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Chapter Eight:  Teaching 1989 – 1996

 

The academic year of the Major Seminary opened with an orientation day. We assembled in a new hall called after John Paul II and were led in prayer and reflection by Fr Benny Bohan. He was an Irish Kiltegan missionary of St. Patrick, one year younger than me. Before coming to Zambia he had worked in Kenya for twenty years and decided to leave the country when the local priests took over. He had been invited to come to Zambia, followed the Chewa language course, taught by the White fathers Karel Hannecart in Chikungu, near Chipata after which he was appointed to Mpima in charge of spirituality.

He divided us into small groups in order to give expression to our expectations.

What indeed were my expectations?

I had hoped to set up a program of documentation, research and writing for the national church, sponsored by the White Fathers. But until then there had been little response. Those in charge had politely read my more detailed suggestions on a possible task ahead, but they was soon overtaken by the pressure of dwindling numbers. After the very successful visit of the Pope most of my confreres returned to the day-to-day demands of parish work.

Since independence they had been left holding the baby of the young Church in their hands with no local clergy to take over. Their present concern was to hand over the many mission posts as smoothly as possible.

Moreover since the mid 1980s the society at large had decided to recruit new members, not only from the traditional countries in Western Europe and Canada but from the whole world, including Africa. This was a major shift in the animation of vocation. Until then the White Fathers had focused on the recruitment and the training of local clergy only. It meant that most of their attention was and would be focused on the formation of this new candidates. In this filed they were some  twenty years behind other missionary groups.

My question was ‘Did the society foresee a special pastoral task for these young men according to the charisma of the society or were they destined for on-going parish work like so many of us, elders, had been in the past’?

As regards my expectations as regards the future priests of the Catholic Church in Zambia, well:  I hoped to instil into the students the discipline of an anthropological approach, the ability to serve human beings as objectively and impartially as possible and to try to understand and even appreciate their differences without bias.

Since my ordination I had learned that many tensions between, tribes, nations, denominations and religions were caused by prejudices. People were condemned for the sole reason that they were different. Often they were not given the opportunity to explain, let alone defend themselves.

 

The seminary was called after a small river called Mpima, the source of which was on the huge property itself. In the 1920s a five-mile wide strip of land on both side of the rail line from Kabwe to Ndola had been earmarked for agricultural development by European settlers, most of them ex soldiers of World War I. The scheme had not been a great success, mainly because soldiers are not necessarily good farmers.

Mpima farm had belonged to a Scotsman who sold the property to the Jesuits towards the end of the 1920s. They founded a new mission post and started a parish among the Lenje-speaking people of rural Kabwe.

After World War II the Jesuits opened a training centre for catechists on this beautiful place and, later, for primary school teachers. At the beginning of the 1960s it became a minor seminary and acquired a very high reputation under the professional management of young Jesuits. After political trouble with Dr Kamuzu Banda, the President of Malawi, in March 1973, all the Zambian students of the major seminary in Kachebere, situated in no-mans land between Malawi and Zambia, were declared prohibited immigrants by him. Archbishop Milingo offered to share the minor seminary premises at Mpima with the major seminarians. They  moved there at the beginning of 1974.

Later the theology section of the major seminary was transferred to Lusaka to the premises of the Convent school for Girls, donated by the Dominican sisters, and the minor seminary went to Mukasa, near Monze in the south of the country. Mpima remained entirely occupied by the philosophy section of the national major seminary and, during my presence, also by the first years theologians.

We lived in a lovely area of the country, very peaceful and quiet, yet near enough to Kabwe so as not to feel totally isolated. During their free days the students often walked the 6 km to spend their pocket money. The property possessed a herd of cattle, pigs, and poultry plus a flourishing vegetable garden and several orchards. One could walk around at leisure in a nearby wooded area or along the small stream.

I discovered that seminary life had not essentially changed from my days in 1945-1958. Besides a few new key words from the jargon of Vatican II, the day followed the old scholastic schedule of the past. I had to learn again how to lead the Angelus, conduct public prayers, celebrate the ritual of evening Benediction, contribute to shared prayer and not trip over my own legs during the celebration of the Eucharist in an old fashioned chapel.

The manner of giving lectures was mainly done with ‘chalk on blackboard’ that left the students rather passive. I had learned from the past and did not want to upset the system of the Roman mould immediately, but gradually introduced seminars and discussions, as was done in other places of the world. It was not easy to make the young men active and creative. They loved to copy and learn things by heart.

But it was a joy to teach them. Most of them came from secondary schools where teaching had been poor, to say the least. Some confided to me that in Mpima it was the first time that they had regular schooldays during which they could trust that the lecturers arrived sober and were always there on time. Especially the bright and keen young men were like blotting paper and  soaked up almost anything that was new to them. I came to appreciate my own seminary days during which I received so much and had been given such a wide and solid academic background.

The Staff was very colourful. It consisted of two religious sisters, Anita and Julia, members of the congregation of Franciscans of Philadelphia. After years of work in the U.S.A. they had been asked to assist the local church in Zambia for some years.

Sr. Anita Cattafesta’s grandparents had emigrated from Italy to the U.S.A. but did not know Italian, and admired us, White Fathers, who always spoke at least one local language fluently. Her colleague was Sr. Julia Thierney who was born in Ireland but had moved to the U.S.A. as a young teacher. Together with a third member of their congregation, Sr. Mary, they formed a happy-go-lucky threesome, always ready for a laugh and as true Franciscan nuns, inclined to spoil us occasionally with a cake or a bag of ‘cookies’.

The rector was a Zambian, Fr Stan Chibwe, young, very capable and a good bookkeeper. He ran that seminary like clockwork, never got excited and spent his free time repairing cars, clocks or even electronic equipment.

We, the White Fathers, were three in number. There was the lively Belgian Jos VanBoxel,who acted as the dean of studies and taught philosophy and the biblical scholar, the German Ferdi Tillmann, a biblical scholar. There were also two Kiltegans: one was the above named Benny Bohan, the spiritual director and Frank McCauliffe, a philosopher. Later we were joined by Fr Henry Menoud who took the place of Tillmann and an American layman, Pat Filter who, among other things, relieved me from teaching elementary Anthropology to the first years.

An extremely delightful but unofficial addition to the staff was a mentally ill, but very kind primary school teacher, who called himself  ‘the headmaster’ and regarded himself in charge of all of us. He occupied a little room next to the garages, and kept himself clean and well nourished from the water and the left-overs from our kitchens. Every morning he installed himself in the varandah near the exit and controlled our goings and comings. He had names for each one of us: Jos VanBoxel was called the French Bwana, Benny Bohan was the Italian Samaritan,  Julia Thierney was called Madam Julie, I got the name of The Happy Worm and Chibwe was The Teeth Pincher, as he had once extracted a rotten tooth from the headmaster.

One blue Monday in 1991 we found him dead in his little room with a big smile on his face. We buried him solemnly in our private cemetery. Strange, after that Mpima did not seem the same any longer. We all missed him dearly

 

Teaching is hard work but it does no carry any pastoral responsibility. The burdens of parish-life, even of the day-to-day management and the demands of real life fell away from me like the peel of an union. For a moment I could allow the world to pass me by and bother only about the next set of lessons or heaps of papers to correct. There were the occasional free days, the beautiful ritual of the liturgical year and, of course, the long holidays. One of the attractions of the Roman ‘Scholastic’ system is that it offers a relaxed mix of hard work, lazy days and a set of colourful festivities.

Not so far away was the Mulungushi dam, constructed in the mid twenties for the first hydro-electric project in the country, to serve the tin and zinc mines nearby in Kabwe (Broken Hill)[1]. I took some of the students over there to show them the rudiments of sailing. The well reputed  football team of the Kabwe warriors came to play on our grounds to show some tactics to the best of our students[2]. On free days the students gave ‘concerts’ during which for the first time in my life, I was called Shikulu (grandfather) as I had been teaching some of their fathers long ago in the Catechist Training School of Mulilansolo. Some of the students could imitate my way of teaching, my speaking and my mannerism almost perfectly.

 

Outside the confines of the seminary the big world was changing. Pope John Paul had contributed his bit to the fall of communism and the fateful Berlin Wall, that had divided Europe for so long, came finally down. The German-born Ferdinand Tillmann  wept with joy. Little did we foresee how much more complicated the world would become.

The dark phantom of Aids began to stalk freely and uncontrollable through the country. A whole generation of men and women between 20 and 50, trained with so much patience and dedication since Independence, started to fall by the way side, leaving thousands of orphans in the hands of grandparents.

