When David Livingstone, the missionary-explorer, pleaded in the Senate House in Cambridge on 4 December 1857:
I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity. Do you carry on the work which I have begun. I leave it with you. [Winspear, 1956: 11]
little did he realise that whereas his compatriots were busily engaged in commercial and evangelical enterprises the local folk artist in Central Africa was also constructing, refashioning or recreating riddles inspired by the white man, his culture and his other activities.