Comboni Lay Missionaries

Logo LMC
LMCCentroafrica2
MisionenGuerrero2
Natal20162

English

Surgery in Mongoumba. 25 years of dedication and availability

by

Mongoumba

“For more than 25 years, Dr. Michel Onimus, French orthopaedist, devotes his free time to operate in the Central African Republic, particularly in Mongoumba. The patients who are treated are especially children, people with congenital malformations (congenital dislocation in the foot, cleft lip), polio sequelae, burns and fractures. Due to the country’s instability, medical activity has declined during the last three years since Dr. Onimus comes to help, that is, almost exclusively in Bangui”, writes Élia Gomes, a Portuguese lay Comboni missionary, working in Mongoumba.

 

Before the “crisis”, he used to work with a team of young volunteers (anaesthetists, nurses …). Now he travels just with his wife, Michelle, who deals with logistics. Therefore, he is supported by Barthelemy, a Central African anaesthesiologist from the paediatric Centre of Bangui who always finds a “little time” to spare and work with the professor.

In their luggage, the couple brings everything they need for the medical operations, from surgical material to tapes … and when they go back, they donate to us whatever has not being used.

Since I’ve been here in Mongoumba, we have received the visit of Dr. Onimus four times, the last in February in which 31 patients were treated, 15 operated and 4 scheduled to be operated in Bangui in March.

They arrived early, on February 17. Since I was unable to go to fetch them, Brother Alberto, a Comboni missionary, brought them here and spend a few days in Mongoumba. Then the team started the marathon for the consultations, preparations and surgeries of the patients: a process completed in just three days.

Mongoumba

The routine was every day the same: into the operating theatre (so to speak) at 8 am and out at around 15 pm, for a bit of lunch. After a short break, at 16 pm we continued the medical consultations and visits of the patients who had been operated on.

Surgeries are performed in the Health Centre, in an empty room with just the operating table, but with no light sources, without suction of secretions, no air conditioning, no recovery room … A room that has three windows facing the street, with a net to prevent flies from entering inside but not to protect the place from the dust, and curtains to provide privacy but also precluding some light. The only “luxury” is an oxygen bottle that is used only when the professor arrives.

Despite all the shortcomings, we have to thank the availability of the head of the Centre of Health, who not only allows us the use of the room as a place of surgery but makes available the autoclave to sterilize the material.

Mongoumba

The patients, before and after the operations, are housed in our Rehabilitation Centre, called “Da Ti Ndoye”, under the responsibility of Bob, the physiotherapist who works at the Centre since its foundation.

Dr. Onimus accomplishes a difficult job in difficult conditions, a labour of love, which has provided a better quality of life for many children and adults. “In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).

A missionary hug

Elia Gomes. CLM CAR

Do you still not understand?

by

loaves-of-bread

Abundance – this is what God always offers us.   Scarcity – this is how we usually view the world.

On Tuesday, the Gospel reading in Mark 8:14-21 told of a boat trip of Jesus and his disciples across the lake.  Here’s the context: Jesus had just performed one of his most awe-inspiring miracles of feeding four thousand with a few loaves of bread.  The Pharisees then ask him for a “sign from heaven to test him” (Mk 8:11) as if all his previous healings and feeding the four thousand a few hours earlier was not sign enough.  Jumping into the boat, Jesus makes a comment to his disciples to beware of the philosophies and mentalities of the Pharisees, their “leaven” as he describes it.  The disciples, having forgotten to bring bread for the journey (they only had one loaf among them), assumed that Jesus made this comment because they had no bread. How superficial the disciples’ and our thoughts can sometimes be.  Jesus knows exactly what they are thinking and essentially cries out: This has nothing to do with bread! Jesus goes on to say it is like you have eyes but do not see, have ears but do not hear.  He then reminds them of his miraculous multiplication of loaves to feed the five thousand some time before and the four thousand just hours before.  He asks them how many baskets of fragments were left over, the pieces of bread these very same disciples had gathered up. Probably with the disciples’ eyes sheepishly staring at the bottom of the boat, they answer “twelve” and “seven”.  Jesus then brings to a climax the whole moment with the simplest of questions: “Do you still not understand?”