Good news came from the White Fathers in Lusaka. They asked me to summarize and popularise my thesis for ‘the men in the field’. In honour of their centenary they were also ready to subsidize the publication of my thesis. I wrote to Brill, the publishers in Leiden, Holland, who were keen to negotiate[3].    

I did not want to bury myself entirely in academic work and live like a monk. The parish community of Mpima had no regular priest and I accepted to be appointed as the person in charge.  It meant that my weekends were always taken up by pastoral work but I did not mind. I enjoyed slipping away from the unreal world of the seminary and visit the people who lived and eked out an existence in the small plots around the old mission. After independence the land, originally earmarked for Europeans only, had gradually become occupied. Young farming families were settling down on allotments and building their often makeshift, houses. Not all were from a Lenje background. It was a productive mixture of Tonga, Lenje, Bemba and Chewa tribes, who taught their various agricultural methods to one another and sold their produce in nearby Kabwe. For example the Tonga were pastoral people in the literal sense of the word and knew how to prepare excellent sour milk and other diary products. The Bemba knew how to obtain potash fertilizer from the branches of the trees while the Chewa worked with compost from green legumes. All this had become common knowledge among all those young families from various backgrounds.

I asked them why they did not go back to their homes in the North, South, West or East of the country. The reply was almost always the same: 

“There is too much witchcraft in the villages. When you do something special, when you stick your neck out, the elders will always cut you down to size and hinder further development”.

In the very early morning one saw people walking or cycling on the small dirt toad to Kabwe in order to sell their produce in the market. Many of them were women. They could be laden with a heavy load of cabbages on their heads, while carrying a child on their backs and another couple of kids in their trail. Our students loved to do physical exercise by jogging along that same road, well fed and well dressed. They never ever seem to think of helping these poor women by carrying their burdens. I reminded them of their duty as future priests, servants of the people but was never very successful.

The administration also put me in charge of the preservation of the property. Around Kabwe there were only a few wooded areas left as the town had been founded in 1905 and most of the trees were used for charcoal. Small pick-ups came from Kabwe in the very early morning while we were in Mass, cut age-old trees and disappeared before we noticed anything. It was not easy to control this loss of trees.

One hot afternoon I heard the regular noise of people cutting wood. I rushed out, happy to finally catch a culprit.  When I suddenly appeared on the site, two scared women looked at me fearfully with their small babies next to them, sleeping peacefully on the citenge cloth.

I allow them to carry their bundles of dry wood away to their houses.  It is so easy to talk about conservation and ecology but how are women, deprived of electricity or other sources, able to cook their food for their families in the evening? Two thirds of the population of Zambia were at that time still getting their fuel from ‘biomass’, that is from the trees. 

 

In these small settlements around the seminary the late afternoons were passed in a relaxed manner. The men and women came back from their fields and gathered together for a short meeting of their Small Christian Communities. We read the bible, talked and discussed the passage and tried to apply it to daily life. I was surprised how some of the women were able to absorb the passages to their own religious background.. After the meeting they loved to sing their hymns and danced together in a row. These dances were very different from the ones I learned from the Bemba people in the north but they were also very attractive.

During those years Frank McCauliffe was chaplain to the high security prisons of Mukobeko, in Kabwe. There the condemned to death spent their last days or withered away with life imprisonment. He invited me one day to have a look and see if I took to that kind of pastoral care as he wanted someone to succeed him.  I was told that during the night the inmates were confined in such a small space that they could not lie down but slept squatting and leaning against each other.

After we came away I confessed to him to finding it so distressing and so sad, that I preferred to keep to my parish in and around Mpima. At that time the hanging of notorious criminals was still done on a regular basis. I will never understand how human beings can take the life of people in such a cold-blooded fashion without giving him any opportunity to redeem himself[4].

 

November came with its heat and dust. Archbishop Mutale made it a point of visiting me to find out if I enjoyed my new task.

 “Are you settled well now?”, he asked “Is teaching seminarians not below your dignity”. I did not know whether it was meant as a joke or said seriously and just looked at him, unable to give a reply. Perhaps he thought I was out for a higher assignment.

I was happy in Mpima and enjoyed studying in the ever-growing library, lovingly managed by Sr. Anita.   

There was one duty, however, I never got used to in those years. The staff was asked to take the main afternoon meals with the students and share their food. One meal of nshima was fine for me, and very tasty. But I noticed that regular portions of it caused me to become constipated, even ill. The students themselves loved the very white ‘breakfast’ mealie meal with all its fibre removed. I needed the fibre badly and even went at length to visit the milling factory in Kabwe and buy a sack of fisense, roughage,  meant as cattle feed.

 

Christmas came; I had completed the first term successfully and was ready for some rest. A few days before the festivities I decided to bring to order the contents of the huge cupboard in a dark corner of the sacristy. At the beginning of the 20^th century the Jesuits had arrived with church vestments that had been discarded by their home churches, but had now become antique and precious. I found heaps of crumbled copes, chasibles and surplices all thrown on the bottom of that cupboard. Some of them were artistically sewn and embroidered, most probably by a circle of devoted parish ladies who, long ago,  gave their time for the overseas missions. I salvaged the lot, got them cleaned and took them to my room in view of starting a church museum for the Catholic Church in Zambia.

To my utter surprise this caused an angry uproar among the mass servants of the parish. They claimed that these vestments belonged to them as they needed them for drama, acting and dancing during the school concerts. One leader called for a strike and forced the young altar boys to stay home. I acted as if I did not notice anything and asked some of the local  students of the nearby Primary School to come and serve the Mass during Christmas night.

Unfortunately the behaviour of the altar boys had a horrible sequence. During Christmas night the father of the ringleade decided to do some cattle rustling when all people were celebrating. He took his son, the ringleader of the strike with him. The owner of the farm had been tipped off and waited behind the kraal with his gun. He challenged them but when father and son ran off he shot in their direction. The father escaped but the young boy was hit and bled to death on Christmas day itself as his father did not dare to call a doctor or inform us.

The case was brought to the police. Both farmer and thief were condemned to five years in prison. I went to visit the father of the boy in prison. He was a broken man, having lost his promising son.

The New Year 1990 opened with a new member of staff: Father Lufungulo Chashya. Like our rector he came from the diocese of Mansa. He had followed a course on Liturgy in Nairobi, Kenya. He taught this subject with enthusiasm and verve. When he happened to be next to me in the class room, I could hardly made myself heard. I was not getting any younger and at times my voice became hoarse with having to teach  thirty odd students.

That year the rainy season came very late. When it finally arrived the people nearby had to work extremely hard to get everything planted as quickly as possible. I helped them as much as I could and again enjoyed to getting away from the sometimes so stuffy atmosphere of a seminary.

AIDS started to demand its victims but at that time not many were aware of the sudden increase of mortality among the most productive section of the people. People tended to accuse innocent members of the family of witchcraft. One wife of a deceased person and her children were so severely beaten up that I had to carry them urgently to the hospital. There I found the personnel always very helpful ready to assist day and night, seven day of the week.

 

More difficult were my relations with the workers of the hospital who had to dispose of the hospitals refuse. Instead of burning and burying it they dumped it near Mpima in the bush. One day I found little children rummaging in the bandages and discarded condoms unaware of the danger of infection. I gave them a warning but to no avail. The case finally reached the town council but it took time and a great deal of lobbying before anything was done.

I was nicely ensconced in the soft rhythm of seminary life but was not to be left alone. The Zambia Association of Sisters said that they had as much right to my teaching as  “ those spoilt seminarians” Was I ready to conduct a weekend seminar from time to time so that the nuns got “the crumbs of the clerical table”. It was heavy going but I did enjoy it: the sisters often learned in one seminar as much as the seminarians did in one week.

By late February the rainy season was in full spate with lightening and rainstorms all day. One woman was weeding in the field nearby and had put her baby on the chitenge cloth nearby. A thunderclap from a seemingly blue sky hit her with a terrific flash. Not much was left of her than a charcoal frame. Near her the whimpering child  had remained behind unharmed. When I had the baby in my arms I wondered what would become of her in the future.

A more disastrous death happened in that time on the Great Eastern Road near Lusaka.

