesting. His personality displays numerous apparent contradictions. Pride and arrogance with humility, compassion with ruthlessness, discipline with rebelliousness. And these contradictions are all-too-apparent in the circumstances of his death: defending a corrupt administration - which he loathed - against a nationalist liberation movement.

Before accepting his fatal mission to Sudan, Gordon had been considering a senior role in King Leopold's so-called Congo Free State. It is fascinating to speculate how this deeply religious and compassionate man would have dealt with arch-mercenary Leopold's brutal administration. Another misfit, Roger Casement, came and went through the Belgian Congo before achieving fame in the campaign against the exploitation of the Putumayo Indians in the Amazon, and notoriety (and subsequent execution) for treason.

And therein lies both the charm and the weakness of misfits: their stubborn refusal to conform to expectations, their unpredictability. As a stereotype, "misfit" is meaningless, but "Mercenary. Missionary and everybody else" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, and certainly wouldn't support academic analysis.