Peoples and Cultures – Page 2 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

On the rails of love and friendship our train travels through life. (2/3)

31 January, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

The perfume takes over our entire train. They are the ones who come to take us by the hand and guide us, as the conductors of this train. They are the ones who smile at us, as a gesture of their welcome. They are the ones who feed us and toast us. Yes, all women. Joyful, marked by the years of life and struggle, beautiful and smiling. Young and experienced. Short, long, and gray hair. The women who have passed us on this journey have shown that they are capable of embracing and fighting. To face great dragons and to stroke our heads when we turn on our feet. Eunice is one of these women. The first to welcome us to the priests’ home. Always attentive and welcoming. She marks our first contact with the women of that place. Also Dina and Maynara were in our wagon during this whole itinerary. They were the ones who prepared our way, organizing and cleaning the house of the CLM. They are the ones who welcomed us, taught us about the things of that place. They are the continuators of the struggles and celebrations of such a welcoming people. Suddenly, we were all together. The girls run among us in a game of getting closer, the young women who stare at the strangers are curious about those who come from afar, the women who open their arms and hearts to welcome us, and the ladies, the leaders who have already done, are doing, and, if necessary, will be able to do it all again.

Knowledge is something that only grows when we share it. And so it was on our mornings, sipping coffee or a mug of juice, many juices, that we shared our knowledge with Marcelo, Father Carlos, João Carlos, Valdênia, Renato, Yonná, Morgana and Father Joseph. And everything ends with a taste of wanting more, of staying in that station for a few more hours, days, lives. Learning is something unique and contagious. Those who learn begin to live with the desire to teach, to transmit, to share what they have received. But there is also teaching without words. With gestures, conversations, but mainly with attitudes. Father Silvério is one of these. He looks at the smallest, the little ones, with a sparkle in his eyes, stories to tell and a whole life to dedicate to them.

We arrived at the highest station, the “Piquiá da Conquista” station. When I saw in the distance, hidden among the açaí palm trees, mango trees and babaçu trees, those little white houses, all well organized, a distant story of a place known as the Promised Land came to mind. It was while talking to Dona Tida, in the facilities of the restaurant Sabor da Conquista, that we learned about the history and the conquest that was taking place there, in front of us, present in the lives of the people of Piquiá de Baixo. Just like the Promised Land, this story has its Moses. One of the leaders of the community who was present in all the moments and struggles of this people. But it was on the day the first brick was laid, the day Piquiá da Conquista was sighted, that Mr. Edvar passed away from respiratory complications. Yes, he was one of those who died from the pollution brought by the steel mills to Piquiá de Baixo. Dona Tida (Francisca), like Josué, leads the people through the Piquiá River, promotes meetings, discusses, listens, and organizes the people. There are 312 houses. There will be 312 families with a new place to live, far from the dragons, but not far from their flames and smoke.

Perhaps you ask why this journey. Maybe these are not your tracks. Maybe none of it makes sense to you. But I can assure you of one thing, you have a way that is uniquely yours. But I have met a man, frail in appearance, intense in look, with a life well lived. To summarize this man, Ms. Tida revealed to us a secret that only experienced people, able to hear the whisper of God, are able to tell us. She asked us: Do you know that man who has the way of God? Our glances met as if asking: we still don’t know the way of God and how will we recognize such a person. She then asks us: do you know Father Dario? Our eyes open and everyone confirms: Yes, we know Father Dario. Each one with his or her own story about the one who has “God’s way”.

To be continued…

The heart of a Portuguese

28 August, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

This is the third time I have come to Portugal. But a pilgrimage to Fatima and a city break in Porto was a completely different experience than the three months I have spent learning the language, volunteering and living with a local family.

I have been a Lay Comboni Missionary since last October. On September 12th I will be officially sent on a two-year mission to Mozambique. One of the most important stages of preparation is a language course. From May 20, I lived in the village of Duas Igrejas (the name means literally “Two Churches”, although there is only one temple there) together with Gloria and António, a married couple cooperating with the Comboni Lay Missionary movement.

