Nigerian Drum

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Item Overview

Nigerian Drum Made in Numan, Nigeria, 1913-1920 Wood, metal, animal hide 2008.036.001 - Gift of Lloyd Neve

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The Danish Sudan Mission was founded in 1911. In 1913 three Danish missionaries, Dr Niels Brønnum, his wife Margaret C. Young and Miss Dagmar Rose came to Africa. Within six months Mrs. Brønnum died and Miss Rose took the couple's infant son to his grandparents home in Scotland. Dr, Brønnum refused to give up his call and traveled farther inland and established work at Numan in Nigeria. More missionaries from Denmark joined him. The Danish Sudan Mission is now named Mission Afrika and has expanded the mission work to other African countries.

This handmade drum was used to call people to worship at the Danish Sudan mission’s chapel in Numan before the chapel had bells. The donor, himself a Danish-American missionary to Japan, visited the chapel in 1987; here he saw the drum in the old chapel which was no longer used because a new chapel had been built. He asked the missionary Helen Margaret Jacobsen, who served for 42 years as Director of the Girls School in Numan, if he could have the drum, which she allowed. 

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