Mgr. Elias Mutale, Archbishop of Kasama, had become increasingly disenchanted, even annoyed with the way ‘UNIP and its Government’ were going.  The leaders had become dictatorial. He now regretted to have collaborated with the introduction of a one-party state. When its legislation was enacted it had been said that a review of this experiment had to be done within ten years. Now almost two decades had lapsed without any review. UNIP members had enhanced their grip on the people by allowing themselves the right to ‘vet ‘any party candidate for the elections of whom they did not approve.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Archbishop Mutale had visited one of the leaders to express his disillusion, even his annoyance. Late in the evening on his way back to town he met with an accident and was left bleeding unconsciously on the tarmac for a considerable time. A Samaritan took him to the University Teaching Hospital where he was given a bed and emergency treatment. Early next morning the chaplain of the hospital, Fr Desmond O’Loghlan, S.J. did his rounds to find out those who wanted to receive Holy Communion. When he saw the still unconscious person he recognised the Archbishop. He administered the last rites, but on the 12^th of February 1990, at the age of 60 years, Elias Mutale, the Archbishop of Kasama, was on his way to meet his Creator.

It was a tremendous loss for Zambia and for the Catholic Church in particular.

It was believed that nobody dies like that in Zambia without a cause. All kind of rumours started to circulate through the city with accusations flying all over the place. On behalf of the Bishops Conference Bishop Dennis DeJong had finally to say publicly that Archbishop Mutale had died of an accident and that further conjectures should be discontinued.

A Bemba proverb says that a great chief never dies alone. He needs a retinue to face his ancestors.

Was this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Whatever can be said, it is true that in that period a whole row of church people died in accidents. A group of laymen and women, together with a young African priest and a sister set out on Lake Bangweulu in a motorised banana boat. A sudden storm caused it to capsize and sink. All of them drowned in the heavy waves.

On my birthday, the third of April, Brother Koch and a Polish priest Fr.Gazur drove in a drizzle from Kabwe to Chilonga in the north. Were they blinded by the rain? Whatever the cause will have been on the way, between Kabwe and Kapiri Mposhi  they had a head-on collision with a fast car, coming from Ndola. All five passengers of the two cars died: the two priests, an Asian couple and their African driver.

I was called to the mortuary in Kabwe to identify my confreres. Fr Gazur had never seen anything coming as he lay there with a smile on his face. Fritz Koch’s face was frozen in utter horror.

Brother Fritz Koch had taken us, three young missionaries from Abercorn (Mbala) to Kayambi in 1958. Since then he had built many churches, houses and convents, in particular the beautiful cathedral in Mbala. Gazur had come as a Fidei Donum priest to help the Zambian church for a couple of years.

Both were buried in the red soil of Chilonga. I went to assist at the long burial ceremony, conducted by Bishop Mpundu of the diocese of Mbala. During the celebration of the Eucharist I had to sit down, as I did not feel well.

 

To encourage more dialogue, not only with Traditional religion but also with the world religions I asked a leader of the Islamic community in Kabwe if he was ready to give a conference on Islam to the third year students. The imam arrived and gave a balanced exposé that made a deep impression. He also said that peace of Islam was being undermined by a group of extremists, who came from abroad.

“We do suffer a great deal as these young men try to force us to follow their ways on pain of heavy punishments”, one of the elder men said.

 Only later, much later, did I understand what he meant. The Islamic Asian merchants who had contributed so much to the development of Zambia for so long were not going to be left alone.

 

South Africa finally became finally independent and Zambia was open to free trade. It proved to be a mixed blessing as the country was flooded with goods from the south. One of the big shopping malls in Lusaka was called ‘Shoprite’. Many a husband in the city complained that his wife suffered from a new addiction, called shopritis.

By then the country had become aware of the seriousness of AIDS. Even Dr Kaunda admitted publicly that one of his sons had died of it. The people prepared themselves for a horrific period but not much else could be done.

The White Fathers asked me if I was ready to be a member of a ‘Think Tank’ to usher in a new period. When we finally managed to get together in Ndola the various items on the agenda were swamped by the urgency of this pandemic. Nobody spoke any more about self- reliance, about cultural and religious research or about other pastoral issues.

“We have no time for long discussions any more”, it was said, “It is an emergency and as good Samaritans we must care for the victims as quickly as possible”.

Zambia  became gradually  one big hospital with  everybody either infected or affected.

In May it was one year since the Pope’s visit. The Cardinal in charge of the Congregation of the Evangelisation of Peoples, (the old Propagation of Faith), Archbishop Tomko came to Zambia to check on the follow up of the Papal visit. A one day visit to Mpima was on his heavy schedule. After the solemn Eucharist, he gave an address to the assembled students and encouraged them to become trustworthy celibate priests.

After that we, the staff, an opportunity to talk with him. After a few polite introductions, we asked him if the imposition of celibacy on all the church leaders of the Catholic Church was indeed the right approach. Was the gift of celibacy not too beautiful to be forced upon young men as a main condition for ministry in the Catholic Church?

He seemed to take the question rather lightly. Yes, at the beginning celibacy would be difficult for a young church, not only in Zambia, but all over the world.  But one had to be patient and after many years celibacy and Roman Catholic priesthood would go hand in hand, accepted by everybody.

“Celibacy is something that comes with time”, he said. “At first there will be failures but gradually it will become accepted”.

I could not help thinking of all the women and children who were to become victims of those initial failures.

He asked me my name and background.

 “I am from the Netherlands but have been in Zambia since 1958”, I replied.

 “Are you old-fashioned or modern Dutch”, he asked jokingly.

“ I do not know”, I said “I have been away from the Netherlands for such a long period”.

Then he wanted to know if I was qualified to teach in a Roman Catholic seminary and asked where I had made my studies. When I replied that I had obtained a doctorate in African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, he looked slightly puzzled but after I had explained that I taught Anthropology, he seemed at ease and content.

Anthropology was apparently not concerned with the Church’s Doctrine.

After he had left we received via the Nuncio a big consignment of blankets for the prisoners in Kabwe. Somehow these blankets became symbolic for me. Why were we hiding our ‘failures’ that happened between the blankets?

 

Zambia was in trouble. There were riots in Lusaka and the Copperbelt when the price of mealie meal was increased again. People were tired of seeing the face and of having to listen to the long speeches of Dr Kaunda. They wanted a change, any change. The benign dictator, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, had overstayed his welcome.

In the Copperbelt the articulate Franciscan Friar, Fr. Umberto Davoli, spoke up for the poor and the oppressed. He published many articles on human rights, on Justice and Peace and on Democracy in the Bemba magazine called Ichengelo. People looked forward to each weekly issue and the Mission Press in Ndola had to increase its number of copies. Many parish priests forbade the sale of the paper before Mass, as the men were reading it during their sermons. The ecumenical Church magazine The National Mirror followed suit. At the launching of its publication, in 1972, the President himself had said that the paper should be the mirror of the nation. Now its reflection was not so friendly and tolerant as it had been at the beginning.

 

It was at the end of July when I was informed that my nice, Marja, was on her way to Zambia via Dar es Salaam. She had almost completed her undergraduate studies in African History and planned to travel by train from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi within a the next few days. At the same time I received a letter from Marga Kerklaan of the Dutch Catholic Broadcasting Corporation. After the successful film on the children in Zambia in the 1970s she wanted to make another documentary on Zambia with her team. I did not exactly panic but was rather apprehensive. My young niece in that dangerous train and at the same time the arrival of the capable but demanding Marga.

Everything went smoothly. The students were on holiday, I corrected their papers, went by car to Kapiri Mposhi and there Marja was, happy and self composed without the slightest harm, ready to enter the continent of Africa.

“I felt safer in that train than in a train in Holland”, she said.

Elderly African women had welcomed her in their compartment, given her all protection and kindly shared their food with her. It had been a marvellous journey.

We talked on the way back to Mpima. I had to get used to having such a strong willed and intelligent young woman beside me.

Once the film team arrived we both became part of the scenario of Marga Kerklaan.

Like before the script of her documentary was already written before arrival. This time it was not about children but more about the last group of missionaries, the end of an era, and about the political situation of the country. Like the first time she wanted an in-depth interview with Dr Kaunda arranged as quickly as possible.

Things were fine and cordial until the day on which her interview with KK was scheduled.

After a term of uninterrupted teaching, I was tired, did not feel too well, and wanted a tête-à tête with my niece to get to know her.

I told Marga that this time I was not to accompany her for the interview with Dr Kaunda but that everything was arranged and that she could go under her own steam. She was upset but finally left for Lusaka without me.

 

On the very day of the planned interview Dr Kaunda finally agreed to a change of Constitution and the introduction of a multi party democracy. It was the beginning of the end of UNIP, as the National Party and eventually also of the long reign of Dr Kaunda.

The interview was postponed for a few days and severely curtailed. She was extremely angry and convinced that I had known about the announcement of Kaunda all the time and had manipulated her. But how could I, a teacher in a seminary, know what was going on in State House? The days of Milingo, of direct contact with State House and with the President were long past.