Initially, I compared the Portuguese reality to the Polish one. Portugal is a country with a standard of living similar to Poland, where in the past, due to poverty and joblessness, also many people decided to emigrate. A country where many people still practice their faith; they have a figure of Lord Jesus of Our Lady of Fatima in theirs gardens. Many catholic holidays are celebrated very solemnly there; among others non-working days are Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Fr. João Pedro Martins Ribeiro, local pastor of the three parishes (due to the small number of vocations, parishes are very often combined) presents a more pessimistic picture of religiosity in the country. He says that only a small fraction of the faithful goes to confession, is aware of what they believe and adheres to moral principles. Football is a religion for many Portuguese. Then the most important for them is to eat well and their favorite team to win the game. They go to church for the most important opportunities during holidays or at a funeral, when one of your friends dies – Padre João complains.

People in Portugal are very calm and conflict-free. I have witnessed many times like someone forced right-of-way, cut the road or blocked the passage. It is never used on this occasion horn or profanity. It just slows down or waits. Someone will make a mistake on the road, but I can also forget myself or not notice someone. Why should I react nervously to the mistakes of others? Better to be calm and understanding about everything – says Augusto, the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and the working driver in the house of the daily stay, when I was a volunteer. Only once did I hear someone speaking a raised voice, I did not notice anyone drunk, I did not encounter any manifestation malice or aggression. The Portuguese are very helpful too. Repeatedly they let me leave mine a backpack in a cafe or ticket office at the station, they bought a beer or dinner when they heard that I had arrived to learn a language. It happened that when I ran to a train station late, the driver heard mine calling and waited for me to jump on the train.

I also experienced a lot of care and love from Gloria and António, who hosted me for three months at home. They took me to lessons and volunteering every day, cooked meals, took me to trips and bought a couple of language study books and two pairs of pants (after I destroyed my own, by unskillfully disinfecting the soles of shoes when entering the house). We joked that I was like them fourth, adopted, child.

Soon, as a child who still has a lot to learn, I will go to my new home in Mozambique.

I will get to know a new culture, have a new job and build new relationships. Just like in Portugal and before in Uganda, I will leave a piece of my heart there and come back gifted with pieces of hearts people that I will met there.

Bartek, Polish CLM

What is Africa for you?

25 May, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

Today we celebrate the International Day of Africa. A day to celebrate the life and hope that is contained in this great continent and its peoples.

From our ONGD Amani-Laicos Combonianos por el Sur we want to give voice to different African people by origin or heart so that they can share with us what Africa means to them.

By clicking on each image of the tree you will be able to listen to the testimony of each of the people who participate (in several languages Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, Macua, Amharic…).

Amani-Laicos Combonianos por el Sur

Maiata organizes an exhibition about the mission of volunteers in Africa

23 April, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

Cristina Sousa, 51, already has an enriching experience of two years of volunteering in the Central African Republic to show in her photos.

As a Comboni Lay Missionary, she did not want to stop recording in photos, as an amateur, a people that brought her closer to the best there is in the world. Now she is organizing, together with the Municipality of Maia, an exhibition of which we will soon have news.

Cristina Sousa is from Gueifáes, Maia (henceforth maiata), and in January 2018 she went on mission as a volunteer to the Central African Republic, to the Mongoumba region, where she knew the Pygmy people. When she returned to Portugal two years later, she felt the need to share the audiovisual records she collected throughout this time to give more visibility to the daily life of this “wonderful people”.

Cristina Sousa is a Comboni Lay Missionary and, according to her, being a missionary is a vocation, something that accompanies us inside”. Cristina affirms that to become a missionary she had to spend three years of formation. “We prepare ourselves spiritually, we wait and then we are sent,” she explains. This sending is done by the team responsible for the Laity, but for Cristina “it is something interior, where we feel that it is God who sends us”.

The missionary has been on this path for about five years and, according to her, “we do not need to go abroad to be missionaries”. The need to go out to meet “our brother”, as Cristina explains, “is something that is born and boils within us” and if this need is not nourished “we do not feel well”.

The Pygmy people are “extraordinary”.

Her first and only mission up to date has been in Central Africa, “right in the heart of Africa”, where she has shared her life with the Pygmies. According to Cristina Sousa, the Pygmies are “extraordinary and very special”. They have a humility and simplicity that “I have only experienced there”. For this reason, she considers it a “privilege to live with these people, to be welcomed, conquered and to conquer them as well”.

