Dear Friends of Africa,                                                  August 2014

On one of my home leaves during a family gathering, one of my little grandnieces asked me“Are you my Uncle Jack from Africa?” and I replied readily, ”Yes, Bessie I am your Uncle Jack from Africa”. And she then came back with the snappy little question,“Then why aren‘t you black?” This caught me a little off balance and I told her that this takes a long time and that I was doing my best and starting on the inside first. This sort of coincides with the remarks of some of my parishioners who say of me that Father Damian is white on the outside but he is black on the inside especially his heart. So there are two conflicting opinions which time will sort out.

I went to Africa when it was still known as Tanganyika in 1960, a year before independence which came in December 1961. To tell the truth I was a rather reluctant missionary. After 7 years of seminary training and the novitiate in a Benedictine Abbey I had come to love the monastic life and saw myself settling down to a life of Ora et Labora, meaning prayer and work in a monastery. It was a bit of a dilemma for me to become a member of a monastic community which also was engaged in foreign mission work in Asia and Africa. So I resorted to a mental accommodation to this dilemma by leaving it up to the Lord and my vow of obedience. If I were sent by the superiors then I would of course go to the missions, but I resolved that I would not ask or volunteer for that kind of work. In July of 1959 while I was studying in Wurzburg, Germany I received a letter from my Abbot of St Paul’s Abbey in Newton, New Jersey, that I would report to my assignment at the mission station of Namupa in November of 1960. So my vow of obedience put me on the list of missionaries going that year to Africa. Now after 54 years in Africa I see what the Lord had in store for me and also what He wanted of me.

My first assignment and the first five years of my mission career were spent in a boarding school for catholic boys who were being trained for the priesthood. Few would ever get that far but it was one of the best ways for a village boy to get a good education and the priests in charge were under no illusions about this. It was a very busy place with about 300 boys from the 5th to the 8th grades and we were putting up the buildings which would become the new high school. I had charge of the discipline, food and general good order along with the building program, a good introduction for my future life in Africa.

On one of the first days of my supervision duties, which entailed eating with the students during the noonday meal, a little boy came to my table with his spoon and began to skim off little black specks from my bowl of lintels which was the side dish that day. I assumed that these specks were bits of black pepper and I told him that I liked pepper and he needn’t remove it. Then an older boy who could speak a bit of English came over and enlightened me that we always remove the weevils from our beans when they float to the top of the bowl before eating them, so I dutifully consented to the removal.

When I did the night check I could often hear the growls of leopards and the grunts of lions on the other side of the walls and was far more concerned and frightened than the boys. When one of these night prowlers happened to climb over the wall and parade about the courtyard I was even more perturbed and would hurry to get the tracks brushed away before the boys got up to find their parade ground so invaded. The same head boy who had alerted me about getting rid of the weevils in the beans also informed me that they all knew that the animals sometimes took shortcuts through our compound but they were usually gone by morning and that I needn’t bother with the tracks anymore. These boys all came from very basic and simple village backgrounds and knew the habits and ways of the forest wildlife far better than a stranger like me.

In the 1970’s and 80’s all our mission schools were nationalized and the missionary sisters, brothers and priests were all sent on our separate ways. Many found other types of social work to continue to give a boost to the development of the country, others went home disillusioned with the dismal course of events. My own conviction was always that it was through education that we could make any kind of change and improvement for the good of the country and better the lives of the people. So with the permission of my superiors I applied to the Ministry of education as an education officer and was given the job to teach in government schools basically in the same schools which once were our own. I held this position for 14 years. As I look back on this period of my life I see it as a preparation for the task that lay before me when the new government opened the door for the missionaries to restart our own schools again.

