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Chapter Five:  Euphoria after the Second Vatican Council

December 1964 - December 1971

 

The Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, January - December 1965

 When I was working myself through custom and immigration at Schiphol Airport I saw from a distance that my entire family had assembled at the exit.  My sisters waved a banner with the words : Welkom thuis, Hugo. (Welcome home, Hugo.) while my parents waited in joyful anticipation, tears in their eyes. All my brothers and sisters jostled forward to show their children born during the last six years, their wives, husbands or fiancées. 

My eldest sister Toos and Chris her husband had another son, Jeroen. Jan had married Jeanne and showed me proudly their three little sons, Stef, Paul and Frans. Riet and her husband Karel had two lovely girls, Monique and Verena. Fiet en Koos had lost their first baby, Petra, after a few days but showed me a second, healthy Petra walking around. Stef had married Nel and Wim introduced me proudly to Elly. There was quiet André, a handsome young man, and Nelty and Marian, both of them lovely looking young adolescents. John seemed a real hippie with a cunning smile on his face and our youngest, Carla, was a neat secondary school girl with a joyful and easy laugh.

 Once outside in the wet cold of a Dutch winter my father drove his own car in front of the buildings with a twinkling in his beady eyes. Everybody looked healthy, happy, and prosperous. During the time I had been away ‘in the bush-bush’ Holland had changed, gas had been discovered in the north of the country and the misery of the war had become a thing of the past. Things had changed so much that I hardly could believe my eyes and it all seemed like a dream. The family had hired a small bus but I had to sit next to my father in his Renault, Dolfin. He drove it expertly to a nearby restaurant where Jan, my younger bother, had ordered coffee and cakes. It became a feast for all of us, especially for the children who ran around, chasing each other from one corner to the other. I could not distinguish my little nephews and nieces from each other. They all seem to have blond hair and happy faces. I knew that this was what my parents had hoped and struggled for all their life: to rear a healthy, well-to-do family. At the same time I looked around and felt that someone of the clan was missing. He was one of my brothers, Frans who had driven his scooter under a parking lorry during that stormy evening, some four years ago. Fortunately he had just kissed his fiancée goodbye and was the only one to be killed.

 

The first weeks after my arrival seemed one great feast during which I tried to catch up with what had happened to all of them since December 1958. Almost all appeared busy with setting up their own families. Some of the young men attended evening classes to get better qualified. Nelty and Marian worked as secretaries nearby. John and Carla were still at school.

Most of my brothers and sisters had left home but the house in the Kokosnootstraat was not empty. My mother had agreed to look after two little children, Corrie VanderKlink and Myra Korst, who came not only from broken homes, but had also been neglected by their parents and were placed during weekdays in a better home by the Ministry of Social Welfare. At weekends they were allowed to stay with either their divorced mother or divorced father. After having experienced the benefits of the African extended family the Dutch solution of removing children from their own parents did not seem to be a very good one, but how could I judge, after an absence of so many years.

 

Once the feast days had passed and the year 1965 had set in, I experienced the first reaction of what I had gone through in the north of Zambia. Everybody went back to work or to school and I felt lonely. I did not wish to upset my parents and bothers and sisters unnecessarily by talking about the recent past. The White Fathers in Boxtel seemed not to know much of what had happened. I must have suffered of what, nowadays, is called a trauma[1].

In the second week of January  Fr. Wim Boenders, the vicar general of the diocese of Abercorn, (Mbala)  phoned me from Burgakker, the White Fathers headquarters in Boxtel. Before going on leave, Bishop Fürstenberg had given him a letter, appointment me as the Director of the Catechist School in Mulilansolo. Would I be willing to accept such an important assignment?

I could hardly manage to give an answer so disturbed and startled I was.

“Give me, please, a few weeks to think it over”, I stammered. “I have hardly managed to get a good rest.”

“Go and walk on the beach “ was his simplistic reply. “You will get over your fatigue”.

 

A few days later I wrote a letter to my bishop and phoned the vicar general, Wim Boenders.

I was honoured by, and  ready to accept, this appointment in principle on the condition that I was given sufficient time to prepare myself properly and get acquainted with the recently published decrees and other documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Boenders found this request reasonable and advised me to apply for a course in Catechesis in London, organised by the Archdiocese of Westminster. It would start in September 1965. Until then he advised me to take a good a good rest.

That was easier said than done. Moreover, after my experiences in Mulanga and with all the questions, even doubts,  I had about mission work I wanted to use my time fruitfully by studies on Africa, with particular reference to the continent’s religious culture. 

One day I happened to meet Fr. Borsboom who was the parish priest of Voorburg, a prosperous commuter place near The Hague. He urgently needed an assistant as his curate, Fr. Banning, was also the chaplain to a number of secondary schools and had little time for pastoral work. Could I help him for the time being with services on Sundays and possibly with some pastoral visits to the parishioners?

I regarded this offer as god-sent and accepted it almost immediately. The ‘supply’, as it was called, gave me board and lodging in a presbytery that was near the centre of The Hague.

Among my few possessions was a book written about our founder, Cardinal Lavigerie[2]. His father had been very secular even anti-clerical.

As Bishop of Nancy Lavigerie’s main target was the reconciliation between the Church and the modern world. He envisaged the formation of what he called a doctoral clergy, composed of priests dedicated to serious research in the field of religion and related scientific disciplines so that there would be harmony between religion and science. When he was appointed to Africa and became bishop of Algiers he aimed at having a professionally competent body of priests. He had encouraged them to go to Paris to obtain degrees in Science, in Art with the possibility to proceed to a doctorate.

But how did one go about obtaining a degree in the secular world of learning? All the long studies, in preparation for the priesthood, had been ‘churchy’ not recognized by ‘the world’

It was the secondary school chaplain Fr Banning who made me aware of the existence of the Institute of Social Studies in the middle of The Hague where graduate courses were offered in English to degree students coming from the Third World. As a young lecturer of religion he challenged me to have a try at being accepted.

A few days later I cycled to the middle of The Hague, along the Houses of Parliament and reached the  Denneweg. To my surprise I noticed that the Institute was accommodated in the Royal Residence of the Queen, called  ‘Noordeinde’(Northend), a palatial dwelling with beautiful gardens and royal stables.

It was a place most Dutchmen, especially those coming from The Hague, looked up to with great reverence. Queen Juliana had preferred her rural palace in ‘Het Loo’, near Soesterberg for the rearing of her children, and had rented her Residential dwelling in The Hague to the Institute of Social Studies for a nominal sum.

 It was strange and at the same time exciting to cycle and walk around in a place where not so long ago the Royal Family had resided for many generations and where, as I was told later, Queen Juliana herself was born.

The kind Registrar referred me to a Professor named Mr. Ponsioen who had his office at the end of the corridor on the first floor. I could see on the Professor’s face that I was not welcome as I had ambled into his room without a previous appointment. Even my introduction, my African background, did not seem to make much impression.

“Your seminary studies are not recognized by the Dutch Universities, and are not regarded as adequate for post graduate studies”, he said and did not give me much chance.

“If you are of the opinion that priests, and in particular missionaries are not academically well schooled, why do you not give me a chance to become it?”, I replied and added:

 “I will myself pay for the studies”, wondering where the money would come from.

He sent me outside to wait. The place looked congenial to me and I became very determined to hang on and have my way.

After a considerable time he came back.

“I have talked with the Registrar and some of my colleagues” he said curtly, “You will be allowed to follow one of the post graduate courses as an auditor without the chance of a diploma. Payment of the first trimester is due within a week”.

And with these words he dismissed me.

It seemed like a Pyrrhic victory  but I decided to push on whatever the cost would be. I withdrew all my savings from the Bank, borrowed money from the parish-priest and accepted a small gift from the curate, the Rev. Banning, who admired my doggedness.

In the middle of January I registered as an auditor, opted for the course in Social Policy with a specialization in Community Development and joined a group of mature students who came from various countries of the world. The course would last nine months, divided into three terms and would finish at the end of September.

Like the proverbial camel I was in the tent and would not easily be forced out.

I informed my superiors in Boxtel and in Mbala, Zambia. They were surprised and wondered what I intended to do[3]. I wrote to the embryonic administration of the Corpus Christi College for Catechesis in London with the request to allow me to commence the course at a later date, some time in October 1965. They agreed after some hesitation.

 I was set for a solid one and a half years of study and research and the only possessions I had were my old bicycle and a few outdated books.

I soon got to know the lecturers and the small group of students[4]. For most of them their stay in the Netherlands was part of their in-service training, an occasion to get better qualified for their civil task at home. Most of them made good use of this bonanza of study, that was paid for by the Dutch Government as part of Development Aid.

 

The library in I.S.S. opened a whole new world for me. I soon noticed that a great deal had been written about Africa in general and Zambia in particular. I wished to have known about the existence of these books in 1958  before my departure for Zambia.

I loved the discussions around the various papers each student had to present. It was an occasion to widen one’s interest and to learn about social change, about community development in the countries of different continents. The background of the participants was very varied. Some were ‘high class’ others belonged to the senior civil service of their country. There was a son of an Anglican priest, and also a journalist of a very left wing newspaper.

I cycled each morning to the Institute from Voorburg through rain and wind, while Mrs Mbanefo, the wife of a Nigerian Lawyer at the International Court of Justice, came by car from the nearby  Hotel des Indes  and was ushered into  the palace by  her umbrella-carrying chauffeur!

The ambiance of the Institute was Socialist, if not Marxist. On the whole religion seemed not to be regarded as a possible contribution to social development. It was only mentioned as one of the ways to get to know the community.

In that period The Netherlands prided itself with a strong, well organized and highly principled Partij van de Arbeid, Labour Party, supported by one of the best think-tanks of the country and influenced by bright young men of the Nuffield College in Oxford[5]. It was whispered that even Queen Juliana was a socialist at heart and had rented her palace to the Institute for that very reason

As a son of someone who had always been a convinced member of the unions, the history of the Dutch  labour movements was not new to me[6].During my seminary days Fr. Chris O’Doherty had instilled in us a thorough knowledge of the various labour movements in Western Europe with its spill-over into places of industry like the Copperbelt of Zambia.  I made use of the occasion to study the books of Marx and his social analysis. He dreamt of a paradise on earth once capitalism had become something of the past and asked his followers to believe in this.

Well, we missionaries taught the ‘Our Father’ to the people and  prayed ‘May your Kingdom come, may your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven’. Later Liberation Theology would make grateful use of Marx’s class analysis.

The methods of accelerating change, of self help and self reliance in the local communities were not entirely new to me either as I had applied them both in Mulilansolo and  Mulanga. when  setting up new schools and  ‘outstations’ with the people.

 

During lunch I walked to my younger brother Wim and his young wife, Elly. They were married on the 5th of June of that same year but had no home or rented apartment as yet. Her father, a dental technician had his studio in a tall and narrow house along the Denneweg and had offered an unoccupied  loft to the young couple. Elly was a secretary and kindly offered to type the stencils for my position papers and essays[7]. We went sailing together and, later, in 1966, I baptized their first child, Irene, in the church of the papal Nuncio in the Parkstreet. She was not the only baptism I administered in my immediate family. During that study leave I christened Tony, the second child of Fiet & Koos, Miriam, the third child of Riet & Karel, and Marieke the first child of Stef and Nel.