The Pygmies live in “sparsely populated” camps scattered throughout the jungle, and the aim of the Comboni Lay Missionaries is to help with integration in the villages. “They are almost never welcome, because they live in the forest and are quite discriminate”, Cristina explains. “They are exploited and have no access to school or hospital.” Thus, the role of the laity is to serve as a “bridge in this integration”.

Currently, thanks to the work done by missionaries like her, there are many children in school and more access to health care, but discrimination is still quite visible among the population. Cristina says that one of her biggest concerns is the fact that there are no records of these people “as people, it is almost as if they did not exist”.

In the attempt to grant some identity to these people, Cristina Sousa encountered their reality, because “they are nomads, their houses are not protected from the rain and they have no way of keeping documents in their clothes”. Thus, the existence of personal identification documents is almost impossible.

According to this Comboni Lay Missionary “the process of inculturation requires a lot of care”, because “we go with our ideals and we have to understand that they have theirs. Our main charism is to Save Africa with Africa. That is to say, to help in the formation of the African so that they can walk on their own”. Thus, the role of the laity is “to be, to witness and to transmit the Good News”. The sharing of knowledge with the African people is, according to Cristina, “quite difficult, because then we leave and they may not even have understood very well what we wanted to transmit”.

Cristina Sousa returned from the Central African Republic just on the edge of the first confinement.

When Cristina Sousa returned to Portugal in February 2020, she says it was a matter of luck that she was not “caught at the airports” because, two weeks later, the country entered its first confinement. To receive news from Africa, Cristina tries to establish contact with “Portuguese compatriots who are in the capital, priests and brothers”.

The Covid-19 pandemic is “uncontrollable in the Central African Republic”. According to Cristina, due to the lack of economic resources and the “lack of suitable places, people do not have access to tests and, therefore, the true cause of death is never known”, but “because the average life expectancy is about 40 years, the number of elderly people is extremely small and, for this reason, I believe that there Covid-19 will not be so aggressive and resistant”.

As for prevention measures, “sometimes they send me photos or videos and you see people wearing masks”. Which for her “doesn’t make much sense, because at bedtime they are all together”.

For her, talking about the covirus in these scenarios is even more difficult, among other things because there are other more serious diseases that have been killing for several years, such as malaria, Ebola and leprosy, for example, in which thousands of people die every day. “This has been going on for a long time and there is still no vaccine,” she adds.

The inequalities between developed and developing countries “are still very present” and Cristina Sousa explains that she does not understand “the lack of demonstrations on the rights of African peoples”.

Cristina would like to see more fighting for the rights of Africans.

“I see a lot of demonstrations for human rights and animal rights, but what about these people? It’s important that we take to the streets to demonstrate inequality.”

However, Cristina reflects that it’s not all bad: “Maybe we have also unbalanced these people a little bit, because we went to show them a different reality than the one they know. They live off nature, and we cannot take nature away from them”. According to her, “there is a paradox here that requires reflection”.

The Comboni Lay Missionary also says that she has seen “children die from snake bites and other simple things”. If these things had happened in the West, they would not have caused death. It is difficult to manage emotions, because one always thinks that if these people had been born somewhere else, this would not happen to them.”

During her mission, Cristina Sousa used her camera to capture the moments she spent with the Pygmy people. In an amateur way, this maiata recorded the daily life of this sui generis people with the purpose of “spreading the message that the image conveys, that is, to make this wonderful people known”. Our duty as missionaries is to bring their reality here and somehow make people a little more aware of other realities”.

Currently, Cristina Sousa is negotiating with the Municipality of Maia so that her photographs can be exhibited and shared with her community of origin. Cristina Sousa hopes to be able to share the daily life of the pygmies with her compatriots, with place and date yet to be defined.

The missionary believes that “sharing what we have and what others can give us is what develops us as people”. The exchange of experiences of different realities is, in the end, what enriches us and makes us grow”.

Visit to Amakuriat

2 December, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

Greetings to all!

I do not want to end this series on my visit to Kenya without telling you about my brief visit to West Pokot.

It was going to be a much longer trip but, due to unforeseen events that never fail to materialize, we had to cut it short and return to Nairobi. In any case, the trip was intense and interesting.