Then in the mid-1980’s the government of Tanzania allowed mission schools to operate as they had done so for decades. Today mission schools of many denominations are operating in the country, graduating thousands of boys and girls at the secondary level. Our own schools at Mazinde Juu and Kongei are among these schools and we are not to brag but we are at the very top in our yearly academic performance. At our first graduation in 1992 fourty girls graduated and one of those girls, Sister Eveta, is now the principal of Mazinde Juu. The people of Rochester have played a great role in the success of our mission of education in Tanzania. Sister Eveta herself earned her Masters in Education at Nazareth along with 11 other Tanzanian Sisters, all sponsored by scholarships from Nazareth College and the generosity and dedication of the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester. Today Sister Eveta watches over two hundred graduates a year come on stage for their diplomas and continue their march right up to College and University. At present we have over 2000 graduates Catholic, Protestant and Muslim girls each one well equipped and motivated, we hope, to make the world a better place. Our first school event each day is our prayer together at 6 in the morning. It made me feel good one day when a Muslim girl wrote me a letter saying “I will always be thankful to Mazinde Juu for there I learned how to pray”. Today in our schools we are empowering the African women who have been degraded and pushed aside for centuries to take over the vital task of bringing the light of education to their own brothers and sisters to see a new way forward on the road to dignity, prosperity and excellence. I have high esteem for our African Sisters and also their levelheaded handling of the daily happenings in boarding school life. Last Sunday the class that led the singing and the liturgy for the day really outdid themselves with their song and drumming and the overall vitality and verve in their participation at Mass. When I commented on how pleased I was with their participation I told Sister Eveta that the Holy Spirit was well represented at the Liturgy that morning. Sister readily agreed and she added too that her promise of giving them fresh doughnuts for breakfast that day if they did well at Mass might also have had something to do with it.

At the close of every morning prayer and before the final blessing the girls all bow and meditate for a few minutes on what they have heard that morning, listen to what the Lord is saying to them and think of what they are going to take away with them for the day. I get spontaneous responses from some students and often they share with me in the form of little notes that they will leave for me in my office. Here is one of the recent ones for your own appreciation and edification.

In October of 2012 we began a crash building program to put up a dormitory and classroom-library building to cater to the flood of new applications to the school. Requests for the ordinary high school and the Advanced High School 2 year program are in excess of one thousand applicants at each level yearly. Often times we rely on angelic guidance when we sift through the entrance exam papers to make the right choices. Top performers, especially when they are orphans or children of a single mom, will always get a green light though we know the payment of school fees will be hard for them to come by or not at all. Divine intervention is then involved but for me it’s perpetual thin ice skating. Our intake standard should be 100 for each level but we rarely keep to that standard. The principal, Sister Eveta, will come with slips of paper with a girl’s name, her marks according to our exam, the family particulars, and then a big question mark. The question mark usually means we are already over booked or no prospect of payment of school fees. When I ask, “ Where will she sleep?”, the reply comes back, “We’ll find a way.” When I ask about how we’ll pay the bills, the reply comes back,”You’ll find a way, Father. Faith moves mountains”.

So to get back to October 2012. We had moved a good portion of one of the Lord’s mountains and put a lovely 2 story building on the site. The purpose: to house 100 extra students and with two new classrooms and a spacious, lofty library. I envisioned a school with an enrollment of 560 and we now house and educate 720. Late last year we were racing with the weather to put the roof on the building before the rains. That we accomplished but I had not completed the fixing of the rain gutters and down pipes. But I was not unduly concerned at this early stage of our building. The inside would be dry and we could continue our finishing jobs. Then one night as I was closing my office one of the watchmen approached me and announced that a stone wall had moved. The man relayed the message but to me this was unbelievable, just preposterous, so I remarked that he must be seeing things and I went on home. It was 10:30PM and I lay in bed, but sleepless, and could not close my eyes. “Walls can’t walk”, I kept telling myself, but sleep had fled that bedroom. I got out of bed, dressed and went back to school. I had my flashlight ready and was now prepared to inspect any walking walls. And truly it was a scene of disaster. Two days of soaking rain, and an enormous cascade of water from the roof had built up pressure behind my retaining wall and pushed it 3 to 5 feet in places and it was now snug up against the foundation and the structural wall of my new building. Now I know the meaning of heartsick – a 75 feet of retaining wall, 10 feet high, detached itself from the embankment it was supposed to retain and walked away from its job.