Easter came and after a very short rest we started the second term. I presented myself dutifully to the Registrar for payment of my studies. To my utter surprise and joy the lady secretary told that both the second and the third term had been reimbursed by anonymous donors: “They must have regarded you as a good investment’ the registrar remarked coolly.

Things were going well. I enjoyed the first signs of a fresh spring and the lush beauty of a summer in the Netherlands. The three seasons in the north of Zambia are somewhat harsher:  windy, bleak and cold from May, hot from August and very rainy and humid from December.

Prosperity was all around me. My parents took the plane for the first time in their lives and spent a holiday in the Mediterranean. Our group of students went on outings to the Delta works in Zeeland, started after the floods in 1953 We also visited Philips in Eindhoven, and the State Coal Mines in Limburg.  In the shaft lift on our way up, Fred Phiri remarked to me that the copper mines in Zambia were better and more modern than the ones he had just seen! Little did I foresee that the Limburg mines would be closed forever soon afterwards.

The aim of the post graduate studies were to show the participants, of whom most occupied leading positions in their own country, that Social Development in the Netherlands had started from below, often in a very small and insignificant way. The major and first target of investment was people, not institutes or structures.

We continued our course uninterrupted through the months, July, August, September, the third term. This period was a combination of long hours of study in the library, discussions in the rooms, walks with my fellow students along the beach, attending various birthday parties of my big family, sermons on Sunday, and visiting the parishioners during the week in the evening.

I discovered how talented some of these families were in the parish of Voorburg. One family invited me for a concert of chamber music played by the parents and their teenaged children. Others were professional painters, most of the retired people had a hobby which they pursued to perfection. All of them were interested in the work I was doing in Africa, even if they did not know where Zambia was exactly situated. I never reached the end of list of parishioners, the parish priest had given me to visit, but I stayed longer than a pastoral visit required.

 

In the middle of all these studies I suddenly received a very important looking letter from the British Embassy in The Hague. I could hardly believe my eyes when I read that owing to my work during the Lumpa Troubles in Northern Rhodesia I was awarded Membership of the British Empire (M.B.E). Would I be willing to accept this honour?  The letter added that Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the President of the Republic of Zambia, had no objections and wished me all the best in the future.

I agreed with joy. Why would I refuse to be honoured by a country whose simple soldiers had liberated us in May 1945?

During my first 6 years in Northern Rhodesia I had come to appreciate the members of the Colonial Administration, known to me. Many of them belonged to families whose parents, even grandparents had kept the Empire going for over a century. The majority were recruited from the British universities.

Some of them had faithfully administered districts of hundreds of square miles, and stayed calmly on their posts in times of trouble.  I knew that, despite their university education, they were not highly  paid but that for many their spell in the colonial service as young men and women was the happiest of their lives. They would always remember the loyalty of their district messengers who gave them unwavering support and with whom they kept contact, even after the final return to their homeland.

 

It was also an honour for my assistants, Fr Piet VanderLinden, the brothers Joseph Mächler and Burkhard,(Johann Fischer), indeed for all the White fathers Missionaries, now working in the new nation of Zambia. I knew that my parents, my whole family would be pleased when they heard of this award.

 I phoned the embassy in The Hague and asked its secretary how many people I could invite for the occasion. She replied “As many as you like” Did she realize the full extent of a Dutch Roman Catholic family?

It became a real feast. The High Commissioner, his wife and the butlers[8] rose to the occasion when they received us, one after the other, in their residence in the Westeinde (Westend), next to the Catholic Church where the Hinfelaars had been christened for generations. Jan filmed it, the newspapers interviewed and took pictures, there were speeches by the friendly High Commissioner and by me and finally there were drinks. The waiters went round with snacks and well-filled glasses.. Some of my brothers and sisters were still young, not used to alcoholic beverages. When talking with some of the people present I saw from the corner of my eye that John, just fifteen years old, made the same mistake as I had when visiting Fred Rumsey in 1959. He accepted a glass filled with Gilbeys gin, thinking that it was water. I saw his startled face when he took the first sip. I moved slowly towards him and advised him to leave the glass on the window sill and asked for a jus d’orange.

Later I heard that I received the MBE at the same time as the famous Beatles.

 

In September we wrote our final dissertation papers and some of the students prepared for their journey home, especially those who had wives and children[9]. I was so integrated into the group and had experienced hardly any difficulty in coping with the academic requirements that I supposed the authorities had waived my status as an ‘auditor’ and would  issue me with a recognized post graduate diploma.

It was wishful thinking. Even after having successfully submitted the dissertation, Prof. Ponsioen told me bluntly that I was not to receive any recognition, any ‘piece of paper’. Inwardly I exploded bitterly but fortunately I managed to control myself and said almost ominously: “I will sit on the steps of this palace until I have a recognized diploma in my hand!”.

To make a long story short, the case came before the Senate of the Institute and it was finally decided to let me read a list of books, after which I had to undergo an ‘entry examination’. I must have been the only student in The Netherlands who was asked to sit for an entry examination after having completed successfully his studies, written all the position papers and passed his final dissertation.

It was towards the end of October, a few days before the opening of the new academic year, that an appointment was made. Fortunately Prof Ponsioen was still on holidays and a Mr Chabot took his place. He must have felt how ridiculous the situation was and after an hour of talking together he signed the paper, shook hands and wished me success in the future.

I cycled back to the presbytery in Voorburg very calmly with that secure feeling of having taken the first step into the right direction[10].

It became November. The Parish Priest asked me if I could stay on until after Christmas as the new curate would arrive only at the beginning of the New Year, 1966. It was of no use to join the Course in Religious Education in London at the end of the first term and, to be able to return, I also needed the green light of the Memisa doctors in Rotterdam. During my stay in Chilonga, after the Lumpa troubles, the German physician, Dr Feuerborn, had diagnosed a slight murmur of my heart and advised me to have a thorough medical check-up in the Netherlands. I managed to get all the necessary appointments with doctors, dentist, etc., during these months The heart specialist, Dr VanWijk , diagnosed a ventral septal defect in my heart but reassured me that it was of minor importance. I had to try and avoid heavy infections or undue stress on the heart and was given permission to return to Africa. I celebrated Christmas and the New Year with my family and the parishioners in Voorburg and finally left for London by plane on the 10^th of January. 

 

Corpus Christi, London, Jan- August 1966

When I arrived at the White Fathers in Holland Villas no 10, I was given an attic room overlooking Holland Park.

In 1966, London, swinging London was a great place to be. Great Britain was almost rid of the burden of its colonies, there had been no war for twenty years and, most important, the introduction of ‘The Pill’ had given the young, in particular the women, a freedom that had not been known before in history. The miniskirts, the hairstyles, the glorious Beatles and all sort of dances created an ambience that soon was called ‘The permissive society’. Old rules and regulations were ‘out’ and everywhere young hippies experimented with new life-styles, communes and ways of living together.

Even after the rigours of the war and the misery of the Lumpa troubles, I was young enough (32) to appreciate this sudden freedom from law and order, ready to break out of the straightjacket of society and the often so incomprehensible laws of the Roman Catholic Church.

The staff of White Fathers were very welcoming. The provincial was Fr Murphy, a handsome man who kept himself fit, jogging through Kensington and Hyde Parks. His secretary and bursar were missionaries who had worked in Ghana and longed for the day they were allowed to return. I was given a key to the main door, given all freedom of the city as long as I told them my whereabouts. There was Annie, the housekeeper, working away in the basement. She owned a fierce dog of which she was very fond. After a few days she asked me to take the brute for a walk outside in the park. I spent many an evening being dragged forward  by a gasping dog through the streets of Londen.

The buildings of the Corpus Christi College for Catechetics and Religious Education were housed in the property of the Sisters of Sion, in Chepstow villas, just beyond Notting Hill, only a walk of half an hour from Holland Villas. An African White Father from Uganda, Joseph Kamya, five years older than me, had followed the first term of the course and was very enthusiastic. We walked together to the college, and probably without realizing he kept Africa alive for me all these six months in attractive London. I met also Father Joachim Kayunge, a senior priest from my own diocese, now called Mbala, who was sent to Corpus Christi by Bishop Fürstenberg to prepare himself for future work as a chaplain and teacher of Religion in the two Secondary Schools of Chinsali.

The lecturers were all known men and women, not only in Britain but also in other parts of the world. There was Hubert Richard, in charge of the college and a lecturer of Scripture. Peter de Rosa taught brilliantly the new theology of the Sacraments, Charles Davis  taught modern ecclesiology, Fr. Someville liturgy and Enda McDonagh from Ireland lectured in moral theology.

I had missed the first term and wanted to catch up as quickly as possible. During the first weeks I not only attended all their lectures without fail but also dived into the sixteen official texts promulgated by Vatican II, the ecumenical council that had just ended, on the 8^th of December 1965. It was not easy to wade through the jargon of the Periti, the experts, who came mostly from West Europe, especially from Belgium, France, and Germany. But gradually the essence of these documents separated itself from the accidental and came to the surface as brilliant specs of gold.

I read that the Catholic Church was not an end in itself but was regarded as leaven in the dough of the secular world, a world that now was taken seriously. The church’s task was founded for the spreading of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ so that all people could share in Christ’s salvation. The Church was on earth the initial budding font of the Kingdom; The Church had a single intention : that God’s Kingdom may come and the vocation of the Christians was to be the artisans of a new humanity[11].

 

The ‘Periti and the Fathers of the Council’ had taken great steps while we were working away far away in the missionary field.  The Catholic church had finally discarded the shackles of  an inward looking  Western culture. Was it not because of the hundreds of missionaries, spread all over the world, that the Church was ready to get rid of its worn out European garb?

I read the books of Teilhard de Chardin who asked the church workers to be on their guard against pessimism and despondency that might cause them to recoil from the effort that would be required to promote this historical break-through. Any prophecy of doom, any negative thought about humanity’s future could only be an obstacle to the free flow of God’s creative energy. They had to commit themselves to positive action, to promote the evolutionary process and be more loving towards humanity.

Then there were the moving words of Gaudium et Spes:

‘The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and hoping.  We must make the reign of God a reality’[12].

 

Besides Fr Kayunge from Kayambi, and Fr  Joseph Kamya there were many other participants : nuns, lay teachers, priests, and brothers. Most of them were teachers of religious education in the reputed Catholic schools of Great Britain. Others came from abroad. There was one religious sister from Japan, her skin scarred by the radiation of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

 

One day, when starting a hymn at the beginning of the celebration of the Eucharist in the chapel of the nuns I heard a beautiful, strong and trained voice next to me taking the lead. Later I heard that the owner of that voice was Miss Esther Gordon, a lady of the Grail. That rang a bell as it made me think of my mother who had enjoyed such lovely days as member of the Grail youth movement in Holland. Esther told me that she came from Lancashire, had started professional life as a teacher of music, and had become member of the English Grail Community, based in Pinner, to the West of London, in 1961. The centre there offered frequent courses and conducted various projects in the neighbourhood. It drew many visitors from all over the country and, if I wished, I was always very welcome to visit the community. That was the beginning of a friendship and an ongoing contact with members of The Grail for the rest of my life. 