Whatever I said, she remained of the opinion that I had deluded her and her film team. From then onwards relations soured. She left for the Netherlands without giving me any remuneration or even a few words of thanks for all the time spent with her.

‘Why do people from the First World treat those of the Third World so badly?’ I thought. ‘Was it still part of deeply ingrained sense of exploitation?’

I shrugged my shoulders and focused my attention on my niece, Marja. After all what use for Zambia itself were all these reports and documentaries that catered for a spoilt public in the Netherlands, so far away. They were shown in some country, on some evening, often not on prime time, and had to compete with an array of other channels.

When the documentary was finally shown, I noticed that a great deal of the footing of my contribution had been cut. Once bitten twice shy. I had finally learned that often news and data in TV are decided, not by objective reality, but by the script, made beforehand and in the dark room afterwards to the tune of the listeners and viewers.

 

After the film team had left I had finally the opportunity to get to know Marja and suggested to her an introductory course of the Bemba Language and customs in Ilondola. She accepted this with alacrity and together we drove up North, to good old Ilondola at the end of August. My confrere, Wim Wouters, was now in charge of the Language Centre.

When I had said goodbye to her and travelled back along the endless north road I felt that something of my dreams about applied research  was finally becoming true. It was primarily not to be within or by my group of the White Fathers but by young scholars, who were not going to be  restricted by the limitations of missionary institutions.

Would my superiors ever discern that these young scholars might be modern missionaries who could  be supported and with whom they should associate themselves?

 

Light appeared on the horizon of our missionary endeavour. The White Fathers regarded the celebration of their centenary as an occasion to take a distance from the local church.

‘The centenary is an appropriate occasion for the Missionaries of Africa to reflect on the future. We must take a deeper look at ourselves. We are so closely identified with the local church. What will be our specific mission in the future?’ the members of the council asked themselves[5].

Later the council decided to write a script for a short film on the life and work of a White Father, now preferably called ‘A Missionary of Africa’[6].

 

Marja came back from the course in Ilondola in October. She had learned and enjoyed it very much. At the beginning she had been taken aback by the ‘paternalistic’ approach and rather outdated method of teaching of the staff but once she took that in her stride, things had gone smoothly.  She had met a good group of church people, both within and outside the course.

She returned to the Netherlands highly motivated and just in time to complete her undergraduate studies.  

Most of the rest of the year was spent trying to ‘evaluate‘ the 140 students. It was a mammoth task. One had to give an appraisal of each student and vote for him to be allowed to continue. The students themselves feared it and during the time of such evaluations the mood among them became stressful. They all wanted so much to continue, and were very convinced of their vocation to the celibate priesthood. For some of them I could not help but have my misgivings but during these evaluations I was usually outvoted by a couple of seminary priests who had arrived recently from the U.S.A They had little local experience and, according to me, seemed to judge the men by superficial appearances.

 

Politically things were moving rapidly. A commission for the introduction of a multi-party democracy was formed. Bishop Telesfore Mpundu was one of its prominent members. He came to Mpima for a few days of rest and asked me if I was ready to continue and accept another contract. I could not give a satisfactory answer, as I felt tired and feverish. I first wanted a good medical check-up before giving a reply. All of us, the members of the staff, had worked together and by then formed a solid team. Standards were high and with the steady guidance of the Rector, Fr Stanislaus Chibwe, the seminary in Mpima had a good reputation. Superiors of some of the male missionary congregations came to see us and asked whether Mpima could accept a few of their own candidates. This was agreed upon in principle on the condition that the congregation would free one man of their own to teach or assist the management at the seminary in one way or another.

When the students left for the Christmas recess I decided to pay a visit to the Philippine C.I.C.M missionaries whom I had trained in Ilondola and were now fully engaged in the diocese of Ndola. I met them, and their Belgian leader, Fr Goossens, living in a small house in one of the compounds of Kalulushi, on the Copperbelt. I stayed for a full day and came away deeply impressed. I realised that our missionary momentum would continue, would be carried forward by young men and women from the South, the so-called Third World.

 

All by all it had been a good year and  Zambia had woken up from a long sleep of Dr Kaunda’s benign but despotic rule and gave overwhelming support to a small but extremely articulate young man from the Luapula province who promised heaven on earth.

He was called Frederick Chiluba.

 

1991 started innocently enough. I received a letter from an American friend of mine, Kevin Maxwell, with the news that he had left the Jesuits, had become an Anglican priest and was married. He was now teaching in California. He wrote that, once freed from the restraints of the Catholic Church, he was not bitter any longer and from a certain distance could even form a better and more objective opinion about the ‘Mother Church’. All very charming, I thought, but to all intents and purposes he has joined the growing group of those ex Catholics who look at us in the fray from the sidelines.  

In Rome Archbishop Milingo seemed relatively settled. The Roman authorities had earmarked one of their churches for him to exercise his ministry of healing. Within a short time many Italians flocked to him. To me he always seemed like a rubber ball that bounced back after trouble and adversity.

My workload and the number of lectures were quite high during that year, as I had been asked to teach missiology to the third year students. But life remained a pleasant routine as it had been before. I enjoyed working in the garden or in the orchard doing odd jobs with the workers. The students were impressed by my regular manual labour and some would follow my example as priests.

Unfortunately something happened in March that caused an end to the mutual understanding and team spirit among the members of the staff. 

Father Lufungulo Chashya became increasingly more engaged with politics. He was greatly in favour of Frederick Chiluba and his party the Movement of Multiparty Democracy, MMD.

He started to attend political meetings in Kabwe very reglarly. He always made sure to be back in time for his lectures, so that this did not take him away from his duties at the seminary. However at times he returned very late in the night, if not early in the morning.

One fateful morning he woke up in one of the houses of the party members after a long meeting and hours of drinking alcoholic beverages. He remembered that he had to celebrate the Eucharist for the students, jumped in his car, and drove back to Mpima very fast to be in time. On his way he swerved from the main road, hit pedestrians walking to their work place and crashed into a tree.

When he came by in the nearby police post, he heard that he had killed a father of 8 children and a young student of the Teacher Training College nearby. He was charged with reckless driving after a blood sample proved to contain a high percentage of alcohol.

 “I have been drinking” he confessed to Fr Jos VanBoxel, our dean of studies, who arrived later on to bail him out of prison.

The Rector, Fr Chibwe took things quickly in hand and told us, “expatriates”, not to get involved. I felt terribly uneasy about it all especially when dealings became confidential during the weeks that followed. Meanwhile the people of the parish and the lay personnel of the seminary started to complain.

“If it had happened to one of us, simple people, we would be condemned and imprisoned for years” they said and they added : “One of the sons of the man who was killed was on his way to serve Mass in the parish church of the Sacred Heart when it all happened”.

I became even more worried when Fr. Chashya predicted that the court case would be dismissed with a probationary warning.

“One of the judges is an ex seminarian from Uganda and the other is my friend”, Chashya said.

He was also allowed to continue teaching the students.

‘But was he not a bad example to the students?’ I thought. ‘Once ordained priests would they not expect to belong to a privileged class and regard themselves to be  above the law? Would I not sin by omission by remaining a passive onlooker? If I were to narrate the incident to my friend and family, what would their reaction be’?

 I decided to act. I could not prevent people obstructing the cause of justice but, within the confines of the seminary, something had to be done.

I talked with the other members of staff and they all agreed that Fr Lufungulo Chashya should be suspended from his teaching post at the seminary and asked to return to his diocese what ever the verdict would be.

I made an appointment with the Rector and informed him about my opinion and that of the staff. I thought it would be a simple matter, a man-to-man discussion.

In stead he became very angry, told me to leave things in his hands and not to upset the normal running of the seminary.

“Fr. Chashya has to go”, I said simply, “if not, I will go”.

In a rage Fr Chibwe took his car and left us alone for a few days. Most probably he needed  to think things over and to have a rest from it all. We remained on our posts and continued teaching, and leading the seminary as before.

He returned with Bishop Telesfore Mpundu who called us for an emergency meeting.

 “Let us wait until the case has been settled by the court”, he suggested.

“No”, I replied “this is an internal matter as regards his example to the students. He should leave the seminary now and not a day later ”.

Fr Chashya was suspended, told to pack his belongings and stay in a presbytery in Kabwe in order to wait for the court case to come up. The bishop left after a few hours and when he shook hands with me, I had that feeling that he was not displeased with me having done the dirty work.

But the good atmosphere of cooperation in the seminary was spoiled. The students were very subdued, the Rector never looked us in the eyes anymore, while we waited for the case to come up in court. I was not surprised about the final outcome. Father Chashya received a probationary sentence of two years. His driving licence was taken away but he was free to go, back to his diocese.