When the workers reported on the job the following morning I merely said, “We have a big job ahead of us.” They preceded me to the building site and stood speechless at the devastation of 75 feet of rock wall 10 feet high to tear down and replace. With a will and without a word, they set to the job and in two days they had removed the entire retaining wall and cleared away the cave in of the embankment. By day number 3 our mood had greatly improved. The masons were now reenergized and commented that the Lord had wanted to teach them a lesson in moving mountains. They said they would put the wall all back together and it would not take them the six creation days either – they did it in four. The women stone bearers were also in high spirits and I even saw one sturdy Mama bending slightly while two strapping boys struggled to place a 50pound stone on her head while she chatted away gaily on her little black Nokia cell phone.

Thank you all for your loyal support in helping us not to put stones on women’s heads, but wisdom and knowledge into girls heads so that their lives will rest on the solid rocks of patience, courage and faith.

Your’s truly, Father Damian

Dear Friends of Africa,                                                                            Mazinde Juu, Tanzania, Oct.2013

 

On November 21^st 1960 I arrived at my mission post in what was then known as Tanganyika Territory. I was transferred out of the southern province in 1972 and eventually landed in the northeastern section where I am presently working in Secondary schools for African women. I have come back to the South for a few days visit to see my old haunts and have found that much has changed over the past 40 years .Life has definitely improved for many of the families, but like the climate with the implacable sun without a drop of rain for four months, the rural life for the ordinary farm family is bitterly hard. Even the leaves on the trees have shriveled and hang like tatters from the limbs in the breeze. The Mango trees however boast over all the rest and hang their luscious fruits on long strands that seem the most improbable way to grow a fruit that can weigh half a kilo when it is fully grown. But they hang in there as the saying goes and tide many a family over the drought months with nourishment which keeps many a child alive. I recall meeting an English farm expert in the 60’s who declared that the Africans would never become real farmers until they cut down all the mango trees. His contention was that they could live on mangos for three months and really did not have to worry about putting by enough of a harvest to last them for a full year depending as they did on the mangos for their livelihood for three months of the year.

On the 21st of September we celebrated the 21st graduation ceremony of our School at Mazinde Juu. There were 88 graduates out of the 90 girls who entered their first year in January 2010. It was a particularly memorable day to have as the guest of Honor the former Student Prefect from the opening of the school in 1989. She was able to give a powerful message to the student body on what the school had to offer them for their life to come and the urgency to use every effort to make the most of the opportunity that the school was giving them now to prepare them for their life in the big world of tomorrow. The ceremony began with a formal blessing which I usually give. This was followed by a dramatic Swahili hard driving Rap kind of versifying urging the graduates to be a credit to themselves, their parents and the school. This feature of the program was done by the children from our parochial school and for me was the event of the day. Their part began with Dora, a little four year old girl from the Kindergarten, sounding off in a hall seating 600 without a mike and her voice resounding off the walls without missing a beat or a syllable. She set the pace for the following nine children who all took Dora’s lead for a flawless presentation. It was truly an electrifying performance and during the resounding applause a little first grader did impeccable cartwheels back and forth across the stage. Our parochial school is the handmaid of the parish life and we strive to give our local children every advantage they will need to make the most of what they will meet in High School. So English is the medium of instruction even in primary school and along with Swahili and the local tribal languages a child is fluent in at least three languages by finishing grade school.

I want to assure you who have been so faithful in supporting our work here in education that your sacrifices are bearing fruit and as Our Lord enjoins us; “strive for fruit that will endure.”