The lecturers were excellent and the atmosphere filled with joy. It felt like the beginning of a new era. There was one snag, something that seemed like a ‘virus’ among the participants.

It was also a period during which many priests, nuns, brothers would leave and decide to choose another vocation[13]. Most of the well known lecturers of the Corpus Christi Institute would eventually leave the priesthood, people like Hubert Richards, Peter de Rosa, and Charles Davis[14]. During that first year of its existence, the Institute had indeed its teething troubles

 

Cardinal John Heenan, the archbishop of Westminster at that time, agreed to bless and officially open the Corpus Christi College. When I, the only Dutch student, was introduced to him during the reception, he could not keep back some scathing remarks about “what was going on in the Catholic Church in Holland”. To be honest, I had no clue what we was talking about, as I had been away from my home country for six years.

The Catholic Church in the Netherlands experienced remarkable developments in the years after the Vatican Council with the help of some eminent theologians[15]. I had little time to interest myself in what was going on in my country of birth and prepared myself for the task of Director of the Catechist Centre in far away Mulilansolo[16]. I did not expect that these developments and tensions would eventually catch up on all of us, even far away in the bush of Africa.

The Course catered for periods of  practical teaching of Religion in the Schools of London. At first I was farmed out to a private secondary school of very well behaved girls somewhere along Cromwell Road. I often ended up telling stories about Africa, like any seasoned missionary. Later I was asked to help a White Father confrere, to prepare the Catholics, boys and girls, of a Junior Secondary school in Paddington for their Confirmation. Most of them came from the Caribbean, with some girls from Ireland and Poland. They were on the threshold of leaving school forever and entering the world of employment.

It was heavy going. When I entered for the first time I was greeted with minutes of sharp screaming and shouting and I only managed to get them interested with pictures, slides and stories. It became a veritable challenge to get through a session undisturbed for half an hour. It made me homesick for my cultured Zambians who were always so well behaved and happy to be at school.

Some of the  pupils had recently arrived with their parents from Barbedos, and other islands in the sun and I wondered what their parents came to do in dark and rainy London. One day I talked about it with my confreres in Holland Villas Road. They suggested to me to take these juniors out for a day to the beautiful White Fathers’property of Broomehall, near Dorking where I had stayed in 1957, a few days before traveling to the borders in Scotland. This idea set everybody in motion. The headmaster fixed a date, ordered and paid for the coach, the parents gave plenty of food, drinks and sweets, a female teacher offered voluntarily to accompany me and before I knew we were on our way towards Dorking. It became a terrific success. With my experience of keeping the kids of the inner city of The Hague pleasantly occupied during the holidays  and with the help of the confreres at Broomehall  we played, swum, played football and organised  a competition in simple athletics until late in the day. We went home singing all the way and delivered them safely back into the arms of their parents. From then onwards I could not do anything wrong any more and at the end of the course, all of them received confirmation very devoutly and with a twinkle in their eyes.

Later, when I was on my way back to The Hague and popped into a supermarket  I met one of them behind the till waving enthusiastically. “We had a lovely time”, she said. I laughed gratefully but could not help remembering their piercing screams at the beginning of the course.

Academically studies at Corpus Christi were more relaxed than in The Hague. I had come from the theologically creative Holland, one thought and was even asked to give a small lecture by a Sr. Romana to a group of teachers during the weekend. I managed quite well and evoked a good discussion but I also remember being distracted by a line of young female teachers on the first row with their  short miniskirts. “Do they think we are made of stone  ” I wondered.

Father Tom Tye, the secretary of the Provincial asked me if I was willing to ‘do some ‘supplies’ . It meant helping parish priests during the weekends to give them a bit of a holiday from time to time. “All the income will be yours for the missions” he said[17].

My first assignment was in Ashford in Surrey near Heathrow airport. People came to Mass faithfully as at that time they still regarded it as a weekly duty. After Mass a probation officer, took me in his car to the nearby remand prison, called a Borstal, to celebrate a Mass for young delinquents. I was appalled by the starkness of the place and the unpleasant stench of urine during ‘slopping’. After a sober meal I stayed on an hour to talk with the young boys, many of them picked up by the police during riotous binge drinking. One young man asked for a private appointment during which he expressed his fear to be condemned for rape. “She pulled me inside when I was delivering milk “ he cried. I mentioned this to the probation officer who advised me not to be sentimental and not to get involved. But later in the year he told me that the young man had been discharged from a serious accusation of rape as it had been proved that the behaviour of that housewife had been indeed very dubious, to say the least.   

I decided to spend all my stipendiums on visits to theatres, cinema, museums, exhibitions and displays. By then another Dutchman had joined me at Holland Villas. He was Fr Frans Meddens, a secular priest from the diocese of Limburg who was on his way to Ghana as a so called Fidei Donum priest and came to the U.K. to brush up his English[18]. He was a lover of the films of Felini and during his short stay we saw most of his films.

Spring came and the parks, the lungs of London, became beautiful. During the Easter recess in April my confrere and friend, Pat Menzies, with whom we had worked so wonderfully well in the Mulanga refugee camp, invited me to his family in Glasgow. I took a very cheap students’ return ticket by plane and met up with him within a few hours. He had just returned from his first stay in Zambia during which he had effortlessly learned two different languages, Bemba and Mambwe. 

I proposed to Pat to hire a car, share expenses and make a trip through the Highlands. It became a holiday I will never forget. Spring had not yet come and on some of the high hills and mountains there was still snow, on the slopes on which people skied We slept in attractive B&B accommodations where one became part of the family within a few hours. They invited us to sit around the open fire and made us talk. Within a sort time they had found out that we were missionaries who worked in Africa. I was surprised how many of the owners had been overseas before they settled down in Scotland.  

During his driving Pat talked about the history of Scotland, showed me the battlefields where the Scottish clans had fought either each other or the English. We even went to the castle of his own clan, Castle Menzies. It was uninhabited and in a bad state; we almost fell through the rotten planks on the first floor. But it was romantic, even moving, as it seemed that most of the battles had been lost and Scotland became dispossessed by the English Lords. We went as far as Aberdeen where we met Maureen Higgins, the girl guide friend of my sister Fiet. She was soon to marry John O’Donoghue.

All the time Pat interwove his narrative with events from his own life. As a small boy he had been surrounded by his sisters and escaped from their motherly concern to play football with the boys as often as possible. Joining other boys in the junior seminary in the South of England in view of going to Africa had been very attractive. The life in St Bishops Waltham, near Southampton, where the White Fathers seminary was situated and where there was plenty of sport, especially football, seemed a welcome escape. The years in the seminary had flown by but when he grew up and became a young man, he began to have misgivings. He spoke about these to the superior but he waved them aside. Even his mother had expressed doubt about him ‘having a vocation’ “He is my only son” she complained.  But the British Provincial had told her sternly “not to stand in the way of God”.

As has been seen, during the novitiate in The Netherlands he developed stomach ulcers but, again, was encouraged to continue. After the final oath and his ordination he was asked to work in ‘propaganda’. It meant traveling around making the work of the missionaries known in the parishes, soliciting funds and trying to get more vocations for the Society of the White Fathers.

In 1962 he was sent to Northern Rhodesia, a relatively modern country on the brink of attaining Independence. Unemployed young men roamed around everywhere, burning bridges, schools and cutting trees as obstacles on the road. After his Bemba language course in Ilondola he was asked to stay there and somehow get the youth ‘off the street’. Within a couple of months he had organized football competitions, opened a welfare club in one of the abandoned mission buildings and started a rural Cooperative Society. From destructive hooligans the balumendo, the young men in Chinsali become trained cadres of the local party. Some of the officials of the interim government of Dr Kaunda noticed his capacities and asked Bishop Fürstenberg  to make him free for leadership in the big youth camps that were being established around Independence. The Bishop refused and instead took him away to appoint him to Mambwe, in the north, near Abercorn, where he had to learn another language. Within a short time he had grasped the rudiments of the language, organized the youth and initiated a Domestic Science school for girls.

Some of the older priests had their misgivings.

“Did he say his breviary regularly?”, they wondered. “Why was he often late for lunch? Why did he not go on tour and conduct mafundisho, religious instructions in the outstations?  Was is youth work really missionary or was he rather a social worker?”

When even the kind Regional, Fr Oger, advised him to leave social work among the youth and focus himself on the proven routine of parish work and regular safaris to the outstations, Pat started to have doubts about his future in the diocese of Abercorn even his future as a White Father missionary in Africa. Despite feeling well, he became restless. Was he to spend his whole life in the bush? Why did the bishop and the regional refuse the request of the District Commissioner to have him, as a modern missionary, work in the youth camps that were being established all over the northern province? Pat had noticed that special assignments were given to those missionaries who had a strong financial clout, rather than expertise or training. It was one of the weaknesses, a fault line that run through the entire Society of the White Fathers whose members did not profess the vow of poverty and kept the right to decide themselves how to spend their so called ‘personal’ money[19].

I advised him to do what I had done: follow a secular, recognized post-graduate course and give himself the time to reflect on the next step in life.  Later, after I had left for Africa, he was offered a post-graduate course in Social Work in London and applied for a bursary and financial support from Edinburgh and from a Canadian Trust. Both of them agreed and Pat settled in London for a period of study, social work an reflection.

 

One rainy and somber day I could not believe my ears when I received a local phone call and was greeted in Bemba,

  “Mwapoleni, BaFather, muli shani ?, Good day , Father, how are you?”

 It was the voice of the young girl, Lombe Chibesakunda, who in 1963 had offered me a meal of delicious mushrooms in the capital of her father, chief Chibesakunda. The new country, Zambia, needed local lawyers and after having completed her secondary studies with excellent results, she received a bursary to study law in London. She was not the only one of her family. Her brother, Mwelwa Francis and his wife Emma had come with their first child, for similar studies and another brother, Kenneth was in London for a course in Communications. This young and joyful group of young Zambians  made the rest of my stay in rainy London much lighter. I visited them in their digs in Hammersmith and Chalk farm, played with their small baby, Chisanga, and enjoyed a traditional meal of sweet potatoes, chicken and groundnuts with them, brought in straight from their parents in Chinsali We all agreed that these fresh products tasted much better than the food in London![20].    

A White Father on leave, Tom Kingseller asked me whether I was prepared to take over the parish of his brother, near Kew Gardens Both wanted to go for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Rome. The small parish church was situated in a posh and beautiful area of West London, a good place to write my final paper for the College during early summer. Father Kingseller was a stout and well built person with a lively Irish housekeeper who cooked excellent meals. When she saw me so skinny, she almost collapsed of pity and made the resolution to fatten me before my return the ‘the missions’ Breakfast consisted of heaps of toast, bacon and eggs, black pudding, onions and mushrooms. Even the sight of it made me almost sick. I tried my best but to the great misery of Sheila I left almost everything untouched. When I came back in the evening she had prepared another huge meal. To humour her, I had skipped lunch so as to work up an Irish appetite.