I felt very down after it all. Was the final outcome of our hard work going to be a privileged class of priests?

 

Fortunately my friends David and Julie Woolgar paid me a visit on their way back from the wedding of their first son, Justin in South Africa. Justin had become a doctor and was married to Elize, an Afrikaans speaking colleague, in the government hospital. Their marriage had been blessed and registered under a big ‘sausage’ tree by a Dutch Reformed Minister.

We toured around to various places. David donated a new bicycle to the catechist in the outstation of Chowa and went fishing in the Mulungushi dam. On the way back I lost all the oil my car. When I looked under the engine I saw that that the plug of the sump had gone. We went back on our tracks but did not find it, until David had the good sense to have a look at the engine. The plug was stuck between the bars of the front wheels. Local villagers gave us a bit of old oil from a hammer mill and with that we reached Mpima safely.

Academic life became more crowded. I wrote articles, prepared and gave seminars and attended conferences and meetings. I took part in a discussion, initiated and sponsored by eminent theologians of the Lutheran Reformed Church of Zambia, to explore the possibility of establishing a faculty of theology at the University of Zambia. But we, the Catholics, and in particular the Jesuits, some of whom taught at the University, were against it.

 “We already have a department of Religious Studies in the School of Education”,  they argued.

Nevertheless I came away from it delighted. Finally, after so many years, we were trying to find beauty and were on our way to discover the treasurers in the field of local religious culture.

 

I went on leave on 26^th of July and returned to Zambia at the beginning of October.  These two months passed quickly. It was a real holiday. I was declared fit and healthy by the doctors and went sailing with my brother Jan and his wife Jean near Amersfoort. On an early Sunday morning I slipped quietly out of their home  and joined a couple of  people on their way to church. I ended up in the, originally Catholic Church of that lovely town. Since the Reformation  the church had been in the hands of the Dutch Reformed Church.

I picked up a small pamphlet at the back of the building and read that during the ensuing religious wars, iconoclasts had destroyed the altar and all the statues and pictures. After this wanton  destruction and desecration it was said that the rubble lay  knee deep and took days to remove.

Why were religious people so fanatic at times?

On the place where the altar must have been, there was now a kind of memorial shrine to one of another Dutch hero. The focus of attention was now directed towards the high pulpit, along one of the pillars where the dominee delivered a long and beautiful sermon. But after he had finished I could not help waiting for the Communion Service to follow.

The lady next to me must have felt my stress almost instinctively. She opened her handbag and solemnly gave me a peppermint. This was, indeed, something of a real communion.

 

My niece, Marja showed me her university and the ‘Africa Centrum’ in the middle of Leiden, near the railway station. Her plans to go to Africa had not changed. After her experience in Tanzania and Zambia she seemed even more determined. My life as missionary had always been within the structures of a church institution and I wondered how she would manage without it.

We went to see her brother Paul, the second son of Jeanne and Jan. He lived in a house boat in Groningen where he was intent on carving out for himself a life that would be totally different from the normal one. I also had a long chat with Gerrie TerHaar who had almost completed her doctorate on the subject of Archbishop Milingo[7].

Ena, the wife of Tadze Wixted, with whom we had been friends since Mulilansolo 1967, came to Holland together with her daughter Anna. It was a sad visit as she and Tadze had gone through a painful divorce settlement. She was on her way to get the children in school in the UK or in Ireland and buy a small house for herself in England.

We went to see some of the touristy places of the Netherlands. Before departure by North Sea Ferry, they had a meal in the Kokosnootstraat, prepared by my father. After they had left my father said: “What misery parents cause their children when they decide to divorce. I could see it on the face of little Anna”.

 

The period of Computers and other electronic equipment had come. With the advice of Cor, the husband of my sister Nelty, we bought a strong Toshiba laptop and a printer. Armed with this  I boarded the plane back to Zambia. In Nairobi I met my confrère, Ferdi Tillmann, who laughed when he saw me walking around with the printer and laptop hanging in front and at the back of me. In Woodlands I heard that my old friend, Adrian Smith had had a minor heart attack in the U.K. and had been told to loose weight drastically. Sr Astrida Furlong, so lively and happy when we were in Mulilansolo, was now diagnosed to have osteoporosis and was in constant pain.

During my leave the political scene had finally changed. After the M.M.D. had expressed their unhappiness with the results of a commission on the new constitution, as it retained the entrenched power of the President, a deal was brokered by the church leaders and in August 1991 a revised version had been passed by Parliament.

Among the White Fathers nobody said much about NSIMA, my dream of a entre of documentation and research. The talk of the day was still about AIDS and the care of those afflicted..

I agreed to stay for another year of teaching in Mpima and celebrated Christmas night with the simple farmers in the outstation of Chowa. Some of the parishioners came to the celebrations in oxcart to the chapel. During my sermon I heard the oxen mewing and chewing their cud. It must have been like that on that cold night in Bethlehem.

 

After the general elections Frederick Chiluba took the reins out of the hands of Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the Father of the Nation. Just before the beginning of the New Year he declared Zambia to be a Christian Nation without so much as asking advice from the main line churches.

Had the people fallen from the frying pan into the fire?

1992 passed gently in Mpima, one day after the other.

Marja met Archbishop Milingo in Amsterdam on the day Gerrie TerHaar defended her Doctoral Thesis. It became even more clear to me that research, inspiration and creative thinking would occur among a growing group of young academics and not so much among my fellow White Fathers, who were growing older and increasingly less inclined to change.

Professor Richard Gray asked me whether I could contribute to a conference on Religion in Africa. I had to decline as my workload in the seminary was not becoming any lighter.

After the elections, the country became gradually subdued, not only because of the ravages of Aids but also with rampant privatisation. Some of the members of the new government seemed even more rapacious than the leaders of the previous UNIP party.

In February Marja wrote me that she was on her way to Namibia, to a fellow student, called Jan-Bart Gewald, who had just completed his doctoral studies. From there she travelled via Harare in Zimbabwe to Zambia and arrived in Mpima a few days before Easter. She caused a bit of a stir among the seminarians as she did not come alone but with a couple of other young and lovely looking women students doing fieldwork in Africa. Their arrival made me, the old shikulu, the grandfather, very popular.

Together we travelled to Malawi during the holidays via Chipata and Lundazi. She celebrated her 21^st birthday in Lundazi. The superior of the mission, Fr. VanKessel organised a small party in the evening and let her phone home to her parents in Amersfoort. From there we crossed the border into Malawi and reached Mzuzu, where, in the past, the White Father Bishop Jobidon  had built his headquarters. After his departure the Kiltegan Fr Roche as been appointed as administrator. He was the main force behind the famous pastoral letter of the Malawian bishops against the injustices of Dr Banda Kamuzu’s reign.

When we arrived in his home, the place was deserted. We heard that he had slipped out of Malawi a few days before in order to escape the wrath of the President.  We visited a class- mate of mine in Nkata Bay, Herman Paul (Happy) Van Hasselt. He was not  young any longer and seemed to be stuck in the old, pre-Vatican theology. We were of the same vintage but through the years we had grown apart from each other[8].

From there we made a long journey to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, where we stayed a few days. We finally returned to Mpima via  Kachebere and Lusaka. All these days I had the opportunity to talk with my niece and came to the conclusion that she was very determined to focus her studies, if not her further academic life, on Africa. This came like rays of sunshine after a cloudy day.

I was just in time for leading another seminar on African Traditional Religion, organised by the Zambia Association of Sisters. I expected a small group of participants but to my surprise people arrived in great numbers. On the first day they numbered 61.

It was heavy going but I enjoyed it tremendously. At last my dreams were coming true.

 

After it was all over I talked with members of a Zambian family near Mpima. They were successful farmers, lived in a well-constructed house and even had  a small guesthouse on their premises. I asked them if my niece, Marja, could stay with them for a week in order to learn something about their way of life.

 They agreed immediately and looked forward to her arrival. She went there on the 15^th of May but returned the next day. “I have seen everything”, she said simply.

 I knew then that she was inclined to become an anthropologist who loved spending weeks, even months ‘in the field’ to become part and parcel of a given group of people but more of a historian.

She wanted more British background in African studies, and I suggested an M.A. in SOAS, at the university of London.  She went home to Holland at the end of the month. Soon afterwards she informed me that she had been accepted in Edinburgh for an M.A.

 ‘London was too expensive’ she wrote.

