We continue this series with Fr. Antonio Guirao Casanova, Comboni priest and missionary, who has been twenty-three years in Kenya. On this occasion, he tells us about his approach and coexistence with the semi-nomadic tribe of the Pokots. During that time, he has carried out essential work in the field of education in both rural and urban areas in the capital, Nairobi. (Interview in Spanish)
We share a series of videos recorded by “Casa África” in Spain. An initiative of this institution that aims to be a tribute to all those who made Africa the center of their lives.
“Many Spaniards have lived most of their lives in, by and for Africa. Given the advanced age of many of them, the memory of their experiences could be lost. That is why the Memory Project was born, with the sole intention of collecting and safeguarding their experiences, their contributions, their personal and professional triumphs and failures, offering a historical and documentary window that allows us to know what Africa was like half a century ago, something that can help us understand its current situation”.
We will recover some of the interviews with Comboni Missionaries.
We will recover some of the interviews with Comboni Missionaries. We begin this series with the interview of Comboni Bishop Jesús Ruiz who for so long has worked and continues to work with the CLM (now Bishop in Central African Republic in the diocese of our international community of Mongoumba). [Video in Spanish]
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
Source: Vatican news
The Center for Rural Innovation and Agroecological Development (Ciranda), offers theoretical and technical training in agroecology to 70 families in the city of Açailândia as an economic alternative to the region’s mining and agrobusiness chain, which is located right in the middle of the “Estrada de Ferro Carajás” (EFC) railroad. According to coordinator Xoán Couto, the Brazilian project is inspired by Laudato si’ because it follows the same path that unites faith and science in “response to the needs of communities, also taking into consideration traditional knowledge.”
Andressa Collet – Vatican City
The Ciranda is part of the cultural heritage of most Brazilian children. It is a song with a dance in a circle reminiscent of the wives of fishermen in the northeast of the country who sang while waiting for their husbands to return from the sea. It is a community dance, always awaiting “the other”, just like a project developed in the city of Açailândia, in the state of Maranhão, in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon.
A development project since 2018, Ciranda – an acronym for the Center for Rural Innovation and Agroecological Development – has bet its efforts on agroecology as an economic alternative to the mining industry and agribusiness in the region, located right in the middle of the “Estrada de Ferro Carajás” (EFC) railroad, which connects the largest open-pit iron mine in the world, in Carajás, southeastern Pará, to the Port of Ponta da Madeira, in São Luís, Maranhão.
Integral ecology thus emerges as a concrete possibility so families do not have to depend only on mining, but are able to safeguard the local economy, generating income at home with less impact on the environment. Ciranda’s coordinator, Xoán Carlos Sanches Couto, a Combonian lay missionary, explains the relationship with our common home, which can be adapted to the reality of each person: “Ciranda promotes the right technologies for family farming and farmers. Here we test and apply technologies and forms of production that are appropriately adapted to the property size of farming families, their knowledge, the workforce they have among their families, and the environment we have in this region.”
Agroecology inspired by Laudato si’
Xoán is a Spanish agronomist who has been in Brazil for 20 years working with families in the Amazon region of Maranhão. In the beginning, he created the “Casa Família Rural,” a type of community agricultural school to help improve the lives and education of rural youth. Today, together with Ciranda, he runs two projects that help 70 families in the region with theoretical and technical training.
In the courses offered, the children of farmers learn to familiarize themselves with ways of growing agroecological crops with the possibility of producing them on their own properties. These are technologies suitable for family farming that, once learned in school, are passed on to families and communities offering an ongoing series of incentives not to leave the rural environment. This is one of the prime examples coming out of Brazil, an initiative that does not solve global problems, but confirms “that men and women are still capable of intervening positively” to help improve the environment (Pope Francis, Laudato si’, 58).
The idea of working in agroecology, says Xoán, “is very much inspired by the Laudato si’ Encyclical. It is a crossroads of science and faith, which seeks the best that science has discovered to explain the environmental crisis, to provide answers with faith, but also with a scientific foundation. The Ciranda Center also takes the same approach. We use scientific knowledge, we have partnerships with research institutes and universities, but at the same time our response is based on the needs of communities with respect to traditional knowledge as well.”
Xoán gives examples of the techniques taught, ranging from green building, a traditional form of construction widely practiced in the region with clay and tiles made of recycled materials, to biogas production and rainwater harvesting with cisterns. But poultry, fish and beekeeping are also practiced; pigs are raised outdoors and agroforestry systems are promoted through planting of wood and fruit trees, as well as annual crops that are the residents’ food staples, “such as corn, beans, cassava. All this is planted together in a form called polyculture, where there is no monoculture and one species supports the other, so you have a balanced environment: it is very unlikely that a pest or insect will attack and cause economic damage. So this is a way to take inspiration from nature that also has a scientific foundation.”
Ciranda’s challenges: from fires to agribusiness
Despite the positive outcomes, there are challenges, like the fires that come from neighboring properties. Xoán says that in all, they manage to save the permanent crops, but their other efforts in areas like ecological grazing and forest reserves are often severely damaged by the fires. This has been in the case in the last two years: “this is a challenge that makes us think about how to overcome this problem in the coming years by building forest barriers that are less susceptible to fire. Even so, the results are already promising: we see in the families an enthusiasm and willingness to continue working the land, knowing that this is a mission to provide food for humanity and this can be done while preserving our common home, without damaging the environment”.