When I did not too badly, she sighed of utter relief. Later in the evening we both looked at black and white cowboy films on her small T.V.

 “They are always so clean” she said contently, “and the goodies always win”.

My parents booked a weekend in one of the hotels in London and came to visit me. It happened to be a Sunday during which I did not need to preach as a Father Eamon Casey, in charge of housing for catholic families, came to appeal for funds. He was a very handsome, affable man and, despite my mother hardly knowing a word of English, they got on with each other like a house on fire.

 “What a beautiful and kind man” she sighed, after he had taken his leave. We were not aware that later, as a Bishop, he would cause such scandal to so many people.

After I had written the prescribed dissertation, I was interviewed by Fr. Peter de Rosa and consequently  awarded a diploma in Religious Education and Catechesis. I was of the same age and vintage and he  had been in the same class of the secondary school as my confrere, Brian Garvey[21].

 

I left the U.K. on the 3^rd of July 1966, and waved goodbye at Schiphol to my extended family exactly a month later. I remembering carrying Irene, the first child of  Elly and Wim in my arms, but she insisted to walk in between us. “Stappen”, she said “Ik will stappen!” (I want to walk!)

This time the Raptim plane flew straight to Kampala, in Uganda. When we heaved up into the gray clouds of rainy Holland, I sighed with contentment. All that I planned to do after my ‘Lumpa experience’ had been done and I looked into the future with confidence.

 We arrived in Kampala late in the night and it took custom and immigration hours to let us through to the hotels for a short sleep. It was past 2 a.m when I was finally shown a room. The Raptim agent promised me to wake me up at 5a.m. to catch the connection to Ndola at 6, 30 a.m.  I fell into a deep sleep and woke up at 7.a.m after the plane had left.

The agent was very apologetic when she told me I had to wait a full week for the next plane. It became an occasion to see Uganda: Father Robert Gay took me around to various missions and to the shrines of the Martyrs of Uganda.

I flew to Mwanza in Tanzania, near Lake Victoria on the 11^th of August, where I met my classmate Wim Settels and my teacher of the junior seminary, Frits Muller. They took me to see the Pastoral Centre at Bukumbi, started by Mgr Jan Blomjous. He was an internationally well-known bishop who was very active after Vatican II[22].   One felt the atmosphere of the aggiornamento among the staff. On the 15^th August, a small Dakota took me to Mbeya where I was received very kindly but told that there was no connection by plane to Mbala in Zambia. I got myself a coach ticket to Tunduma, and reached it in old vehicle without window panes on the 19^th.  We arrived late in the evening at the border and found it closed. I slept fitfully in the coach and walked next morning over the border into Zambia without much difficulty.

How happy I was to see the Zambian flag and to be able to speak Bemba again. The Zambian bus took me to the Headquarters in Mbala on that same day and finally arrived on the 20^th of August after 17 days of interesting travel.

There I present myself dusty, sticky and tired to the bishop who looked at me in surprise and said:

 “ Oh, there you are. Have you finally come back?”

After a few days of rest he showed me the files, documents and applications for funds that concerned the Catechist Training Centre and took me personally in his Mercedes to Mulilansolo on the 6^th of September[23]. The superior of the mission,  Father Patrick Boyd, welcoming me with a big smile, followed by Fr. Alfons Rau, the outgoing director of the Catechist training Centre.

I had come back to the place where I started as a young, inexperienced missionary, in 1959.and was eager to show what I had learned during my absence from late December 1964.

 

The Lumpa church hade remained banned and all its surviving adherents had trekked away far into the Congo (Zaire)’ Lenshina herself was restricted in Kalabo near the Angolan border[24]. During his reign from 1964 to 1991 Dr Kaunda never repealed the state of emergency, imposed on the young nation during the Lumpa troubles. There had been a commission of inquiry that laid part of the blame on the shoulders of the mutually competing Christian missionaries who had caused division among the people. It also pointed out that some of the causes of the upheavals were labour migration, with the neglect of the rural areas and the poor plight of the women. The commission of inquiry also encouraged the main line churches to train local leaders as quickly as possible. My confrere, Jean Loup Calmettes had come to similar conclusions[25]. I decided to focus my teaching of the future Catechists on the Ecumenical approach according the directives of the Vatican Council, on Rural reconstruction with proper healthcare for women and children and the establishment of a local ministry.

 

Catechist Training School, September 1966- to October 1971[26]

(An ecumenical approach)

Due to various circumstances the academic year of the C.T.C. only started at the beginning of January, 1967 but during these heady days immediately after the Vatican Council I needn’t have to worry of being at a loose end.

After one week Father Franz Empter arrived in his small VW beetle and took me to Mansa to give a course in modern catechesis. This was organized by Fr Adrian. B. Smith and was held in the new secondary school, St. Clements. Adrian had been appointed secretary for Church Affairs at the Catholic Secretariat, an assignment that included Ecumenism, Liturgy, Biblical Apostolate and, last but not least, modern Catechesis. All the missionaries, male and female alike, had to be acquainted with the Documents of the Second Vatican Council in general and with the decrees on Religious Education in particular. It was a very attractive task as the participants were keen to learn as much as possible about modern catechesis[27].

From there we went to Mbala for the same purpose. We traveled via Makasa, near Kayambi to attend the ordination of  Fr.Paul Makasa a young secular priest. I remember how happy Paul Makasa’s family was. Their grandfather had welcomed the White fathers to Bemba country in 1895 and now they were rewarded by having a priest in the family. In Mbala the course was attended by a group of eager missionaries who contributed to the debate from the beginning until the end.

From there Adrian Smith took me to Chilubula for a meeting for the three directors in charge of the Catechist Training Centres and for some of the chaplains of religious education in the secondary schools. With the financial help of the World Bank these schools rose out of the ground in almost all Boma’s. We taught that schools were not primarily to be tools of conversion to the Catholic Church but rather places where the good message of Jesus Christ was to be attractively proclaimed.

The new teaching of Vatican II was welcomed by the missionaries and experienced as a breath of fresh wind on a hot day.

 “It was the most fascinating period of my life. We were all in a joyful mood!”,

many White Fathers would testify in later life[28].

The majority of them came from Western Europe[29]. The small contingent of local priests and some of the older teachers were far more cautious in accepting the teachings of Vatican II[30]. Some of them resisted being bullied into the new way of celebrating the Eucharist and a new theology. This dichotomy became more apparent in later years, when it became clear that the local church demanded to be given time and to handle Vatican II at their own pace.

Some of the elderly White Fathers who were not enthusiastic, and were openly against any form of change were kindly but firmly asked by their Regional to withdraw and return to their country of origin The faithful catechists, who came to the mission for in-service training were more pliant and malleable. I assisted Father Alfons Rau with the giving of refresher courses in the deaneries of the diocese of Mbala. I taught them the new hymns, showed them how to use simple visual aids and gave lessons on the new approach. It was not primarily a question of  learning the catechism by heart but rather of letting the children and adults have a taste of the Good Tidings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. In November we started to compose a new prayer book with prepared services for the Sundays when there was no priest present in the outstation.

At Christmas I re-visited my favourite outstation, Kalela in the north. I was delighted to see the people again after an absence of more than four years.

 

The new year, 1967, came and with that on the 11^th of January the opening of the Catechist School.

I expected  my predecessor, Fr Alfons Rau, to start packing his trunks and say goodbye to all of us. Nothing of it happened. One morning he called me in his office and humbly asked me if he could stay at the Catechist Training Centre for another couple of years. He would not intervene with the day to day running but help me whenever I needed it.   

In my youthful enthusiasm I bluntly said  “No”.

 He had arrived in 1933, the year I was born. He had worked very hard in difficult times during and after the war but, according to me, he had acquired an approach to people and to the apostolate that was way out of time. How would I be able to cope with him looking over my shoulder all the time, me, a youngster just 33 years old, with such revolutionary ideas?

I saw on his face that my adamant refusal came as a great blow to him. He moved away sadly, locked himself in his room and started packing. He left Zambia for Germany for good a week later, without saying goodbye or offering his car for sale to me. It was not a very blessed start[31] .

 

The Diocesan lorry arrived, packed with 15 families of trainee catechists from all the mission posts in the Diocese of Mbala. They came with their wives, and all their children. They looked tired and dusty, happy to arrive after hours of hobbling on bumpy roads. Some of the children cried, looked hungry and needed a wash. Somehow it reminded me of the refugee camp in Mulanga. But this time I was not entirely alone. Sr. Clementina Solo took charge of the wives and the children. She was a member of the local congregation of the Sisters of the Child Jesus, and lived in a convent nearby.

The Catechist Centre, built at the beginning of the 1960s, consisted of a square of 15 houses with piped water, a chapel in the middle, a classroom, an office and a food store with two silo’s filled with maize plus a diesel  driven cikayo, mill. The entire set-up was elementary but attractive and up to standard. Once the families had occupied the houses, the centre gave the impression of a lively village. I loved the sound of playing children, the chatter of the women and the deep voices of the men, greeting and getting used to one another. Most of them were of my age, if not older, mature men who had been selected after a period of probation. Half of them had already done one year of training and, as seniors, assisted me with the day-to-day running of the Centre. I felt at home, was happy ‘to be back’ and ready to teach them all of what I had learned during the previous years.

 

Once the course started, there was hardly a break or let-off. The sister and I  taught and worked for nine months with hardly any interruption, as the families of the trainees did not go home until the end of the academic year in August.  Like all people in the world who are not in their own surroundings, we had to deal with tensions, disease, homesickness, jealousies but also enjoyed the eager faces in the classroom, great evenings around the campfire and beautiful singing in the small chapel.

 I lived very near them and discovered that when the children played happily around and I heard them singing, the parents were at ease with one another. When the place was silent, there was something wrong among them. They left it to me and to the sister to discover the cause of a silence. I was used to living in a big family but, as a celibate, might not always have fully realized the extent of their marital difficulties without the support of the elders in the village.

Sr Clementina was a wise woman and when there was trouble  it was from her that I would obtain the first information. She had been ‘a late vocation’, had helped her aging parents in Katibunga mission, near Mpika, for a long time.

She was the first person to make me aware of the existence of people’s original religion, later called  African Traditional religion A.T.R. Her mother and father had never become Christian, and even near death, had refused to be baptized.

 “ I have done my best and my ancestors will be there to receive me”

had been her mother’s last words. Sr. Clementina was also the first person who explained to me the religious meaning and cultural value of some of the ‘customs,’ which were still regarded as pagan taboos by some of the expatriate missionaries.

 From Fr VanRijthoven I had learned the beauty of Bemba music, from Fr Corbeil a host of data, cultural artifacts and medicine but from the Sr. Clementina and also from Sr. Monika, the mother superior, I gradually discovered that these coutumes, customs, were related in a web of meaning.  I realized that an ecumenical dialogue with the tenets of local religiosity was not only possible but even ‘a must’[32].