It is like Jesus is saying: I give you everything, I offer you the most plentiful of lives basking in my love.  I will fill all your worries, depressions, limitations and failures. All you need to do is believe in me and trust in my proposal of abundance.  All you need to do is have faith in my faithfulness.  We can become so closed in on ourselves, foolishly relying on our own tiny resources – counting the inventory of our few loaves of bread – when God is willing to dump a mountain of bread onto our laps. Do you still not understand? I will not only give you what you need according to your limited horizons (feeding the four thousand men), but I will give you even more than you can possibly dream of (seven baskets left over).

During these last months I have been struggling with sickness and how easily I have found myself dejected.  I have caught myself feeling as if I am battling this all alone. But hearing and wrestling over that potent question at the end of Tuesday’s reading knocked me forcefully out of my doubt.

Sometimes we can be like the disciples, where we have a sincere intention to love God, but out of fear, we are not willing to make the leap of faith to truly abandon ourselves into God’s hands trusting that he will bring all things to good for those who love him.  Sometimes we can also be like the Pharisees, where we observe the workings of God’s love first hand, yet still remain unmoved, continuing down our own self-centered paths, isolated and lost.  In both cases, we remain in a mindset of scarcity, with the anxiety that goes with it.   Jesus’ message is clear: My kingdom is one of abundance, where your life is full to the degree that you have faith in my Love.  If you ask for one loaf with child-like faith, I will give it to you…and thousands more.

– Mark & Maggie Banga

Comboni Lay Missionaries serving in Awassa, Ethiopia

The synonymous of “today” is “present”

by

hoje

What is the force that sustains us? Where comes the hope to continue dreaming?, to resist and seek a more human and happy society, fraternal for all? What moves us are the dreams of the reality we want, a reality that does not include situations of injustice imposed by social and economic inequalities. A reality that becomes what we want if we transform it, through our efforts, with our senses, with our choices. We can and must be builders of our personal and collective destiny, our creative freedom. Our passion and our faith gain strength when they are in direct contact with the victims of violence and injustice against the sacred and fundamental rights called human rights. Signs and resurrections are born from ourselves, from the union and strength of social movements that come from below, from civil and organized society… us! We can rain Justice, fertilize the soil and get the fruits to be born. It is possible, because we want to, we believe, we fight, we build. Fatigue, disappointment, discouragement, fear becomes a giant shadow if we allow it, but becomes small and insignificant if we stick together, if one fight is the fight of all. Among the strongest evils is the absolute indifference, is the one that dominates our daily life, a kind of blindness in the world that causes people to live in a bubble, blind and sterile, unable to hear the heartbeat of the world, forgetting in this beating is also ours. We are the world, history is ours, no one feels excluded, in the words of a song by De Gregori, We are writing history! We are part of an alphabet that is able to write wonderful things, if we choose it. Courage, dreams, hopes, dignity, freedom, justice, respect, imagination, fraternity … so many feathers with which to start writing, where we are the blank paper where start doing it.

Emma. CLM

Love is a rope that leads you to the top…

by

CuerdaBeautiful, is truly beautiful the catechesis I am doing with the prisoners. It has just started, but it is doing well and every time I go deeply in love, in fact, we are all passionate. It is a time of sharing, searching the depths of the soul.

This desire to be on the way to understand … to understand each other … to meet God.

We walked with stones in the heart, hard, heavy; we gradually try to scratch them, to make them small as pebbles, which can be removed from the shoe. Up to now, there are six prisoners who are part of the group and that is good, because the smaller group the easiest is to speak because of the intimacy that is created to say the important and difficult things in life. I am also very happy to have the opportunity to be among them without iron bars or divisions, sitting in a circle, in a space that helps to have proximity. It is important to be close, eye contact, listen carefully, take their hand to pray and finally embrace to say THANK YOU. It takes an hour and a half or so. I forget being in a prison, I don´t remember the red uniform they wear. I forget the noise of the other prisoners. We are so immersed in the depth of what is shared which could apparently be the title of a book by Virginia Woolf: “our own room” and it is in fact a space just for them, a space for us. I like a path that works human recovery and self-discovery, leading to a personal growth inside and this applies not only for them but also to me. It is an exchange, a give and take as the dear old but still relevant Paulo Freire said: “no one teaches anyone, everyone learns from everybody”. We can learn from every person, also from prisoners and their stories, and I am grateful.

Emma, ​​CLM.