Sincerely,

Father Damian

March 2013

             Dear Friends of Africa,

             In the early 1980s I was recruited by the Ministry of Education to teach English in the government secondary schools. The mission schools had all been nationalized and I felt I could keep my hand in the field of education with a hope that mission schools would once again have their day in the sun. After some 14 years as a government education officer, that day seemed to dawn in 1989. The ban was lifted on mission schools. I had the support of a dynamic African Sisters Congregation, but who were totally bereft of education beyond the secondary stage. I managed to send 4 Tanzanian Sisters to Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A. for college degrees. This was the beginning of a 25-year program which produced 14 college degrees for the Tanzanian Sisters. All are now actively engaged in schools here in Africa. Sister Kathleen Milliken of the Sisters of Mercy and Sister Maura Wilson of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester were the heart and soul of this great endeavor. Their quiet unrelenting determination kept the program financed and alive for a generation and the work of our African sisters here in Africa is but an extension of their dream coming into reality.

            Here in Magamba, in the Usambara Mountains of Tanga region, we had hopes of starting a secondary school for African girls, but the barriers to the idea of educating girls were mighty. Our local Bishop expelled me from the diocese on two occasions, but for some unexplained reason the hand-carried letters never arrived. A new Bishop arrived on the scene, but the opposition from the ultra conservative tribal leaders outdid the former nay-saying Bishop. The by-law for being a girl meant tending sheep and goats, tending gardens, minding children, and getting ready to have your own babies.

Our local chief was my nemesis. At every attempt to get a school going for girls, I was thwarted by the machinations of the unholy tribal politician named angelically, Rafael. The trials to get a school started were endless and wearisome, but in the end the school, St. Mary’s Mazinde Juu, was opened in February 1989. The school opened to the joy of parents and their daughters who had been admitted. My not-so-dear friend was resigned, but not repentant. Last year I was called to the bedside of Rafael to administer the sacrament of the dying. I looked for a tear as a gesture of reconciliation – not a drop. Rafael died two days later. A shelter was set up for a Mass to be said for his burial. I presided as the resident parish priest. I did all that was required with the exception of a eulogy.

It was a relentlessly rainy afternoon. My un-dear friend had requested to be buried next to his grandmother. The hill to his grandmother’s grave was now a steep slope of slick mud. In full vestments I was now required to ascend the height, all the time pondering the perversity of Rafael with this last defiant demand. Two stalwart young men were at my right and left to assure that I would ascend the hill safely and preside at the burial of Rafael. In spite of their solicitude, I did slip and with that came all of the indignity that accompanies a fall in the mud. But, muddy and annoyed, I did arrive at the graveside and performed all the burial rites of Holy Mother the Church.

The final jab of the day from Rafael came just as I was given the shovel with which to dispatch the deceased with “dust thou art and unto dust thou shall return” prayer; there was an audible remark from one of the mourners, “Rafael got Father in the end – he fell in the mud on the way to his grave!” I briefly paused before depositing the last of the dust, now a clod of mud, and declared unceremoniously, “Yes, Rafael put Father down on his way to the burial, but Father got up again. And now Rafael goes down and we can be quite sure that he won’t be up again soon.” A rather unpriestly prayer, but I could not repress it and it got whistles and cheers of approval from our congregation.

So dear friends, the work we do is that of the Lord and the schools we build are for the good of the people and the uplifting of the young women of Africa. This work should not be put down. Thank you for your unstinting support and we do pray that you keep it up.