 

Many learner catechists were still smarting of the pain inflicted by the Lumpa troubles. They came from their villages with horrifying reports on the cruelty of the Bena Lenshina and found it difficult to forgive them or even to accept that the opposing party, the cadres of the United National Independence Party (UNIP), had also inflicted a great deal of misery.

I  discovered among them a special veneration for a young boy, called Emmanuel Chewe. He had been a faithful altar boy and had refused to go to Kasomo, Lumpa’s headquarters, and throw away his rosary and his surplice. The people of his village, Chipilimba, near Nkula, Chinsali district, had tied him to a tree, and beaten him so badly that he had fallen in a coma. After that they all had gone to Kasomo and left him bleeding, in the middle of the village, in the hot sun. When they returned after a few days they found him near death. To avoid having a case and being apprehended by Chief Nkula, the local Lumpa deacon had taken him to a nearby jungle, killed him off with one mighty blow on his head and buried him in the mud of a small rivulet. After more than a week his corpse was discovered by some of the Christians, who wondered where their faithful mass server had gone. They were surprised to find that his body had not decomposed at all, or eaten by wild beasts or by the carnivorous soldier ants. They gave him a dignified burial and his memory and example became revered by the local people[33].

   

In the Catholic Secretariat in Lusaka Fr. Adrian Smith established contacts with the leaders of other denominations. Together they made frequent representations to the new government on such subjects as health, education, social services and matters of ethical concern. The initiators were mainly expatriates with the local church leaders finding it very difficult to follow suit.

In (South) Rhodesia Ian Smith declared unilateral Independence, (U.D.I.), and the border with the south of Africa was closed. Landlocked Zambia looked for other roads for its imports and exports. The war in Vietnam continued unabated with the price of copper soaring. It had to reach the London Metal Exchange whatever the cost. On the relatively small dirt road to the North on the way to Dar Es Salaam, huge lorries, laden with heavy ingots of copper and other metals ploughed through mud and dust. Within a short time the road became almost impassable, especially for smaller cars. The Northern Road became know as “the hell run”.

An Italian company, Snam Progretti, undertook the laying of a pipeline for oil from Dar Es Salaam to a refinery in Bwana Mkubwa, near Ndola. A Jewish surveyor, Antonio Levi, arrived one day in February 1967 and informed all of us that the pipeline would pass in front of the mission.

The people, in particular the men, received this piece of news with little interest.

 “It would be better if the pipe line brings us water or beer” they joked. ”What can we do with unrefined oil?”

Levi was a wonderful man and a keen observer of the stars. In the evenings he used his optical instrument as a telescope to watch the beautiful southern skies. He invited us to have a peep and look as stars and satellites, invisible with the naked eye[34].

 

My first year as director of the C.T.C came to an end but work continued. There were refresher courses for the catechists-in- the-field. For this purpose I went to Ilondola and to Mambwe, where I also attended the ordination of Emmanuel Chikopela.

There was another meeting of  the C.T.C. directors in Chilubula. All of us were intent on setting up new forms of church ministry. Both Fr Allain Guégeniat of the Kasama archdiocese and Fr Joe Keenan of the Monze diocese wanted to upgrade one of the centres with a fully fledged theological programme au par with the training centres of the Protestant ministers.

 

Unitl then I had no motorized transport, as I had given my motorcycle away to my friend Pat Menzies during the Lumpa troubles. With the help of the bishop, a grant from MIVA and my own personal savings, I had enough to buy a small car[35]. After the owner of the garage had licensed the brand new Toyota Corona van, he gave me the keys to drive it away from the premises.

 “I do not know how to drive a car”, I said.

He laughed, “ Normally it is the other way round” he said. People know how to drive but have no money to buy a car”.

It was October 1967.

John and Mary Hannah, with whom I had worked so well during the Lumpa episode, were now in Lusaka, living in a home near State House. They had a little son, called David who loved to play on the stoop with his small toy cars. When I gingerly drove my new car into their yard, he insisted that his father bought him a toy van, exactly like I had and called it ‘Father Hugo’s car’.

John worked for the Ministry of  Transport, in the department of Aviation. Mary had some time on her hand and gave me some driving lessons. We had a great time driving around in a city where there was little traffic at that time. Together with Adrian Smith we went for trips to Kafue and practiced on the old tar road through the villages. Everywhere we were greeted by cheering children, shouting “Learner, Learner, Learner!” I felt indeed as someone with a L plate on his back, having still so much to learn in sunny Zambia.

The new International Airport of Zambia became ready for use and was solemnly opened by Dr Kaunda. John gave me a free ticket of admission. The place was something to be proud of, very impressive, beautifully finished with plenty of place for parking. I was told that, relatively speaking, the costs had been minimal. It served the nation for a very long time.

It became November and I had to go back to Mulilansolo via the Hell Run, 900 km over a terribly potholed and ploughed up dirt road. Fortunately a confrere, Fr. Ivan Paul, came back from leave and was happy to be my co-driver. The journey took three long days during which I learned to keep my car steady over heavy corrugation, and through thick sand. Everywhere big construction companies had arrived to build the tarmac road as quickly as possible[36].

When I finally reached Kasama, it was Saturday afternoon. The only traffic officer who had been authorized to issue driving licenses was having a cool beer on the patio in front of his house. His name was Johnny Green, who combined work in his garage and flying a small plane with his task as traffic officer. He welcomed me with joy, offered me a beer but seemed disinclined to heave himself out of his chair and  supervise a driving test.

 “Did you drive all the way from Lusaka over the hell-run? ” he asked.

 “Yes” I replied, “ together with my confrere”

”Drive your car backwards out of my yard, close half of the gate and drive back”, he said.

 

I got my driving license, ready and certified on that hot Saturday afternoon. When I took the road to Mulilansolo via Malole, and then over the long embankment through the Chambeshi flats to reach the Chambeshi pontoon in Mbesuma,  a couple of women with their babies asked me for a lift. I drove very carefully, fully aware of the responsibility one has as the owner of an open ‘bakkie’[37].

I was one of the few who owned a car in the mission and its surroundings.  Soon I was called upon to assist people with lifts, and the transport of goods

 

At the beginning of 1968, 8 new families arrived and joined the seven of the previous year. Among the new comers was a trainee catechist from Chalabesa who proved to be very intelligent, a cut above the others. I encouraged him to follow a correspondence course in the higher grades if only to remain fully occupied. He passed his Standard six with flying colours but after that he became restless. It was obvious that he had higher aspirations and wanted to move on to secondary education. In stead of making an appointment and ask me for advice he became difficult and eventually caused a strike among the other trainees for hardly any reason at all. Strikes and unrest was in the air among students all over the world, so why not in peaceful and rural Mulilansolo?

 I followed the advice of the wise brother Gottlieb, who had come to lay the foundations of a rural health clinic. He told me not to get upset.

 “If you cannot beat them, join them”, was his adage.

 When nobody came to classes, both Sr. Clementina and I  thanked them for giving us a few days of rest.

It became still in the catechist compound. The children played a bit but the parents were subdued. Finally the wiser men formed a small delegation and asked us to restart teaching and forget about the strike. But the so promising catechist from Chalabesa had to go.

We were very silent when I gave a lift to him and his uncomprehending wife and children. When we reached Isoka, and I saw him off on the bus, he knelt down and asked for a blessing for himself and his family. I was moved but wondered why he had to take such a strange way to tell me that he found himself too highly qualified for the status of a village catechist[38].

 

I remained ably assisted by Sr. Clementina, but as director and in charge of a whole ‘village’ of some 60 people it was a lonely task with little support from the mission staff among whom there were the usual changes, some of them hilarious..

Fr. Denis Bernardin with whom I had arrived in the country in December 1958, had to be replaced by Fr Piet Verkley on the 21^st of May. The main reason was that Denis could not get on with Father Boyd because of the mission dog.  Boyd loved, even spoilt the dog, and never really trained it. It barked endlessly during the night at a small lizard against the wall or a bush baby in the trees. Denis suffered from sleepless nights. One day he could not take it any more. He drove his car to Mbala, knelt down in front of the bishop and exclaimed dramatically: “My Lord, either the dog goes or me !”

The bishop told him to have a good rest, to return and to wait for an important decision. After a few weeks a letter arrived with the news that he, Denis Bernardin was transferred to Chalabesa while the dog stayed!

On the 24^th of May Brother Patrick Hayes arrived from Kopa with the instruction to start and build a Rural Health Clinic and later a Domestic Science for the women of the C.T.C and the villages.

And at the beginning of the academic year in September 1968 Brother Roan Musonda came to assist me with the day-today running of the C.T.C.[39]. He was still young, and appealed to the youth around the mission. He was an excellent football player and organized competitions among them. Soon the sports fields were alive with the boys playing and the girls cheering.

Roan  took most of the lessons on secular subjects during the afternoons. Life became a bit more relaxed for me.

On the 14^th of September 1968 Fr Ton VanDiessen arrived. He had been trained in the Netherlands and in Canada when the Second Vatican Council was in session and came with a load of new ideas. He was a born teacher of religion and used all the means at his disposal to make the message as attractive as possible. I noticed that the young were spell-bound during his  mafundisho,  religious instructions.

But he was also a child of his time, in an era of students unrest, heated debates on authority and clashes with the Police, especially in France, The Netherlands and Germany[40]. This unrest originated from the sheer delight of breaking out of out-dated straightjackets, and of self discovery. It was the beginning of the  demise of dogma and the birth of the individual. It was not only the desire of cultural change but even an urge for transgression and a rejection of all kinds of uniformity.

The group of new White Fathers and some Fidei Donum priests were greatly in favour of the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII[41]. Experimentation was the ‘in-word’ in liturgy, catechesis, and even systematic and moral theology[42]. Their sheer tenacity combined with a measure of flexibility in their ideas and work style proved to be a major factor in the religious future of Zambia.

Freed from the colonial restraint, that, for example, hardly allowed the Roman Catholic Church to acquire a plot of land within the parameters of the ‘Boma’s, the Catholic church grew out into the largest group during the years following independence[43].

I ended the year rather early, at the beginning of August and left Mulilansolo for courses in Chalabesa, Chilonga and Serenje. Gradually I got to know all the nooks and crannies of Fürstenberg’s diocese: the missionaries, the little group of local priests, the ‘Chigwell’ sisters of the Sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary, in Chilonga and Mbala, the German volunteers, the always hard working brothers and the smiling Sisters of the Child Jesus, who were so near the people.

These sisters, teachers and nurses alike, were at the service of their people but were not sentimental. They knew their failings and weaknesses. They had not such a great esteem for and trust in their men, now in charge of the country. They were proud of their African background, but they also could point out its dark, shadowy, side, to customs that had to go and for which they had little time.  