Cooperation with nature is already very present in the lives of most farmers. Yet not everyone has this awareness, because agrobusiness is very present at the local level, “transforming economies, landscapes and mentalities.” As the Pope writes in Laudato si’ (54), “economic interests easily end up trumping the common good” and “any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions.”
Xoán is fully aware of how Ciranda is an experience that “profoundly contradicts the notions of the capitalist market, where those who have more and those who make more money are worth more.” For this reason, he explains, many times “families tend to be ridiculed or dismissed, by saying that their approach does not work and this cannot feed humanity. But we already have several research studies that show how, for example, one hectare of agroforestry, which is the method we work with – the agroforestry system, is more productive than one hectare of soy monoculture. This is not only in monetary terms, but also in ecological terms. So, dismantling this ‘money mentality’ is one of the challenges we have and will be working on in the coming years.”
*Photos and video produced before the last steps were taken to address the Covid-19 emergency
Ethiopia is a country very different from the rest, in many aspects. Among them, its own calendar, both civil and religious. Christians follow the Orthodox calendar (both Orthodox and Catholics), in which Holy Week began yesterday, Sunday, April 25 (day 17 of the month Miaziah for Ethiopians).
In these days we have been in Lent, a period characterized by fasting and by the personal and voluntary commitment to abstinence in order to rethink our way of life.
However, our people have been suffering from forced fasting for weeks now. Since the conflict became radicalized and negotiations to reach a peace agreement in our region broke down, thousands of families of all ethnicities had to leave their homes, and it was then that this imposed period of true penance and abstinence began.
Abstinence from food, because they fled with the clothes on their backs, thinking that it would be temporary; and they spent days, if not weeks, without being able to enter any village, wandering through the forests, without eating for long periods, in order to feed the babies and the youngest children with what little they had. This forced fasting has kept them with hardly any strength for more than a week, and malnutrition has surfaced, as well as related health problems.
Abstinence from shelter, because they did not even have time to find something to cover themselves with. No blankets to protect them from the cold and humid night in the forests, nor from the suffocating heat of the days in the sun. Moreover, forced to sleep on the ground, with nothing to rest on and nothing to cover them; exposed to all kinds of animals and insects, especially the mosquito, which has wreaked havoc, leading to a major resurgence of malaria, which is now manifesting itself.
Abstinence from health, since the aforementioned situations, as well as stress, worry, fear and anguish are causing the flourishing of all kinds of physical illnesses, as well as worsening psychological health, especially of the most vulnerable. Hopelessness has a negative effect that I could not even imagine, and that also materializes in the body.
They are not only exposed to inclement weather, but also to attacks from the militias of different ethnic groups, from those who, out of desperation, are engaged in looting, from those who want to profit from the conflict. Life is so fragile in this situation that it seems to have lost all its value.
Tomorrow the Holy Week will begin with Palm Sunday. With the absence of almost all of our people, with the uncertainty of whether we will see many of them again, and with the suffering that is taking root in our hearts. The Passion and Death of Jesus makes more sense than ever at this time when, for hundreds or thousands of people, every day is a Calvary.
For this reason, the Last Supper has to regain its full meaning, when Jesus, before beginning, began to serve his own and washed their feet, a gesture understood in his time as a humiliation of the one who must revere the one who is above him. However, He gave it a new meaning, staging one of the greatest works of mercy that exists: let our faith in God serve us to seek to serve and not to be served. We cannot remain impassive before the suffering of our brothers and sisters. May the suffering of our people (understood from the universal fraternity) not be alien to us, but “neighbor”.
From our mission in Gilgel Beles, from the beginning we opened our doors to the thousands of refugees in the forests around our area. With the limited means we had, searching even under the stones, and with the collaboration of our diocese in Ethiopia, as well as of the local government ( little collaboration due to the number of needs) we tried to alleviate the little we could reach, focusing mainly on the most vulnerable.
For the sick and the pregnant women we set up an emergency medical post, which is always overwhelmed by the numerous cases of malaria, typhus and typhoid, serious skin problems, pneumonia, severe malnutrition, etc. For the children we set up a daily canteen, which unfortunately is almost always overwhelmed by the needs.
The means are insufficient, the forces weaken, the number of people arriving daily increases, the needs multiply, the days go by and the situations deteriorate. But at the end of the day, when our hope is about to be exceeded, we realize that all the children have received at least one meal, the sick have been medicated and at least recognized, the women have received care, and the distribution of clothes and means to protect themselves has been completed. Where there was no food for all, it arrived, and where there was no plan, the solution emerged.
As St. Augustine said, “work as if everything depended on you, trust as if everything depended on God”. These simple day-to-day miracles are what make me recognize that in spite of the fact that we are so foolish as to spoil His work, God continues to take care of us and protect us, especially when nothing is left, “God alone is enough”.
With this bittersweet feeling of confidence on the one hand, and of discouragement for the situation on the other, we begin Holy Week, with our eyes always fixed on the Resurrection, that is, on the confirmation that in spite of everything, goodness and forgiveness must always have the last word. And it is difficult to believe it with what people are living, but was the resurrection expected?
Because, if these “unexpected miracles of everyday life” are not a sign that there is a God who overflows with Love, “may God come and see”.
David Aguilera Perez, Comboni Lay Missionary in Ethiopia