            Here’s a story I tell the students once a year, about my Dad. It was in the 1940’s just after the war and our Sister Kathie was a young Sister of Mercy at the time. She was stationed at St. Mary’s in Corning, NY. Visiting Sunday was the first Sunday of the month and visits were allowed for a few hours on that Sunday only. Since we were a rather large family, 14 to be exact, my Mom and Dad would select one of us by turn to accompany them on the visit to see Kathie. This time it was my turn. They had no car, as was not uncommon then, so we were on the bus to Corning to see Kathie. I was delighted. Seating being as it was on buses in those days, some rows were facing front, others along the sides of the bus with passengers facing one another. As it so happened I was sitting with my Dad facing forward. Mom was ahead of us facing the opposite side. I was on the aisle side and was a regular window-gazer, looking past my Dad at the passing scene outside. I noticed my Dad looking rather fixedly forward and with my curiosity aroused as to what he was looking at, he said to me quite calmly, “Did you ever see a woman as beautiful as your mother?” I have never forgotten that special encounter and imagine a mother of 14 children would hardly be in the Vogue magazines, but she was someone far more esteemed as his wife and the mother of his children. As you can tell I’ve never forgotten that Sunday morning on the bus to Corning and as I also told you, I retell that story to our girls at least once a year. I then tell them at the end of the story to bow their heads and put themselves in the presence of God. This all takes place at our daily morning Mass. After they have dwelt a few minutes on this particular story, I then give them all a blessing and pray that each and every one of them will experience that when they become mothers their husbands and fathers of their children will also find them more beautiful and esteemed than when they started out life together. Many of the girls are in tears when they lift up their heads – those who are orphans, those who never knew a father, those who have an abusive father – the gamut of our failures as parents weighs heavily upon these children.

          Today I received an email from a former student by the name of Anna. It was in the early days of the school 1989-1990 thereabouts…I had to go to Dar es Salaam and on my way I passed by the house of Anna who had taken our entrance exam and was on the waiting list to join our school. Just to be on the waiting list was a delayed action of joy. There was however a candidate in Dar es Salaam, the daughter of a professor who had been selected with very high marks, but no word from the parents as to whether the daughter would be coming or not. Imagine a 14-hour drive for shopping and to get a final reply as to whether or not this candidate would be coming. I got to the house the next morning, a Saturday, and with difficulty managed to rouse the late-sleeping Professor. He called out the bedroom window that they were sending their daughter to a better rated school than Mazinde Juu – thanks a lot! Back now to school and another 14-hour drive, but no stopover this time even to inform the parents of Anna that she was now on the selected list. Time for that another day, I told myself. I arrived at school at 10 o’clock at night and I was informed that I had visitors. At this hour and after such a safari! I was dejected to say the least. Going to see our midnight visitors, whom do I meet, but the girl Anna herself, her father, and their local parish priest. So Anna came to school at Mazinde Juu. She did well at school and was devastated when her father died suddenly when she was in third year. She was in dread of being sent home for lack of fees after the death of her father until I assured her that I was now the father she could turn to. Anna’s mother was turned out of the company house in which they lived where the father was a plantation supervisor. After 6 months the family was now homeless. So we found a roof for the family and Anna struggled along through secondary school. She then went on to college and a Master’s degree in law. She went into the police force, and is now in Sudan with peace-keeping police from Tanzania. Anna was one of our first graduates to go on to finish University. Anna’s younger sister, Devota, followed in her footsteps. It is such a privilege to have played a role in the lives of so many needy children.

I recall a conversation many years ago with a nun who had been active for over 50 years in the African Missions. We were sitting outside the mission compound enjoying the relief from the afternoon sun. Sister was still active in the care of pre-school children. Our conversation broke off with an explosion of shrieks and shouts from the boys and girls piling out of the school building. Sister was bemused with the bedlam that had erupted and fielded the calls of farewell and the forest of little arms that were outstretched her way for a final touch-and-go as the children raced on home down the dusty village pathways.

When the final greeting was over, Sister said to me, “I wish my arms were longer.” From the quizzical look I gave her she went on to clarify. She then said, “What I mean is that I wish I could put my arms around them all so that they would know how much I love them and want to protect them.” I now know myself what Sister was talking about. When I look out over my congregation of some 620 students during our morning prayer and during our meditation, I look out over those hundreds of bowed heads and I forget about long arms, but I do think of wings that I could spread over them all to protect them from the “slings and snares of outrageous fortune” that await them in one way or another. I take comfort that the school we provide for them and the education, with its integration of mutual respect, prayer, and spiritual values, will be the armor to bring them safely through life.