 

Africa is beautiful but at times can also be very cruel. It was in that same period that I met again Lorna Harvey, the daughter of Sir Steward Gore Browne. She came with her husband to see me in Mpima to talk about her father’s library.

 “You are always welcome at Shiwa Ngandu for your research”, she said “We will make a room free for you”.

Shortly afterwards two criminals broke into their house in Chisamba. They shot both of them at close range and disappeared with a few of their little valuables. It almost seemed the end of a story, a romantic narrative started at the beginning of the century by Sir Stewart Gore Browne himself[9]. Their children remained behind, bewildered. I did not dare to ask them about their grandfather’s library.

In June the young Bishop Paul Lungu SJ visited us. On 15 March he had been consecrated as the bishop of Monze, to succeed Bishop Corboy and was now in charge of the Seminaries. He made a fine and reassuring impression and thanked  each one of us individually for a job well done. “The Jesuits can be proud of a man like him”, I thought.

He worked with fervor and joy in his diocese until April 1998, when he was tragically crushed to death by an on-going lorry on the wrong side of the road.

I was asked to prepare a seminar for the students in the Department of Education at UNZA, and spent my weekend giving short conferences nearby. Things were going well, I had become kosher again but still, I was not content. The NSIMA project became an item on the agenda of the Regional Council of the White Fathers but this was followed by a long and protracted silence. I realised that I would have to overcome a big mountain of resistance, only to be moved by ‘faith and prayer’.

In the middle of the year there was again some trouble among the students. The poor example of Fr Chashya might have  lingered on. Ten of them had overstayed their permission to go to Kabwe. In fact they stayed away for a whole weekend and returned late on Monday morning bleary eyed and sleepy. This time it was Fr Rector himself who dismissed them stante pede. Most of them came from the diocese of Solwezi, in the North West of the country. A few days later its irate bishop, Severino Potani, arrived and demanded that we re-instated his students as quickly as possible. This time the entire staff responded as one block and refused. As retaliation Bishop Potani took all his students away from the seminary and send them straight to Rome. I could not believe my ears when I heard that in Rome the college of the Holy Spirit accepted all of them, without even asking for a report or any information from us. The only condition was that the bishop paid for their journeys (quite a considerable sum) but board and lodging was provided for by that strange College of the Holy Spirit.

I was not surprised that at a later date, that diocese had great trouble with its priests.

Rome seemed to be her own worst enemy at times.

The shortage of lecturers remained acute. As has been written above it was solved by the arrival of a couple of Sulpician priests from America. They belonged to an order that specialised in the training and education of the clergy. They did not deem it necessary to follow an initiation course, to learn a language or know something of the country’s culture. They came with the lay-out of the old Roman system and started teaching and forming the Zambian young men the day after their arrival. On the whole they did a good job but it was now very evident that our beloved Roman Catholic Church had made a  ‘swing to the right.’

We, the generation of Vatican II, seemed to be in trouble.

 At times pressure became so high that one almost wished that the Vatican Council II had never happened. To me it sometimes seemed a bit like mental cruelty.

 

In September Marja went to Edinburgh. This time she was accompanied by her partner Eric Sommeling, whom she had known since high school. Eric had almost finished his studies in computer engineering at the prestigious university of Delft. He did not want to settle down to  steady employment by big companies like Philips but looked around for work in the wider world Also he was of the opinion that this could well be in Africa. During their journey through Great Britain, they met my friends, the Hannahs and the Woolgars.

The last months of 1992 passed almost uneventfully. In Lusaka things did not go as I had expected. A new vice provincial moved in from rural Chipata with his own ideas. He was of the opinion that more attention had to be paid to new candidates.

I was asked to act as a resource person during the coming post-capital meeting. The Church was preparing itself for the African synod to be held in Rome. It was hundred years ago that the founder, Cardinal Lavigerie had died. I was also told that, after many years of lobbying, the NSIMA project was rejected out of hand by the councillors.

 “We are sitting on top of old dreams”, was the opinion of one of them.

Their attention was still drawn to the pandemic of Aids. It gradually became known that probably 20% of Zambia’s population was HIV/AIDS infected and the country prepared itself for a long perid of disease and care for the afflicted.

The year 1993 started with an avalanche of requests for talks and seminars. These invitations  came not only from within the country, but also from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. I had to decline. My knowledge of African religion was limited to the peoples in Zambia. However the main reason was that I did not feel healthy and strong any longer. Life at Mpima was pleasant but with the heavy load of teaching and training also hard for someone who was near 60 years of age.

After his graduation Eric went to South Africa to explore the possibility of employment in that country. In Belgium our capable Chewa language teacher Fr Karel Hannecart died after a heart transplant and in the Netherlands Fr Harry Weghorst, one of my classmates whom I had known since 1945, died of cancer of the stomach. At the same time Pat Menzies, with whom I had worked in the refugee camp in Mulanga during the Lenshina troubles in the 1960’s re-appeared on the scene. After his marriage to Pauline he had two daughters who were now grown up. Could we renew our friendship?

By then it had became clear that President Chiluba followed the egocentric adage: ‘Each one for himself, and God for all’. The little money the nation possessed disappeared in the pockets of the new leaders and other shady figures under the cover of ‘privatisation’.

At the same time the nouveau riches  asked the poor to ‘bite the bullet’ of scarcity and dwindling resources. Sr Celine Namalambo, a religious sister then working in one of the compounds of Lusaka, could not take this any longer. She managed to enter Parliament and addressed the assembled Members of Parliament, most of them men. “Did they know what they were demanding from the poor, while living in luxury themselves?” she asked them.

The local church became very involved with the demands of Justice and Peace and with that entered into the difficult field of national politics.

The M.M.D. party that originally stood for multi-party democracy, became nervous, re-imposed a state of emergency and detained 17 members of the opposition.

 

However life in Zambia kept its laughs and hilarity. Some of the personnel at the Post Office in Kabwe opened private letters when they thought these might have money in it. They also stole expensive magazines coming from overseas.

One of our teachers, the American layman Pat Filter, noticed that copies of The Economist were missing. He went to Kabwe and discovered to his dismay that a vendor was actually offering them for sale in front of the post office. He exploded in a rage, stormed inside the building and did not stop shouting until the Postmaster in charge promised that this would never happen again.

During the 1990 we lost a great number of letters, and by that many contacts and friends. Will those who searched our letters for money and then threw them away ever realise what they did?

It became 20 years since the National Major Seminary of the Catholic Church in Zambia Zambia had been established in Mpima. I was asked to write a short history on the events of those two decades. It proved to be the first, hesitant, step into the art of writing history. After it was done and well received I decided to collect data for the history of the White Fathers since the year of Independence in 1964[10]. I began to interview my confreres, including those who had left. Most of the last category had successfully settled down in marital life and employment. They showed little bitterness or hostility.

 

‘As missionary I had become a little authoritarian Nazi’ one ex White Father wrote, ‘but that wore off very quickly. I have now two under-aged children at a time my brothers and sisters are grandparents.  I have no pension for a life time of voluntary service, something   that is quite worrying at my age, but I am happy and would do it all over again’.

 

Despite being slightly cut off from academic pursuits, I continued writing. We were visited by a regular flow of researchers from abroad and from UNZA, the national university in Lusaka. Tony Simpson a teacher at St Paul’s, the secondary school for boys along the Mulungushi river near Mpima, was writing his doctoral thesis. Ian Goldman, whom I had taught Bemba in Ilondola, was employed by a British Development Corporation and was stationed in Kabwe. The senior Norman Long arrived to visit his son, a budding anthropologist and Megan Vaughan & Henrietta Moore passed by for a short interview[11].

Eric, the partner of Marja, stayed a few days, after a long journey by train through South Africa. He was taken aback by the situation in South Africa itself but had found employment as a lecturer in Computer science at the Technical High School in Harare in Zimbabwe. This position would  exempt him from national military service in The Netherlands.

It seems that, in a small way, I had achieved what I had set out to do so long ago in the 1960s:  bringing academics and missionaries together in order to be of more professional service to the country.

Teaching the students had become a pleasant routine. It was my last year at Mpima as the White Fathers had decided to withdraw their personnel from this major seminary.

The dean of studies, Jos VanBoxel was appointed to the White Fathers formation house in Kahangala, in Tanzania, and Henry Menoud accepted to work at the Generalate in Rome. The parish around Mpima became an outstation of the Sacred Heart Church in Kabwe with local priests in charge. I was told not to go there any longer but concentrate on a far flung place called Chowa, where nobody wanted to go. I do not know how many marriages I blessed in that far-flung outstation but each time I returned to Mpima my pick-up was filled with protesting chickens, gifts from happy brides and bridegrooms and ready for the pot!.

