Page 57 - C:\Users\Owner\Documents\Flip PDF Professional\SHEPPERSON MEMORIAL SoMJ working copy\

The Society of Malaŵi Journal

IN MEMORIAM, GEORGE SHEPPERSON

Janet Parsons

Janet Parsons visits George Shepperson at his
Orton Longueville Care Home.

I came out of Africa in the mid-1980s to read the letters of David Livingstone in
Edinburgh and there met Professor George Shepperson, who would contribute more to
my work in history than anyone else. While our common ground would eventually
become Nyasaland-Malawi, I was seeking his advice then as I traced the lives of David
and Mary Livingstone in their Kalahari years. The meeting was a turning point, and I
realised in time that encouraging others' research interests was George Shepperson's
stock in trade -- propelled by a breadth of knowledge and enthusiasm for all things
African that were truly astonishing.
How many, like myself, built firm foundations for scholarship on the interest he
took in projects that might otherwise have failed? How many were able to work
through their personal crises because he was kind and understanding? I had no
qualifications in History, but he wrote a review of my book for African Affairs that
established me as an independent scholar.
Years later, when Terry Barringer and I visited him in Peterborough, first in
Orton Wistow and then in Orton Longueville, we found that the key to lively
conversation was to spark his memories of Nyasaland/Malawi -- the church of David
Clement Scott, views of Zomba from the Plateau and the 'Nyanja' he learned from 'his'
KAR askari in the jungles of Burma. The mark he made is indelible -- in our
memories, partner nations, Africa and academia.

Janet W. Parsons has taught, carried out research and worked with charities in
Malawi, Botswana, South Africa and Uganda. She is author of The Livingstones
at Kolobeng, 1847-1852, and has published on Scottish and Dutch Reformed
contributions to the development of church and nation in Nyasaland/Malawi.

49