Anna Kempe retired i Munsala

Anna lived as a little girl in a small village that belonged to the church of Munsala in Nykarleby. She also returned here when she retired from her worklife as missionary in India, more than forty years later. Here is a metalsign where the swedish text tell about others from the village of Munsala who also worked and lived in foreign countries. Many left as emigrants for America, but not as many chose India. Only a handful of persons chose this route. About emigrants to United States of America and to Canada there are already many books written, to be found in local libraries.

The Anna Kempe book will soon have a local store. I am working on a website about this right now.

The website will be in both english and swedish.

From Nykarleby to Vörå

In Brännars village, when she was retired in Finland, Anna continued to walk. Once she wanted to go for a very long walk to Brännars village where her brother's son worked as a teacher. Martin Kempe had three children and was the schoolteacher in this village in Vörå.

Anna wanted to walk all the way, but somebody picked her up in his car som she did not have to walk the whole route she had planned.

She kept herself in good condition also in old age, it seems.

The cottage is by a lake, abandoned today but it is possible to go downhills to get a closer look at the lake and a beachmeadow in front of it.

About the Anna Kempe book in swedish

Anna Kempe learned to write and read swedish in this schoolhouse

Anna Kempe was one of the first girls who could go to school and learn to read and write. The school is called "Anders Svedberg's school" because Annas uncle Anders Svedberg had planned and participated in the building process of the schoolhouse. He worked first as teacher here, and became later a member of parliament. He is still today considered as a very important historical person in his home parish.

Anna had a long way to walk from her home in order to be able to study in this sschool. She walked also in wintertime. Maybe that is how she could later manage so well in the mountainous region of Himalaya where she later in her life worked. She had from youth a good condition and could sustain hardships. She continued in her retired years the same habit of walking for many hours.

A missionary station from 1905

Anna Kempe left for India in 1909 the first time. This house och missionary church has a text on the wall that says it was built four years earlier,  in 1905. It is still a very nice church in need of only small restauration. There are not so often gatherings there, but the area around it is very suitable for bicycle tours. It is not situatied in Anna's home parish Nykarleby, but in Vörå, she also visited here, when she was very young and had not yet become a teacher.

Inside is a photo collection of missionaries that has left for different destinations.

Many of them seem to have been more interested in music than Anna Kempe and show in the photos many fancy instruments, that they have gathered during their worksessions in different countries.

Mission, a magazine free of charge

There are several associations, churches and congregations that work with missionaries and projects abroad today. Read more about Baptists 

For example this one: Finska missionssällskapet who also supported Anna Kempe.

They have now a campaign about sport and active semester together with the Mission magazine.

For instance they suggest biking or walking and giving away the magazine to people around you, much like the way Anna Kempe worked in India with the christian magazines of her time.

Mission today

Tidningen Mission / a magazine / periodical about how to sponsor children. "Mission" can be ordered free of charge and you can read more about becoming a sponsor for a child. When Anna Kempe worked in India, there was of course no internet, so she wrote letters on paper. Sometimes the letters arrived in Finland weeks or months after she had sent them. But some of them as well as photos are today preserved in an archive in Helsinki. Today it is also easy to find internetpages about the region where she worked. But in her lifetime, people back home, here in Finland had no coloured photos to look at, her letters with descriptions of her life and people she met was surely interesting reading for them.

Several different organizations or associations for mission in other countries supported Anna Kempe.

Finska missionssällskapet was one of them.

Small mountains and larger ones

Anna Kempe lived as a young girl at the westcoast of Finland. In her life this was then a part of Russia. But at home Anna and her siblings spoke swedish. The region is also called Österbotten, because it was the name of the region from the period when Finland still belonged to Sweden, I think. On the swedish side there are regions called Norrbotten and Västerbotten.
Today Finland and Sweden are linked in many ways. Of course geographically as before. But different countries today. Different governments, different administrative systems. Different languages in some parts. (In eastern Finland more people speak finnish than swedish )

Mountains on the westcoast are not the Himalayas. But Anna wanted maybe to get higher...

For Mothers

Yellow flowers to all women "who are like mothers" to someone. Anna Kempe had a friend who when he was old, and she even a little bit older and had moved back to Finland, wrote a letter to her with this sentence: "You were lika a mother to me"

So if you have adopted or sponsored children, you can feel like a mother to them and enjoy these yellow flowers.

Anna hiked in the mountains

Many times, she used to walk around with christian brouchures and small magazines. She tried to get to know people in her region. So rather than Bollywood dancing she kept herself in good condition by walking. Since the region is almost in the Himalayas there are many hills to climb.

Life is not always easy

Anna Kempe, Peter and Esther. On a photo she is together with a teenage girl. Everybody in the Kempe family here in Finland name her "Esther". But who was she? She looks like any other girl from India, the photo show a little bit of a small white house. Anna Kempe succeded to build her own livinghouse / schoolhouse or missionary station. In an other photo there is also a younger boy, aged maybe seven.

This is the intriguing parts of Annas life in India. Who was the photograper? To start with the first obvious question. At that time nobody used "selfie-sticks"!

Anna Kempe travelled twice to India

Anna Kempe worked for forty years in India. Her first period of work lasted seven years. Then she went back to Finland and gathered some more money for a second worksession. The second one lasted more than thirty years and she participated in building her own missionary station. Kalimpong and Pedong are small mountain towns in the area between Bhuthan and Nepal where she worked. The region is famous for tea: Darjeeling is maybe the best known of the many different labels.

Anna wanted to go up in the Himalayas

...but in her time it was not so easy. Aku Pema is a traditional melody from the Himalayas, in this video performed at a place where Anna Kempe wanted to go. Here is a a young woman also named Anna who studied folk music, but she has far as I know been working totally without knowledge of Anna Kempe.