At the end of July I corrected the last papers of the students and said goodbye to them[12]. I had enjoyed my years as teacher and I thanked them for their cooperation.

At the beginning I had been quite apprehensive. Would I be able to get used again to the daily routine of seminary life? But right from the beginning I was made to feel at home by a friendly staff and keen students. I wished to have been a bit younger so that I could have taken part in their sports and entertainment activities. The Teaching of Anthropology within the context of African and Christian Religion had been the beginning of a long journey of discovery of the beauty of Zambian Culture.

There remained only one nagging question in my mind. Would the obligatory imposition of celibacy on these young seminarians be a bonus or a hindrance to their life as secular priests? 

 

Back among the White Fathers in Woodlands I gave an important lecture on Inculturation to the Bishops of all the AMECEA-countries (Association of Bishops Conferences of Central and East Africa) that lasted all morning. I argued in front of these illustrious dignitaries that their lines of authority had also to be ‘ínculturated’ that is, not so much exercised from above to those below but rather via the more conclave consensus of a round pattern, with the people of God in the middle surrounded by the spiritual leaders.

They listened and applauded politely but somehow I felt that my argument had not gone home and needed repetition in one form or another.

During that address I felt really ill with fever and sat down exhausted after it was all over. Fr Peter  Henriot S.J. was so kind as to facilitate the discussion afterwards.

 

At the beginning of August I left for the Netherlands. A day before I met David Woolgar, looking for work in Africa. He borrowed my little car and drove slowly to the South.  Later I heard that he had been employed by Tate and Lyle, not in the South or in the sugar plantations of Mazabuka in Zambia, but in Uganda.

The Regional Superior asked me if I was ready to be a resource person for on-going formation and inculturation and be posted at Woodlands. It would be a strictly regional appointment for the benefit of the confreres[13]. I agreed in principle but wanted first of all a thorough medical check up before taking up a next assignment.

 

In Holland my four sisters, Toos, Riet, Fiet and Nel were there to meet me. It was a joy to see them. We all went back to Kokosnootstraat where my father waited with the coffee. He seemed in excellent form despite the loss of my mother and his increasing years.

It must have been around that time that the last  Dutch White Father was ordained: Ferdinand Van Campen who came from a neighbouring parish in The Hague. The great missionary movement of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands had come to an end after more than a century of impressive achievements. It was not very clear what the future would bring. Were the next  missionaries to come mainly from the South, from the Third World?

I first paid a visit to a small funding organisation to try and get some funds for the work I intended to do. It was called A.M.A. (Association of Mission Advice), set up by the Conference of Religious Men and Women.

The Netherlands had entered a secularisation process that put an end to the role the Religious had played since the Church’s emancipation in the middle of the 19^th century. As there were no vocations to the religious life any more, many houses, schools and other institutions of learning became vacant and had to be sold so as to make way for modern development. This brought a great amount of money in the coffers of these old orders and congregations, especially of those of the women congregations. As a sign of good stewardship they decided to establish a fund, the interest of which would be used for the needs of the Third World. A small group of Consultants were employed, whose task it was to judge each application from the Dutch missionaries, still working in the field.

I thought that my NSIMA project would be just right in the line of AMA’s preferences. But at that time I was not successful at all. The person in charge, an ex-teaching brother preferred projects that dealt with Religious Education. I came away a bit down and wondered whether my NSIMA project would ever get off the ground. There was indeed still a long way to go.

It was also a time when The Netherlands became aware of the great influx of people, originally called guest workers coming from abroad. Many were not guests any more to whom one said goodbye after having been employed but had acquired Dutch nationality and were there to stay. They were now  called  ‘allochtones ‘ while the ‘original’ inhabitants were the ‘autochthones’. This was the first signs of a demarcation, if not apartheid, that would hold the, until then, tolerant population of the Netherlands in its grip during the coming decades.

 

In October I finally underwent  serious medical treatment, not in The Hague, but in the more gentle hospital of St Jan in Weert, near Heythuysen, where many of the physicians had worked in Africa. I regarded the visit to the doctors as a mere routine and asked the internist for some pills against bilharzias as I was passing blood in the urine. He sent me on to the urologist, Dr Langeveld, who immediately advised a more thorough examination.

After the usual series of tests, he called me to this office, asked me to sit down and said quietly:

‘We diagnosed some polyps in your bladder, which are malignant. However you should thank the good Lord as they are only in an initial stage. If you would have come nine months later, it would have been far more serious’.

He arranged an appointment for an immediate operation.

 

I could not believe my ears and went back to my room in Heythuysen in a daze. Cancer was a disease other people got. Was this really the beginning of the end?  What had I done? What had caused it?

I thought of the time I spent in Siavonga when we swam in the Kariba at our hearts content. But I thought also of the pollution caused by the poisonous effluence of the lead and zinc mines in Kabwe, near Mpima. There had been a research some years before that had shown Kabwe to be one of the most polluted towns of Zambia, if not of the whole region. Or was it the prohibited insecticide the manager used for the fruit trees and vegetables in Mpima’s garden? Perhaps it was just one of those ailments people get at a certain age, the first signs of their mortality?

Why should I be an exception?

The rather simple surgery was painless and went very smoothly. Dr Langeveld kept my attention by talking all the time. As a young man he had wanted to become a missionary but had found the prospect of a celibate life too daunting. In stead he had worked for some years in a hospital in Kenya but came back once he married and had two daughters.

According to him a person could react on the occurrence of cancer in two ways. One could sit down passively and wait anxiously for things to happen or one could continue positively and take it into one’s stride. He asked me to come back for another test after six months. I recovered quite quickly and decided to take the positive advice. After all I felt healthy and was not dead as yet!

People around me were very supportive. Benny Bohan, my ‘soul mate’, wrote that his father had had the same illness but lived for many happy years after it. Esther Gordon of the Grail in Pinner near London, hoped that I would remain vigorous and determined enough to fight whatever attempted to attack me.

The publisher Brill was preparing my Doctoral Thesis for final publication. They wanted drawings and diagrams and some clarifications. It was all done via phone and fax.

I was back in Lusaka on the 29^th November to see what I could do as a resource person for the Society of the White Fathers in Zambia. A new parish had been opened in one of the compounds of Kitwe, called Kawama. A young Kenyan, Charles Obanya, was placed there as a ‘stagiare’ (placement). This new endeavour seemed to me like a fresh cutting on an old and wrinkled cactus.

 

On the 8^th of December, something happened that would weaken considerably the presence of the White Fathers in the urban areas. The Frenchman, Fr Jean Loup Calmettes had done a sterling job since his appointment as Secretary of Justice and Peace at the Catholic Secretariat. He had contacts with members of the Government, set up a powerful National Commission, prepared pastoral letters for the bishops and directed seminars and conferences all over the country. He had even given a retreat to a group of Members of Parliament and other high ranking officials.

During the first week of December he gave a long and demanding seminar to the diocesan group in Chipata. Afterwards he jumped in his car and drove the 600 km. to Lusaka with the intention of reaching Kasama next day, another 800km to the North. On the bridge at the Luangwa river, he gave a lift to a few soldiers.

He must have fallen asleep. 140 km away from Lusaka he crashed into a tree so vehemently that the steering wheel hit his chest. The soldiers walked to Mphanshya, a nearby mission post, and the ambulance of the small hospital took him to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. The day afterwards he was operated upon. I went to see him, talked with him and later he got out of bed and sat at a table to eat.

Then on the early morning of the 8^th of December the night nurse found him dead in bed.

He was buried, not in Chilubula near Kasama, as Fr Palma Levesque had been, but in the cemetery of the Jesuit mission in Kasisi, near the National Airport.

The year ended sadly after the loss of such a capable man, who had done so much for Justice and Peace in the country.

 

At the beginning of 1994 we were told that the Vice-Regional, Jean Luc Gouiller had been appointed as the new regional for the next six years. He had mainly worked in the Diocese of Chipata but had also international experience as member of a Catechetical Commission, set up by the Bishops of AMECEA to update the teaching of Catechesis. He was a healthy and vigorous person, used to a remarkable out-put.

He told me that, as a resource person, I could occupy the room next to his office and gave me a small grant of $1.500. Until then, this place was used as storage room by Brother Paul Donders, who was the bursar of Woodlands at that time. The room was filthy, especially the floor, covered as it was with hard cement, bitumen and oil. It took me more than three weeks to get the place reasonably clean. I scrubbed the floor tile by tile. Some of those who came for a visit and saw me on the floor and called me jokingly the new houseboy.