 

At the beginning of the 1970s the National  Catechetical Commission in Lusaka, of which I was a member, had started experimenting with a Common Syllabus for Religious education. Some leading educationalists in Lusaka, men like Mr. Trevers Coombe, based themselves on the philosophy that religious and secular education find common ground in a set of values and norms necessary for good citizenship. Many of these values were to be found in most religions. But as Zambia had been under the sway of Christian missionaries since the beginning of the 20^th century, it was deemed reasonable to base R.E. on Christian inspiration without excluding the beneficial influence of other religions.

For the progressive missionaries in the parishes this idea of a Common Syllabus of R.E. was a major step forwards in the field of ecumenism. The battle for schools among the Christian denominations had come to an end.

 

It was not only in the field of Catechesis that we were involved. One of the moot motivations that had driven the Lumpa movement of Alice Lenshina Mulenga towards the establishment of beautiful settlements was the desire to return to the norms and values of village life based on the laws and rules of traditional religion. This return might well have been mythical but it was evident that  The Bemba-Bisa groups who lived in and around the Chinsali district, away from the more centralising influence of the Bemba Paramountcy of Chitimukulu, took to its ideology without any questions[44].

The president of the country, Dr Kaunda, born and bred in Lubwa, 5 km from Chinsali, and a considerable number of his immediate friends, men like Simon Kapepwe, had very similar views. Moreover during the years that followed Independence the Socialism of  Julius Nyerere gave birth to the so called Uyamaa model of village life in Tanzania[45].

It must be admitted that a great deal of these ideas came from Western Europe.  In Oxford and Cambridge the key words became Community Development. Was this based on the mythical Bon Savage beliefs of the philosopher Rousseau that lingered on in the minds of young students of Sociology?  It was believed that things would become simple and less complicated if only people would return to the pristine world of village life

With the help of clergymen like Colin Morris and Merphlyn Temple, Dr Kaunda developed  the ideology of  ‘Zambian Humanism’, based on self-help, mutual support, and the extended family. During his holidays around Christmas he came back to his home and his family in Lubwa, not only to have a rest but to move around with a party of his ministers to encourage people to come together and build Imishi ya Buyantanshi, Villages of Progress.

People will not really against it. For example around the Primary school of Charloshi, between Mulilansolo and Mundu, to the north of Chinsali people from a group of small villages came together and constructed a big settlement, with their houses along a straight line and well distanced from each other. They dug a furrow from the source of a small stream in order to have easy access to clean and fresh water. The government promised to build a small clinic and to upgrade the local school.

Dr Kaunda, a son of a Presbyterian pastor made sure not to develop an ideology that could alienate the churches. The expatriate missionaries in the rural areas gave these projects their full support. In the Lundazi district the White Fathers Jean Luc Gouiller and Theo Nielandt constructed new roads with young scouts and the people to connect some of these settlements with the mission and the Boma. In the diocese of Mbala Fr Palma Levesques and latter Robert Lavertue introduced the Credit Unions to assist the upcoming local farmers. In Isoka Fr Leopold Lalonde started with a thriving chicken project to make the mission financially independent. He called it with a good sense of humour his “Lay Apostolate”. One missionary, Theo Bakers, gave high grade seed potatoes to the people when on tour through the villages. The people became known for their excellent crops of potatoes[46].

There was a great deal of optimism in the air. In Lusaka the Catholic Secretariat, together with the Christian Council of Churches, made frequent representations to the Government on such subjects as social services and matters of ethical concern[47].

As Director of the Catechist Training centre in Mulilansolo I made sure that Community Development, Agriculture and Zambia Humanism became part of the curriculum. Brother Roan Musonda had been trained in London by the Jesuit Fr. J. Crane, and took charge of these subjects with great understanding. The student catechists, married men with their two feet firmly on the ground, were less enthusiastic, in particular as regards the grouping together of so many people. They feared that big agglomerations would give cause to jealousies and witchcraft accusations. But they were eager to learn new methods of rotation, and accepted the new crops, like soya beans, hybrid maize, napier fodder, and the growing of cash groups.

One of these cash crops was believed to be Turkish tobacco. One needed only a quarter of an acre of  poor soil and it could be grown near the house as a cash crop. The drying and curing of the leaves was done by the sun. In short the whole process needed only nifty fingers and a terrific amount of stamina. The catechists were ready to give it a try as long as they had not to invest any money in it. During the years 1966-1969 the CTC produced a regular amount of bales of tobacco that were picked up by the officers of the local extension services and eventually sold on the auction floors in Lusaka, some 850 km away. We won first prizes for some of the products both in Isoka and Chinsali during the annual Agriculture Show and other groups visited the Centre to learn and to pick our brains.

 

Unfortunately already scientists suspected that Turkish tobacco could be one of the causes of cancer. Whatever the reason, prices slumped terribly and everywhere people stopped growing the crop. We continued introducing new crops in order to try and keep the people in the rural areas, away from the pernicious trek to the copper mines and other centres of employment.        

Manual work took place in the late afternoon just before dark at 6 p.m. I loved working with the catechists and listened to their conversations. They came from various tribes, the Bemba, Lungu, Mambwe and Bisa and each of them were convinced that their way of gardening and farming was the best. I learned from them traditional methods of rotation that were well established before the coming of the Europeans. My family and my home parish supported me enthusiastically. One of my sisters, Fiet, sent me copies of the Boer en Tuinder (The Farmer and Market Gardener). The people of the St Paul’s Parish collected enough money for me to be able to buy a small tractor. With it we cleared land for more crops in order to make the Centre as self-supporting as possible.

 

It must have been in the same year 1968 a serious looking middle age man came to see Father Boyd. His name was Mike O’Leary. He was in charge of a team of young Irish civil engineers who worked for a consultancy firm called Pettit, based in Cork and worked for the Italian company, Felici, in charge of constructing the tarmac road from Nakonde on the border with Tanzania to Chinsali. He asked the superior of the mission, Fr Patrick Boyd if they could come to the mission from time to time, especially on Sundays, to get through the boredom of life in the bush.

One of them was Tadze Wixted, also from Cork. These young men brought a great deal of good cheer and joy to all of us. After the sudden death of Sr. Monika another nun came, called Sister Astrida Maria Furlong.  She was a qualified midwife and put in charge of the new  Rural Health Centre. Her father had come from Scotland as a member of an order of religious brothers in South Africa. He had decided to leave before his final vow and eventually ended up in Kasenga, in the Congo near the Luapula river, working as a manager for a Greek company that froze fish for export to Elizabethville (Lumumbashi).  He had married a Congolese by whom he had several children. One day he had taken his daughter Astrida to the Bishop and White Sisters in Chilubula for her education, where she decided to enter religion.

Sr Astrida was a hard working person, known as an excellent, no-nonsense midwife and in charge of the pre-natal care of the entire district. She had a great sense of humour and loved to give herself a free day from time to time, to be away from it all. She was one of the first to join us and the young Irishmen for a fishing trip to the nearby Chambeshi or to a party at the road camp near Isoka.   

 

Towards the end of the 1960s a detailed census and national registration took place of  the entire population of Zambia.  This was done by a mobile office that traveled from one musumba (chief’s place) to another. From an alien citizen in Northern Rhodesia, I now became a ‘Permanent Resident’  in the Republic of Zambia, a status I would cherish for many years to come. We were very idealistic and even thought of applying for naturalisation, and so becoming a fully-fledged citizens of the new nation. Some priests, in particular Jesuits in Lusaka, had done this already. But our Zambian Vicar General, Father Pascal Kakokota, dissuaded us to do so.

 “By changing your nationality you offend your mother”, he argued from his matrilineal background. “Moreover”, he added, “as a citizen of an European nation you will get protection, social care and even a pension once you become old”.

 How practical and right he proved to be in later years.

The introduction of hybrid maize, as part of the, so called, ‘green revolution’, became a success. The seed came originally from Southern Rhodesia and was developed for the country in Chilanga. Little did we realise that by this the people would become not only dependent on imported seed but also on the use of all kinds of artificial fertilizers produced abroad. In order to encourage the people I decided to buy all my maize requirements from the local peasants and stores it in the silo’s of the CTC. The people liked it as it brought ready cash in the community without any hassle.

Before storage one had to scrub the inside wall of the silo’s with insecticide. The first time I did this, I let myself down to the bottom, all alone, without anyone being present, and started to spread the substance on the walls. Its fumes proved to be so strong that I almost lost consciousness. Happily I managed to heave myself out of it, to get some fresh air. It could have been the end of me, without anybody being aware of it, on that still and hot afternoon in Mulilansolo.

 

After I returned from the Copperbelt in November 1967 with a brand new ‘Toyota Corona’ pick-up people I became indirectly involved with the day to day running of the Rural Health Centre. Since the departure of Fr. Rau the mission had no motorised means of transport and was unable to take serious cases to the District Hospital in Isoka and to collect new supplies of medicine. The Ministry of Health had developed a wonderful system of medical care, eminently suited for third world countries. On the village level it consisted of a network of dispensaries and rural health centres, run by medical orderlies. They served as ‘filter clinics’. Almost 80 % of the simple cases could be dealt with by these orderlies as long as they were furnished with a regular supply of household medicine. One of the most important tasks of the doctors in the central district hospitals was to visit these health centres each month, and collect serious cases for treatment in their hospitals. From there a serious patient could even be referred to the provincial hospital in Kasama and finally to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. These visits by the doctor were also occasions to vaccinate the children against various diseases and to teach expectant and young mothers about the dangers of malnutrition. This system proved to be an excellent way of  bringing down infant mortality. Until the construction of the Health Centre it was regarded almost as normal that of ten children four would die in early infancy. But now this percentage was halved and the mission became a happy place with healthy kids playing all over the place.

The government provided vouchers of repayment per mile (km) for those who were kind enough to transport emergencies to the district hospital. I became often called upon to transport serious cases to the hospital in Isoka, in particular women who had a difficult childbirth.

And this happened only too often. In an area where girls were married at a much too early age, the birth of their first child could be extremely traumatic. The custom of accusing such a young woman of adultery or promiscuous behaviour, and insulting even beating her, was still rather common. On the whole the local, traditional midwives, the birth attendants, as they were called by then, did a good job but when there were difficulties, they panicked and as last resort would send the young husband to the mission clinic to get help.

We would finally enter a small hut in the middle of the night after a harrowing trip on a bad sand track and find in the corner on the floor a women in agonizing pain, exhausted and moaning with a dead child in her arms and a ruptured uterus. I will never forget these scenes. One day I moved inside a hut with a stretcher to get a young lady, the wife of a teacher, to the hospital as quickly as possible but slipped in her blood that covered the earthen floor. We carried her gently into the car but she died during that long journey in the night. The people asked me if I could transport her body to the village where she came from in order to bury her.

At times the doctor in Isoka was away on an assignment. Then we traveled on to the better equipped mission hospital of Lubwa of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Another time we came to a place where the bridge was washed away. A team of road workers carried the whole car with the patient  to the other side in order to save  mother and child[48].