In mid-February of this year the Ministry of Education released the results of the last year’s Fourth-Year Secondary School examinations. These examinations spell out the future or the failure of the girls and boys who took the exams. The exams are a rigorous trial of what the students have done over the past four years and will open the doors to their future in the technical, practical, or academic world.

            To put it painfully brief, the results were as shocking as they were dismal. Over 60% of the children scored 0%. Others placed in a Division 4, as it is called, which means that they accumulated a few points, but which will lead them nowhere and in all practicality is also a failure. In over 4000 secondary schools, which produced more than 500,000 fourth-year graduates, less than a quarter will go anywhere. Parents and their children are blasted face-on with the frigid cold fact that they now have spent four full years of their lives, day in and day out, trudging to school with not a single iota of achievement.

            Now the recriminations come flooding across the TV and the newspapers of the scandalous show of ministerial ineptitude on a national scale. The Prime Minister himself has been called upon to look into the educational collapse and he has set up the typical titled high powered committee to look into the matter, identify the shortcomings and put forward the right solutions to rectify this national tragedy. Oddly enough, this was the same procedure that was gone through three years ago when nearly half of the candidates failed in the national examinations.

In the meantime my little parishioners swarm about me after the Sunday Masses asking what they should do, where they are to go. Amid all of the gloom however, there are rays of hope. Of the top 20 schools out of 4000 registered secondary schools in ranks of performance, 18 were Catholic schools and our school, Mazinde Juu, was number 8 out of these. Every one of our graduates will qualify for a place in a school of higher education.

            Your loyal support of Mazinde Juu and the education program for our African Sisters show brightly and clearly what can happen when the right people with the right motivation are given the tools of the trade to do the job at hand. Our thanks and prayers go out to you for reaching out to our children with a light of hope.

There is an old Chinese saying (why such wise sayings always seem to be Chinese ones is a bit of a wonder to me), however this one goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago, but if you have not done so then the best time is today.” As a matter of fact, we are now harvesting trees that we planted ourselves that proverbial 30 years ago. We have three teams of sawyers manning 10 foot pit saw blades and we are turning out on a daily average of sixty, one inch planks for flooring and furniture and two by sixes for the rafters and trusses for the roof of our new building.

            Our present building project is a two storey dormitory and classroom structure with a spacious library on the second floor. There are over 100 local men and women working on the building site and it never ceases to make me wonder when I see the results of human endeavor…moving earth all by hand and hauling the rock for the foundations and mixing the cement and laying the bricks, and then a building grows right out of the spot of ground like a potter’s creation. However out of our potter’s wheel  the creation comes  with the coordination of hundreds of hands  and the common will to see it all grow into a vibrant living edifice. It will become a place where our children will live and learn and grow from being little schoolgirls of 11 or 12 to young women of 18 or 19 with the expectations that by now they are mature enough to meet the challenges of college and later life.

            Every worker at Mazinde Juu is a local person and we have been here long enough to have the children of our former workers as the carpenters and masons doing the jobs at which their parents labored 25 and 30 years ago. Many of the workers make their salaries payable to the school straight away to cover the school fees for their daughters for the coming year.

We started in 1989 with 40 young Tanzanian women and now accept almost 100 per year with a total enrolment today of over 6oo. Our policy is still as it was in the beginning to cater especially to the local children.  As a matter of fact the Principal of Mazinde Juu today is one of that 1989 class of 40. After getting her degrees from Nazareth College in Rochester, NY some five years ago, she has brought the school to become one of the top ten performing schools in the country which boasts of some 4000 Secondary Schools today. Your contributions are keeping us operational and in the forefront of quality education for the Tanzanian women of today. May the Good Lord richly reward you.

 Sincerely

Father Damian