# Return migration and missions  
The outward spread of Christianity from Sierra Leone to Yorubaland was linked to the return migration of Africans to their places of origin from the late 1830s. Prosperous Yoruba traders started to 'return' to Badagry and Abeokuta after 1838 to pursue economic opportunities along the coast, and these Saros made the first appeals to the CMS to establish missionary stations in their new locations. One of the early returnees to Badagry was James Ferguson, who had converted to Wesleyan Methodism in Freetown. Not all returnees were Christian; a group of 50 Muslim Aku under the leadership of Mohamadu Savage was among those who left the colony (Fyfe, 1962, pp. 227-228; Ajayi, 1969, pp. 25-34; Hair, 1964, pp. 14-17). Walls has emphasized how the spread of Christianity in nineteenthcentury West Africa was often through informal contact with 'an itinerant or immigrant Sierra Leonean'. The form of Christianity that returnees exhibited was syncretic in nature and did not conform to the type of Protestantism that European CMS officials promoted in Sierra Leone. Ayandele has argued that returnees tended to 'conform to indigenous pattern in all essentials' (Walls, 1996, p. 105; Ayandele, 1966, p. 7, p. 15).  
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[^0]:    2 Remember Me: The Changing Face of Memorialisation digital project. Available online https:// remembermeproject.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/surveying-memorialisation-in-freetown/. (Accessed 29 July 2022.)