We gave our full cooperation to overall birth control and the application of so called artificial contraceptives We were certain that the authorities in far away Rome would agree to this and had no qualms of conscience in this matter . We left it to the conscience of the couple, their family and a competent member of the medical staff. Thus when the encyclical, Humane vitae,  was promulgated by Pope Paul VI  in July 1968 it came as a bombshell, as a first sign of an retrenchment. But we were far away from Rome. Anyway what did the commission of cardinals, or whoever they were, know about the harsh life of the village women in the bush of central Africa?.  Did the members of the Roman curia know of what was going on among the struggling people of the emerging small Christian communities? 

 Some of my confreres did not take the tenets of this encyclical so lightly. Adrian Hastings, whom I had known as a student of theology  in s’Heerenberg openly dissented. It marked the end of his working life in the Catholic Church in Africa. In Europe the debate became increasingly acrimonious and a yawning gap began to appear between the church administration and a large majority of Catholics, including pastoral workers and theologians.

Some of my contemporaries left the priesthood in the years that followed. All over the world priests, nuns, monks and missionaries discarded their clerical garb, their cassocks and habits and re-entered the increasingly secular world for another vocation. For those who stayed put and decided to remain in   harness in solidarity with the people, life did not become easier. So many of the church’s best men and women went away, now seemingly sitting on the fence. Later, after the election of John Paul II in 1978, the distance between the more liberals and the more conservatives became so hardened that a tolerant dialogue became almost impossible. But in 1968 the young group of mainly expatriate missionaries was still idealistic enough to think that attitudes would change and that by remaining faithful to their oath they would be able to alter things from within.

 Fr Paul Conner a White Father missionary who before coming to the diocese of Mbala had worked in the USA, flew all the way back to Zambia after his leave in a small plane, donated to him by his benefactors. It was decided to integrate this plane in the country’s flying doctors service. Each mission post was asked to construct a small airstrip of about one km.

Together with the catechists, the schoolchildren and the local people we started to clear a strip of land as quickly as possible. It took us several months as each stump with its deep roots had to be dug up and the sandy surface had to be hardened with gravel.

At the beginning of 1969 when we were had cleared only a small, rather sandy strip, we heard the roar of a plane. I thought that Paul would fly over to have a quick look at how far we were, but to my consternation the little plane landed gracefully in the middle of a cloud of dust. Out of it stepped Paul Connor with a big smile and a crate of beer in his hands, followed by, one of our confreres,  Tony Coninx. He had a couple of camara’s slung over his shoulder and had taken a set of air photographs of the mission.. They stayed for more than two hours and all the time I wondered how they would manage to get up into the air again. They somehow managed to heave themselves out of our sandy airstrip, hardly avoiding the tops of the eucalyptus trees that grew around our house.

We were proud that Mulilansolo was connected to the big world by air. A few months later a helicopter landed on what now looked more like a hardened and grassy strip. A grinning American came out and asked whether ‘we were white pops’. His task was to fly weekly along the newly constructed pipeline and inspect it for any leaks. During a previous flight he had seen us in our white cassocks, called gandourahs. As a young man he had spent a few moths in the novitiate of the White Fathers in America and wondered if we were of the same order. From then onwards he would fly regularly over the mission and throw down a bundle of recent newspapers, and a packet of ‘goodies’ prepared by his wife in Ndola.

 

The structures of Zambian Humanism were gradually introduced into local government. Each village had a local committee, that sent three representatives to an overall ward committee and from there matters could be directed to the district development committee in the Boma, the district administration. It worked quite well on local level as it was democratic and people became involved.

The members of our ward committee decided to build a shelter for people who came from afar to look after their sick in the ever expanding Rural Health Centre. I promised to get the money for the corrugated iron sheets for the construction of the roof and in a short time the shelter was completed.

To channel matters to the district development committee in Chinsali and to get quick attention was more difficult as matters got entangled in the web of local bureaucrats.           

     We had been working so hard that nobody of us noticed that the roof of our house, built cheaply in 1936 was being eaten by the termites. One could hear them gnawing away during the night. Sometimes a piece of rotten wood would fall on the mats that served as ceiling board but we kept our fingers crossed and hoped for the best. However one day in the hot summer of 1969 there was a mighty crash. Half of the roof had collapsed. That night I slept in the open air, looking at the millions of beautiful stars that decorate the sky of the southern hemisphere.

The whole house had to come down and this time the bishop promised to find finance for a modern house, firmly constructed on a concrete cemented slab. It was easier promised than done. All these years, until my leave in 1971, I slept in my office of the Catechist Training Centre while my dear confreres had their rooms in the sacristy, the storeroom or the parish office.

 

It was also a time during which one searched for various forms of parish ministry.

In 1966  the three dioceses in the North were  manned by a  considerable number of  White Fathers. Both Mbala and Kasama had 52 priests each followed closely by Mansa with 50 priests. With the 34 brothers the total of White Fathers missionaries was 207.

Together with the White Father bishops they  had things firmly in hands, in fact the White Fathers Missionaries constituted  the local clergy of the  church in the dioceses of the Northern province, Luapula and Chipata. By then many of us were financially well off, supported as we were by our family, acquaintances, benefactors, parishes and increasingly by aid organizations. The white gandourah, burnous and the chechia (fez) gradually gave way to a simple pair of trousers and an open shirt and monastic enclosure did not exist any longer. We were let free and personal responsibility had taken the place of undue control from above.

Regular contact with the Copperbelt and other towns along the line of rail made us aware of the great need of priests that existed among the Franciscans and the Jesuits. In 1966 Bishop Agnozzi pleaded with the WF bishops to accept the responsibility of one or two parishes in his diocese of Ndola. The White fathers refused to accept this invitation.

 ‘It would be possible to add one Father to the Ndola procure who could be of some assistance’ they replied rather tersely[49].

  However, at the end of his visit to Zambia, Fr Gilles Barette, a delegate from the Generalate in Rome, insisted on going for more urban commitments.

The WF bishops agreed very reluctantly and after many deliberations they released a few of their men for a parish in Mufulira. The new Regional Superior, Fr Palma Levesques, admitted that church personnel in Zambia was poorly posted and called for a national census in order to spread the church workers more equitably. Each bishop held frantically onto his own number of missionaries with little consideration for more national issues. Moreover a good White Father was a bushman who belonged to one of the White Fathers rural dioceses.

Until then, local vocations for the diocesan clergy were few and far between. Many of the priest students accept a place in UNZA, the university of Zambia or went for more lucrative employment after an excellent education in Lubushi or in any other minor seminary of the country.

It became clear that despite the call for ‘Zambianisation’, the expatriate church workers were left holding the proverbial baby in their arms with little hope of handing it over to local hands.

For most of the younger, post Vatican II, generation the obvious answer was to establish new forms of a supplementary clergy. For example one of the decrees of this Council had made provision for the restoration of a married diaconate. During a meeting of the five principles of the Catechist Training Centres, it was suggested to select the centrally placed Chilubula and upgrade it to a fully fledged school of theology for married deacons.

To our surprise this suggestion was accepted by the Zambia Episcopal Conference. In fact, Bishop Corboy of Monze and Bishop Pailloux of Mansa went even further and agreed to ask Rome for the introduction of married priests in Zambia. They were not alone. The Church in The Netherlands had made a similar request. The authorities in Rome replied in their usual diplomatic manner. They would make preliminary inquiries among some African ecclesiastical dignitaries.

However the entire proposal of allowing married clergy, be they priests or deacons, were almost unanimously voted away by the body of local bishops of AMECEA, gathered in Nairobi[50]. They were in favour of a celibate clergy as had been developed in the traditional European Catholic Church from the twelve century onwards.

“We do not wish to allow any lowering of standards among our local clergy”, they said.               

 

All this took place in a time of great turmoil and change in the churches of the West. After Humane Vitae in 1968, and the National Pastoral Council at the beginning of the 1970s many lay people in the Netherlands went their own way. Within a short time the seminaries and churches became empty.

St Paul’s college in Sterksel, where I spent such happy years, was closed and sold, followed by Santpoort. The newly appointed Dutch Provincial, Fr B Van Amelsvoort, proposed a moratorium on further missionary vocations. Other West European countries showed a similar picture.

In that same period the famous moral theologian, Fr Häring visited Zambia.  He was a professor in the well-known School of Theology of the university of Tübingen in Germany together with the theologians Hans Kung and Joseph Ratzinger.

Professor  Häring encouraged us to listen to the judgment of the people.

 “Put yourself in their shoes and you will love, rather than judge them”,  he repeated over and over again. We could not get enough of his talks as they were so liberating and re-assuring.

Häring came back to Africa on several occasions, paying the expenses of his travel from his own pocket. “I see this as my contribution to the Third World”, he said.

At the beginning of 1969 Adrian Hastings came to Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation near Kitwe. Sponsored by the Anglican community, he started a research on ‘Christian Marriage in Africa’[51]. He also gave a great deal of his time to update us on the latest in Christian theology

We read the first books on Liberation Theology with  its proceeding in Medellin in Columbia and its ‘option for the poor’ Even those of us  who at a later date decided to leave,  remember this period as highly interesting when we discussed pastoral matters until deep in the night.

Gradually, without wanting to be negative or destructive a group of  similar minds formed itself, especially in the dioceses of Kasama and Mbala. We all agreed that urban apostolate was becoming very important.

 

But at the beginning of the 1970s the euphoria of Independence and of Vatican II seemed to have reached its nadir. Despite all the idealism of Zambian Humanism and the ‘back to the land’ movement it was only to obvious that young people literally and figuratively voted with their feet. They continued migrating to employment opportunities in the Copperbelt and other towns of Zambia.

One also got the impression that the administration of the new government paid lip service to proper agricultural development They would visit the rural areas during their holidays or around local and national elections but traveled quickly back to thee towns, seeming to ‘enjoy the fruits of Independence’.

In the diocese of Mbala there was another reason for disenchantment. Bishop Fürstenberg  had started with the construction of an expensive cathedral on the very margin of his extensive diocese. It was not to be a simple, functional building but a modern structure with a ‘flying concrete roof’ that was suspended from two huge pillars. Architecturally it was to be a real feat of endeavour but how could he do this in a country where people were poor and could hardly survive?

As director of the Catechist School I was one of the bishop’s councillors. I spent many a meeting pleading with him and his administration not to be so extravagant and to spend some of the money on the meager salaries of the catechists. On my visits to them in the poor outstations I had become aware that the real grass-root work  had been and was still being done by these simple and steady men, fathers of big families with heavy responsibilities. I also was upset about the fact that I was given no information what so ever on the finances, i.e. on the amount of support that came in the coffers of the diocese for catechesis in general and for the catechists in particular.

While the cathedral in Mbala went up, we were always told that there was little money, to be very frugal, to keep salaries low and only apply for monetary assistance when really necessary.

 

 I often wondered whether I could continue collaborating with enterprises and projects that, according to me, were meant for personal glory rather than for the poor people for whom we had come.

