This article discusses the establishment of St. Mary School Yala, a school begun by the Mill Hill Missionaries as an incentive to attract potential African converts to Catholicism. The school was the outcome of fierce rivalry among missionary groups to spread their denominational faith. Provision of formal education became a popular method of enticing potential converts when colonialism took root as Africans then began flocking mission stations in search of this education to survive the colonial economy. Data for this study was collected from the Kenya National Archive, oral interviews, and from published works on missionary activity in their early years of settlement in Kenya. The study has applied Christian Apologetics theory in analysing the missionaries’ conflict which initiated the establishment of St. Mary’s School; and Dahrendorf’s Theory of Social Conflict in examining conflicts between missionaries, Africans and the colonial state which steered the later development of St. Mary’s School.
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