Anna Kempe, seems to have been more interested in languages and handicraft, she quite seldom mentions music in her letters.

Many books in local library

I was yesterday to Nykarleby, the town where Anna Kempe was born. Or actually in a small village just outside the town. Her familyname is also maybe connected to Juthbacka. In the 1700's a man named Daniel Kempe, his wife Helena, and their son Samuel Kempe owned the yellow house by the riverside. Samuel Kempe had nine children. But that might be a totally different story.

Anna Kempe wrote most of her letters from India to her brother Johannes Kempe in Munsala. He married Amanda Nynäs and they also got many children. One of them my granny Linnéa.

Anna Kempe also wrote letters and columns for several christian magazines. Telling about what she experienced in India. She also there participated in a Bible translating project and wrote articles for a newspaper.

She had studied to be a teacher and a nurse, and besides all her writing she tried to help the women in the area at childbirth for example.

På engelska då...

I will continue writing here in english. In Finland today there is a magazine in finnish language named Anna. The picture is from this women's magazine, an article about a man from India that wanted to teach Bollywood dancing in Tammerfors. (Tampere).

This has not so much to do with Anna Kempe, but as a way to playfully get started, with understanding more about India today: I figured it might be a good idea.

The girls here are from Finland, but they made their Bollywood dancing suits themselves.

Songtexts and music are good ways of learning languages also.

I doubt Anna Kempe would have joined dancing classes, but she used to teach the girls english while working with handicraft, such as weaving, because she noted that was the way she could tempt the local girls to come join her in the schoolroom. They were otherwise shy and the families in the area thought it was an unusual idea to send their daughters to school.

Om att studera engelska

Anna Kempe levde för över hundra år sedan. Hon var min farmor Linneas faster och en av de första flickorna här på västkusten i Finland som fick chansen att gå i skola och lära sig läsa och skriva. Hon växte upp i en liten stuga i Munsala som idag är en del av Nykarleby. Men sedan kom tanken att hon ville arbeta som lärarinna och därför fortsatte hon att studera i Ekenäs där man på den tiden utbildade de första kvinnorna till lärare i vårt land. När hon hade arbetat som lärare i några år, bland annat i Kronoby i Österbotten kände hon sig redo för nästa utmaning: Hon ville bli missionär och fara till Indien och allra helst till Tibet. Vägen dit gick via språkstudier i engelska. Utbildningen ordnades i London.

Sommaren och våren 2018 skriver jag  mera här om engelska böcker som jag läst.

Det blir säkert också en och annan bildtext eller någon uppdatering av bloggen på engelska.

Om Anna Kempe på facebook

Läs mer om SLEF, vad är det?

SLEF

Här ovan en länk till den lilla tidskriften Salamu, (Hälsning) som är gratis och där man kan bekanta sig med olika missionärer utsända av den Lutherska kyrkan i Finland.

Missionsloppis i Nykarleby är stängt på Vappen och Kristi himmelsfärdsdag, men ordnar 16.Maj istället en dag med längre öppethållningstider. Kl. 10.00 - 18.00.

Lördag 19 Maj blir det i Nykarleby församlingshem en tema dag om mission som startar Kl.10.00. Mer info om det i Missionsloppis på Bankgatan, bredvid ÖT redaktionen.(Österbottens Tidning) Föreläsare bland annat från Finska missionssällskapet.

Programpunkter handlar till exempel om Nepal eller så kan man vara med i en musikgrupp som sysslar med körsång.

Om lycka

Den där känslan man skulle vilja få ha, några minuter ens. Idag slåss vi mot snödrivorna. Sedan klockan sju i morse: Diskussioner med en man i traktor med schaktblad som såg som sin uppgift i arla morgonstund att försöka få ihop snön runt framhjulen på min bil så att jag inte skulle kunna köra framåt om det skulle vända några grader till minus. Nu är bilen flyttad men snöhögen som han schaktade ihop når upp till garagetaket strax intill. Sedan kommer det att töa och frysa på om vartannat hela månaden ut, antar jag.

Det är lyckokänslan jag är ute efter: Glädjen över att jag fick mina saker till denna nya lägenhet. Att det var tystare här än på förra stället. Att jag tänkte mig att jag skulle kunna sova och vila här.

Jag ska skriva om en sak jag noterat. I skrift kommer ni inte att höra min röst, så ingen kan säga om jag marrar, morrar eller gnäller. Men det som jag tänkt här i kommunen är att varför folk när de öppnar munnen ofta använder imperativ utan att först hälsa.

"Stäng dörren, det drar!"

Eller i form av en lapp under vindrutetorkaren: "Skitstövlar! Ni har tagit en handikappad persons parkeringsplats!"

Tänk om den som skrev lappen hade kunnat avstå från ordet "Skitstövlar!" Jag skulle gilla den här kommunen på det hela taget bättre då. Nu är min känsla den att jag gillar grannstaden bättre, eftersom de säger "Hej!" och ler, även till personer de inte känner från förut. Jag har aldrig där råkat ut för att någon tilltalar mig med ordet "Skitstövel!" först, eller skriver det på lappar någonstans.

Jag försöker känna glädje här, varje dag och ibland går det så bra att jag under ett foto skriver  att min hemkommun är "vacker". Jag skriver inte på finska "Vitun ruma kunta"( En fittans ful kommun.)

Om fotografiet är tillräckligt vackert, talar bilden för sig själv, jag behöver inte dra på den något Instagramfilter ens.

Vem som helst kan se att det är taget på en vacker plats. Bilden behöver ingen bildtext, egentligen.

Då kan jag känna lite lycka eller glädje, över att jag råkade befinna mig där och fick med på bilden just den där bildkompositionen jag eftersträvade, jag behöver inte ens putsa kanterna eller beskära fotografiet.