When the bishop suggested grooming Fr Paul Makasa, for becoming the Director of the Catechist Training Centre, I did not hesitate  and accepted this decision without any regrets. From then events followed one another at considerable speed. Both Fr Makasa and my assistant Bro Roan Musonda were sent to Gaba in Uganda to follow a prestigious course on Catechesis and Pastoral Theology. I decided to reach out and to accept a number of invitations to national meetings and international gatherings. Besides attending the annual meetings of the national catechetical and development commissions in Lusaka. I flew with Bishop Corboy of the diocese of Monze to Nairobi to attend a regional  meeting on Development in Limuru sponsored by the aid agency Misereor from Germany. The delegates from the Amecea countries decided not just to remain passive recipients of aid from the West but to initiate Lenten campaigns, and other actions among the Catholics in the dioceses of Central and East African. This was accepted and became a success during the following decades.

 

Sr. Astrida Furlong became unwell. Doctor Patel in Isoka diagnosed a number of cysts and recommended the removal of her uterus. Little did she and those around her know that by such a drastic operation her hormonal balance would be severely disturbed with a possible danger of osteoporosis. After the operation I drove her for a well-deserved rest to her mother and other members of her family in Kasenga, situated in the Congo, at the other side of the Luapula river. We had a lovely time as her whole family came together for the occasion, some as far as Lumumbashi  (Elizabethville).

 

 On the 2^nd of August 1971, l closed the Catechist Training Centre and left for Ndola for my leave in the Netherlands. When waiting for the plane in Ndola. I wrote a letter to Sr. Astrida  in order to comfort her, and to express my gratitude and love for all she had done during the previous years. Little did I foresee that this letter would give me a great deal of trouble.

 

Despite the hard work and some disappointments, I remember this period as very productive. As director of CTC I was in constant contact with the daily life of the 40 odd catechists of the diocese .I loved to hear the happy voices of their children ringing out in and around Mulilansolo Training Centre. I got acquainted with many of their domestic customs, their innate religious background based on traditional culture and their will to contribute to the welfare of the people in the outstations to which they were assigned.

During those years many of my best friends left the priesthood. For them the Church was slowly coming back on what was granted when John XXIII opened its windows and allowed fresh air in the stuffy offices of the Curia in the Vatican.

The disappointment and creeping disenchantment did not deter me from the challenging task of training future church leaders. It was exactly what I had dreamt of during my days in the seminary: assisting  families in their desire to take a few steps ahead in the quality of life.

I bade farewell to them with reluctance but looked forward to being of better service in the years to come.   

 

 

 [1]                I was not the only victim. The Lumpa hordes conquered the Boma of Lundazi, killed dozens of people, among them an Indian storekeeper. When Fr Theo Nielandt arrived by motorcycle  from nearby  Lumezi  to hold a Sunday service, he was hit on the head with a sharp axe and left bleeding on the road, next to his m/cycle. Fortunately his crash helmet took the brunt of the blow. He regained consciousness, drove bleeding to the little hospital. He recovered but was never the same again. It left him depressed and with frequent headaches. After a few years he decided to go home where he eventually married.   

[2]                  Kittler,G. 1961  1961, The White Fathers, New York, Image Books. See also: Reneault, Cardinal Lavigerie, pp. 55-86.

[3]                  The Dutch Provincial was Fr Piet DeRuijter, who stayed until 1968 and died in 1981.

                      In that time it was said that when a missionary asked for some time off to study anthropology, his bishop would retort with the question “What is her name?”

[4]                  Besides Prof. Ponsioen  I remember Mrs. Van Ooosterwijk-Bruijn, Mr. Daalder, Mr. VandeLaar, and Mr. Kuitenbrouwer and Bartels.  Profs. Rosmalen, Albedra, Nijkerk and Mrs. Verweij-Jonker.The Institute attracted occasional lecturers from abroad e.g. Mr. Pusic from Yugoslavia, and Prof. Busia from Ghana. Some of the students were Dr Mendoza from the Phillipines, Miss Mary Rafferty from Ireland, Mrs Aggarwal from India, Mrs E. Mbanefo from Nigeria, Mr Hashi from India, Miss Tanaami from Guatamala, Mr Farog from Somali, Mr Abraham from Ceylon (Shri-Lanka), Miss Hermans from Belgium and Mr Fred Phiri from Zambia.

[5]                     In 1964, the Labour Party in Great Britain had regained power with a tiny majority but won a 100 seat majority in 1966.

[6]                     My father felt very proud when he received a medal from his union after having been a member for 75 years in 1999.

[7]                    I presented ‘Community Leadership in the Co-operative Development’, followed by ‘The Role and Function of the Voluntary Agencies in India’ and ‘The Main problems for social change in the Northern Province of Zambia’.

[8]                     Exact name and other details, date etc. Later the Ambassador was assassinated by the I.R.A.

[9]                     The title of my dissertation was ‘The Contribution of the Churches towards the Development of the rural areas of North Zambia’. Unpublished Paper. Institute of Social Studies, The Hague September 1965.

[10]                   A few years later a White Father colleague of mine applied also for a graduate course but was adamantly refused  on the grounds that I had caused disagreement and almost  a split among the members of the Institute’s Senate!

[11]                   A.A. (The Apostolate of the Laity) No 2.;  Lumen Gentium No 5; Gaudium et Spes, No 45 and No 30.

[12]                   Gaudium et Spes, No 31.

[13]                   In the Netherlands not less than 75 White fathers left within a few decades.

[14]                   Charles Davis died in February 1999, after years of suffering from Parkinson disease, lovingly cared for by his wife. He made a brilliant career at the university of Edmonton in Canada. See article  In touch with the Grail, Series 2, No 75, February 1998. front page. Pinner, 125.  Waxwell Lane. U.K.

[15]                   E.Schillebeekx, Piet Schoonhoven, etc.

[16]                   Later I heard that in 1971 my father had become very down by what was going on and had needed some treatment against depression. He was of the opinion that everything he had fought for in his youth, even the Catholic Labour Union. (K.A.B) had disappeared and predicted the return of  ruthless Capitalism. His grandchildren called him “Our red Opa”.

[17]                   Fr Thomas Tye of Westminster returned to Ghana after ‘his stint’ in London. He died on the first of July 1993 at the age of 81.

[18]                   Name derived from the encyclical Fidei Donum, written in 1949 by Pope Pius XII, in which he asked the bishops to send some of his priests to the missions.

[19]                   Interview, Warrington, U.K. October 2000. Fr Louis Oger had excellent qualities as will be seen, but little contact with the wider world. For example: at that time the post of Secretary of Social Affairs at the embryonic Catholic Secretariat in Lusaka was vacant. The  Bishops were  looking around for a capable person to fill it and Patrick Menzies would have been the right person.

[20]                     After their studies Lombe became court judge, Mwelwa clerk of the National Assembly and Kenneth worked for Zambia Broadcasting Cooperation.

[21]                   After a few years back in Zambia, I heard that Corpus Christi College had been closed by Cardinal Heenan.

[22]                   In 1983 he was appointed to Rome and finally to the N.L. where he died in 1992.

[23]                   The Catechist Training Centre was opened in September 1962.

[24]                   She and her husband escaped in October 1967 but was recaptured and restricted in a remote village in Mkushi district. She was placed in detention in 1970, released in 1975 but put under permanent house arrest in Lusaka. She died in December 1978. Hinfelaar, H.F. Bemba-speaking Women, p.74.

[25]               Report of the Commision of Inquiry on the Lumpa Troubles’ Government Gazette, 1965; Calmettes, J.L. 1978, ‘The Lumpa Sect’ Reconstruction and Conflict. Unpublished Dissertation. University of Aberystwyth, Wales.

[26]                   This period of five years was a watershed in my life and so packed with different that I have divided it in different sections. 

[27]               Later, in 1968 Fr Adrian Hastings was invited by the Bishops to give brief , non-technical outline of the salient points in the Council Documents: Hinfelaar, H.F. 2004, The History of the Catholic Church in Zambia, p.220.

[28]                   Interviews, White Fathers, 1998-2004, Archives WFZ.

[29]                   …………………….

[30]                  In that time the majority of the 3.600 White Fathers came from France (916), Belgium (702), The Netherlands, (526) and Germany (373). A total of 2517.  Statistics, WFA, Z. February 1967.  See also Interviews, White fathers, 1990-2005. WFA.Z. 26. Father Rau was only 59 when he left. He settled down in a parish in a small village in Germany, worked there for 25 years and died 19-09-1986.

[31]                   …………….

[32]                  Sr. Monika suffered from severe asthma and had a weak heart. She died suddenly in one of her attacks in February 1967 and was buried in Mulilansolo.

[33]                   Emmanuel Chewe, born in Chipilimba, in 1943. His father was Njemushi Nkamunina and his mother Teresa Martha Kaleya. He started school  in August 1954 during which he received his first Holy Communion, reached St III (Grade 5) in Kalonga in 1959 and Standard V in Ilondola in 1961. He died in 1963.  Baptism no Ilo, 2651, Godfather: Martino Chisulo. See Document of Testimony, typewritten by Fr. Peter Bwalya. WFA.Z.

[34]                   The pipe line reached Ndola in a record time and went in operation in September 1968.

[35]                   MIVA, an Aid Agency, started in the Netherlands, to collect money for transport in the missions. It supported me all my working life in Zambia. 

[36]                   The road was constructed by Italian, German and Yugoslav companies.

[37]                   The name given by South Africans to a pick-up.

[38]                   In the middle of the 1970’s I met him at UNZA. the University in Lusaka where he obtained a degree in Education!

[39]                   Bro Roan Philip Musonda was the only product of a drive for vocations from Zambia by the White Fathers during the 1960s.. He and some others had been trained by Fr Sanders in Mbala.  See H.F. Hinfelaar. 2004, The History of the White Fathers in Zambia, 1964-1994. WFA.Z.  Roan  was transferred to Mulanga and then to Mbala towards the end of November 1969.

[40]                   1968 was the year of the ‘Paris Revolution,’ and of a revolt among the students in Tübingen in which both Joseph Ratzinger, (later Pope Benedict XVI) and Hans Küng were involved.  

[41]                Bernhard Frits Pehle from Germany, Pierre Lafollie from France, Robert Lavertue from Canada, Jean-Pierre Sauge from Switserland, Ulrich Piwek from Germany, Frank Carey from Great Britain and Henk VanderSteen from the Netherlands.

[42]                  The group produced an excellent book for Parish Catechesis in Bemba entitled Apatabeta Lesa.

[43]                   See also Hastings, A. 1979.

[44]                   Jean Loup  Calmettes argued convincingly that this was the case even from a more socio-economic point of view. 1978, ‘The Lumpa  Sect’ Reconstruction and Conflict. Unpublished Dissertation , University of Wales, WFA. Lusaka.

[45]                   DeBecker, Nico.

[46]                   Interview Theo Bakers, Lusaka, 1999.

[47]                   Impact, 1967, Fr Tessari, Secretary of Social Affairs. WFAZ.

[48]                   Zambia has still one of the  highest  number of death in childbirth of the world.

[49]                   Minutes of the WF Regional Council, 19 December 1966.

[50]                   See Hinfelaar. H.F. 2006, An Autobiography of Bishop VanSambeek, Rome. (Manuscript, WFAZ.)

[51]                   Published in 1973.

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