Congolese women and female missionary, Congo, ca. 1900-1915

Tinted lantern slide showing a group of Congolese women and a female missionary of the Congo Balolo Mission. Only a few Congolese women wear smock dresses, the remainder wear traditional wraps or are bare-chested. There are also a few men in the group. The Congolese women have had their lips tinted bright red, which has not happened to the men in the group or the female missionary. Work amongst women was very important to the Congo Balolo Mission in its early days, and was started in 1899. This slide comes from a collection generated by missionaries working for the Congo Balolo Mission, a mission begun in 1889 under the supervision of the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions that developed into the interdenominational evangelical mission Regions Beyond Missionary Union after 1900