March 12, 2018
Day 388 Remaining 712
Greetings to all, how are you? I hope well… this Christmas and New Year 2018 were a little strange, spent in the heat of the Central African Republic, wearing a summer T-shirt and eating Portuguese cod… 🙂
THE NIGHT OF DESIRES
It is NIGHT here! A deep NIGHT that envelops everything! A NIGHT that is not like all the other NIGHTS, because it is a perennial NIGHT! It is NIGHT even during the day! We live in this NIGHT, in an infinite present, we live as if there was not tomorrow!
Our schools would need to be restructured because the bricks are literally eaten up by the termites and, when it rains, they get flooded, and during the NIGHT they are inhabited by bats that make your stomach turn…
Our hospital have no medical supplies, there is no food for the patients, and those who need surgery must provide everything down to the last penny…
Our roads have potholes that look like craters because of the big trucks and the rain, and the average speed on the Bangui-Mongoumba road is around 30 km/h and the trip lasts 7/8 hours…
We would need a bridge on the River Lobaye or a new ferry because the big and heavy trucks of the foreign multinationals that transport our lumber from the forest have damaged it… We would need doctors, pediatricians, teachers, instructors, university professors to take care of the new generations, instead…
…more soldiers will come!
Perhaps I am the only one who does not understand how more soldiers may help us come out of this dark and deep NIGHT in which we live!!
The new year has brought us as a gift a new military base in our diocese of Mbaiki… the bulldozer arrived, it flattened an enormous area, it quickly dug a trench, it raised great dirt barriers and behold… a beautiful, new, secure UN military base… to protect us from whom? The Lobaye is the only peaceful area in the CAR!!!
Perhaps I am the only one who does not understand how more soldiers, more arms, more armored vehicles, more resources to keep them going, can help us get out of this dark and paralyzing NIGHT in which we live! Adding the risk that our NIGHT may become even more NIGHT. We are all like acrobats walking on the wire, risking to fall again in our fears, instead of finding the courage to get out of this NIGHT that seems to be eternal!
There is no money for the schools, for health care for salaries for our teachers, for the hospitals, for repairing our roads…
…but there is money for building a new military base and pay 900 soldiers…
Perhaps I do not understand!
Someone asked me what we would have DESIRED on Christmas NIGHT… and for 2018…
…a little bit of LIGHT…
The people who walked in DARKNESS have seen a great LIGHT…
…for those who lived in the shadow of death a LIGHT has shone… (Mt 4:16)
Greetings, a hug, a kiss, a prayer and THANK YOU…
Simone, CLM
