Mary Slessor

Mary Slessor went into a Dundee jute mill at eleven, working half the day and schooling the other half, and taught herself to read with a book propped on the loom. She sailed for Calabar in 1876 and quickly grew impatient with the safe coastal stations. She moved inland to Okoyong, alone, where no trader would go, lived in a mud house on native food, and learned Efik until she dreamed in it.

The custom there held that twins were cursed and must be killed and the mother driven out; Slessor took the babies, took the mothers, and kept taking them until the custom broke. She settled blood feuds, faced down armed men, and was eventually made a British vice-consul, presiding over a court barefoot with a rescued child on her hip. She died at Use in 1915 after thirty-eight years, and West Africa buried her as one of its own.