I traveled with Fr. Maciek and Bro. Cesar from the community of Amakuriat.

It was a 15-hour trip in a Land Cruiser that turned out to be a little crowded for the three of us, but that we shared joyfully.

As usual, the vehicle was loaded up to the top, as it is normal in the missions to take advantage of each trip to buy what cannot be found in the bush, both for your community and also for the other communities in the area that also need help. So, it is normal that a missionary’s car will fill up any time it goes from one place to another.

And why not, we even had time to stop for some visits along the way and deliver some messages as we did with the bishop. We did not see him because he was elsewhere, but at least we signed the guest book of the diocese.

We left at 6:00 in the morning and arrived at the mission compound at 9:00 in the evening. The truth is that for the most part the road was not too bad, but traffic slowed us down. The last few hours were on a dirt road that made us understand how, as we left problems behind us, there were many more ahead. There was an especially complicated stretch of about a half hour where it would have been nice to have a 4×4, because the rain had left the road in a sad state with pits and stones. Fortunately, it had not rained too much and the road was not blocked by some of the rivers like when it rains a lot and there is no way to enter or leave the area for hours or days.

The next day, after eating with the community, which welcomed me and made me feel at home, we visited the “business area’ of the town and, in the afternoon, some Pokot communities.

This is the community where Fr. Tomás Herreros had worked for many years. He was provincial in Spain when we were getting ready to leave for the missions, and I had listened to his witness of life among the Pokot which now I could see in person in this mission. He is most certainly well remembered and cherished and has left a great legacy among his people.

The village of Amakuriat is not unlike any other African village, with its little stores, a small hostel and some local restaurants where to eat.

To walk through the streets is a slow process because every five minutes you bump into someone who wants to greet Fr. Maciek, ask questions, exchange the time of day or agree to get together later to talk.

This parish is a possible place where we could be if some day we will have sufficient personnel to open another missionary community in Africa. And that is why it was important to see it.

In the afternoon we visited a couple of traditional Pokot villages. It is always a wonder to see how they keep their customs, their buildings and way of life. Even though there are schools in the area, a lot remains to be done. Education is the door to the future and to the development of people here that are still living as they did centuries ago. Cattle is still the main source of wealth, polygamy is still prevalent and the work of women to sustain the family is still central.

To get to the villages can be difficult, through tracks that have to be picked among the acacias and that makes us stop now and then to engage the four-wheel drive to move ahead.

We were able to visit a few villages and, as always, we were amazed by the welcoming and kindness. Whatever little they have, they share it and so they did with a coup of milk from their own cows, slightly fermented already because they have no refrigeration of any kind and keep it in a bowl. They cook on a wood fire, sleep on cow hides or on rudimentary beds, without light or drinking water, all within a corral enclosed by thorny barriers to protect themselves from hyenas. This is how they still live. Fortunately, they tell me that the area is now at peace and they no longer suffer cattle raids from the Turkana, their northern neighbors, that also used to cause death because of mutual conflicts.

The following days we visited another sector of the parish. It is a parish with three sectors that could mean eight hours between the far end of one to the other, on dirt roads and where the missionary sleeps at times in a little room next to the chapel or on the ground in a sleeping bag.

Chelopo gave us the chance to rest a while on the return trip to Nairobi. We stopped briefly with the youth group and we were overwhelmed by their initiatives. They would like to have a volleyball court: they already have the net and all they need to do is to clear the area and bring cement for the posts, then they will organize a tournament with young people from the nearby communities. They would like to take some old computers from the school’s warehouse, put them in the hall and try to learn how to use them, get together with other groups and see if they can help the community. It’s summer vacation time here and they have a lot of free time.

These are young people with a spirit of initiative and the will to do things.

We then continued our journey. Bro. Cesar took us to a town to catch a night bus for Nairobi with which to end our lighting speed trip to the North.

By 5:00 in the morning we were already in Nairobi and from the station we went to the provincial house to see a number of missionaries who were gathered there or passing through, to speak with the provincial over our experiences and to rest a while.

It was a quick visit, but a very interesting one. Who knows whether in the future there will be a CLM community in this area. For sure, it is a very beautiful mission and with many needs.

Only God knows.

Greetings,

Alberto de la Portilla, CLM