1 Ignored But not Forgotten: The Role and Place of African Porters in the African Christian Mission of the 19 th and 20 th Centuries Andrew Ratanya Mukaria Associate Professor 2, in Missiology and Systematic Theology Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society Gydas Vei 4, 0302 Oslo This article explores the role and contributions of the missionary porters in the African Christian mission in the 19th and 20th centuries. The study is part of uplifting the voices of the margins by discussing the role and place of missionary porters in the African Christian mission south of the Sahara. The study acknowledges the negligible contributions that are usually overlooked. In contrast, such are crucial parts of Christianity in today's Africa. Chinua Achebe, the prominent Nigerian novelist and essayist, said, “There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”The moral of the proverb is that there is a need for the marginalized to write their own story. The topic is chosen to explore the role and place of African porters in the African Christian mission of the 19th and 20th centuries. African porters are equated to the story of the Biblical donkey in Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem. The donkey’s role was solemnly carrying Christ, where symbolically, Christ entered the city as a humble King of peace and eventual salvation to humankind (Schnabel, 2018). The porters’ role was carrying (Mandala, 2014); nevertheless, what might seem negligible, was the greatest aspect that enabled the establishment of Christianity in the Africa southern part of the Sahara. Through porters, the European missionaries were guided in their inland forays unperturbed, an easy pass to spread the gospel. The porters being of African descent and black reduced the white missionaries’ strangeness, a camouflage among the local communities they passed through.