Mr. Chibombo, a retired carpenter, installed cupboards along one of the walls. He did an excellent job. I could finally occupy my office at the end of February and install my little computer, printer and other office equipment. The next step was the founding of a working team of missionaries who were interested in the work of inculturation. With them we arranged a series of meetings. Most of them were  enthusiastic, ready to explore various possibilities. The dwindling group of White Fathers needed attention. After having been part of the local clergy for so many decades, we were seriously searching for a new identity as missionaries. Some of us , but not all, wanted to ‘break out’ of the stranglehold of parish maintenance and to move on[14].

Move on, to where? The trouble was that canonically the status of missionaries as such did not exist in the Catholic Church. This nomenclature has to be affixed to a recognised status within the existing hierarchy. One could be a missionary priest, a missionary brother, even a missionary layperson but never just ‘a missionary’.

 We felt that we should take a more prophetic stance, be part of the periphery, blaze a trail into the future but all these ideas remained mere words It would stay like that for the next decade during which most of the middle aged and eventually elderly men fell back on to the demanding routine of parish work. This had to burn itself out and I had to be patient.

 

In April I left Lusaka for Harare in order to meet Marja and Eric. After obtaining his degree Eric had entered employment as an instructor in computer science at the Technical College in Harare and Marja had started research for her Doctorate in African History. They had taken the plunge and would from then onwards immerse themselves in the rough and tumble of life in Africa. We were joined by the Woolgars who came for a holiday. Tony Coninx was so good as to give me the use of on of the minibuses from the Communication Department of the Catholic Secretariat. Its starter motor was faulty and every time the vehicle had to be pushed into action. Despite these hiccups we had a wonderful time. We drove  to a camping site near Masvingo where we met up with Justin and Elize, who had come all the way from Pretoria.

After they had gone back and I had said goodbye to the rest of the party at the airport of Harare, on the 24^th of April, I returned to Lusaka in one go, without stopping the engine, not even on the border at Chirundu.

 

I was called back to the Netherlands for another medical check-up and left Woodlands on the 17^th May, just in time for the Hinfelaar Family Camp in Helvoirt, in the middle of Brabant. It was early in the year and the nights were still cold. I discovered that among the members of my extended family a new generation was taking over, who had little comprehension of what I was doing in Africa.

On the 31 May the urologist took out another malignant polyp. The bladder kept bleeding for a long time. I became feverish and weak, and had to stay in Heythuysen for several weeks. It gradually dawned upon me that my time in Zambia might come to an end and that I had to stay under doctor’s supervision in the Netherlands for the rest of my life.

But what was I going to do?

I left for Lusaka from Gatwick on 15^th of July in order to wind up several affairs and say goodbye to my confreres. There I found that my office, next to the Regional’s, which I had cleaned so arduously, had been occupied by the Administration and my few possessions were put in a cupboard.

As regards church policy a great change had taken place: from trying to get people on their feet, self reliant and strong, now people had become the object of compassion, of aid and of care. It seems as if the country had become one big hospital divided by ‘patients’, those who had Aids, or were HIV positive and ‘the carers’, those who looked after the sick. 

Jan and Jeanne, Eric and Marja arrived from Harare for a few days in Siavonga.  As a sign of  remembrance Jan cut my name in the plaster on top of the entrance to the patio.

It all seemed like the end of an era for me. My mood was low but people kept encouraging me to remain fighting and try and overcome the disease.  Prof Richard Gray wrote to me in those days:

‘You have so much experience and accumulated wisdom. All that you have to offer to the church both in Zambia and elsewhere. It demands that you take care of yourself now that you will continue this mission for many years to come’.

 

On 11^th of August I finally said goodbye to a country in which I had been since 1958, more than 35 years and went for my appointment to the urologist on the 16th.  Gradually the dark clouds seemed to disappear from the sky when the urologist told me that the malignant polyps had disappeared.

While recuperating in Heythhuysen, the rector, Hans VanBreughel, suggested to me that I apply for a teaching post at the Missionary Institute in London. He also asked me to give a small talk during a reunion of old students on what had happened in Rwanda, the terrible genocide when almost a million people had been slaughtered. I tried my best but found it difficult, as I had never been there. 

I met my ex classmates Pieter Reesink and Joop Harding, both happily married. They came with their wives and children.

 

I finally decided to have a go at a teaching post at the Missionary Institute in London.(MIL).

Towards the middle of September I arrived in Oak Lodge, the house of the White Fathers, along Totteridge Common. Workers were treating the house for dry rot, redecorating the walls and painting the rooms.

The house was well occupied: There was my contemporary Fr. Peter Kelly a bit at a loose end after a tough life in Uganda, and some students, like Mezimo from Brasilia and John Abobo from Ghana. There was also my classmate, John Morrisey, who, after many years of work in Nigeria, had been diagnosed as having the beginning of  Alzheimer’s disease.

My friend, Frank Carey was around and offered me some work in his office. I made an appointment with Fr. Aylward Shorter, the Rector of the Missionary Institute, (MIL) and talked with the Deans of Studies, Frs. Scudiero and Costello.  They told me to make a formal application for the post of Anthropology and to wait patiently.

Oak Lodge was situated on a small but attractive estate. It needed care and I filled my free time by working in the garden around the Victorian house. I visited the Ladies of the Grail, in particular Esther Gordon, in Pinner for a Prayer Workshop and said Mass for secondary school girls in a nearby private school run by the sisters.

It became December with the days short and dark, that Fr. Stan Dye was appointed as the superior of our community. He was a relatively young man who had made his novitiate in Chilubula, Zambia. While working in the Sudan, he caught some unknown virus that caused him to become paralysed from the waist down. He had to give himself daily injections to keep the progress of that disease at bay and to palliate the pain. It was moving to see how he coped and remained determined to live a full life in the service of the people around him.

I visited Oscar Holleman, now working as an archivist in the Netherlands embassy in London. Both  Gerrie ter Haar and her partner  Steve Ellis came to see me. We met during a rendez-vous in one of the pubs of the inner City and talked for many hours. They encouraged me to start writing.

Gradually life in the U.K. fell into place. A few days before Christmas I got word from Fr. Scudiero, the dean of studies. The post of teaching anthropology had gone to a Dutch SMA missionary, called Wiel Eggen. Could I start with lessons and seminars on African Traditional religion and Spirituality at the beginning of January?

I spent Christmas quietly with John and Mary Hannah who were happy to have me. We went to the Anglican church for carol singing and the traditional nine lessons. Their son David was now serving as a military officer in Bosnia and we prayed for his well-being. At the same time I heard that four White Fathers had been massacred in Algiers by some fanatic fundamentalists. We would not see the end of this.

Just before New Year’s Eve I received a letter from my aunt, Sr Hugolina, the only surviving member of my mother’s brothers and sisters. She felt very old and weary, and asked me if I could conduct the service during her burial.

I slept gently into the New Year but felt that religious fundamentalism of all sorts had stuck up its ugly head and that globally we were in for a rough time.

 

 

I began the new year 1995 with writing  articles, seminars, lessons and workshops and went   each day to the Missionary Institute to make use of the library. It was not a sinecure. There was no footpath for pedestrians except through muddy clay fields. Everything was grey, the sky, the trees, even the originally brown squirrels had become grey! At times it caused me to be in a poor mood and I found things more primitive than in Zambia. I needed a pair of strong rubber boots to reach that Institute of learning, walking  along such expensive and prestigious estates.

I met Joe Brankin who had been in Lusaka during the 1970s. Comfortably settled as secretary of the National Mission department, he showed me the house and introduced me to the lecturers. They received me politely but did not show any great enthusiasm. More successful was the meetings with the students. I had known a number of them as ‘stagiaires’ in Zambia and in Malawi. Now they were students again, somehow treated again like students during the 3 to 4 years before their final ordination. Among them was Bernhard Udelhoven, who had become interested in Anthropology during his period ‘in the field’. He found it very difficult to settle down again as an undergraduate student. I suggested to him to register for a course as an auditor at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Before the course started I made a quick trip by coach to the Netherlands for a check up with the urologist. Everything was in order and I returned with fresh courage.

From then onwards I dived, as it were, into the sea of courses and seminars. I taught ATR and Missiology. The seminar on mission spirituality was fully subscribed and we needed a bigger room and more chairs. Some of the students approached me and asked if I was willing to assist them with their assignments and papers. I did this kind of work with joy and great interest. It was good to be in touch with the young generation and to know what motivated them. Besides this I could talk about my great dreams: to render missionary work much more professional than it had been in the past and  to be of better service to the people in Africa.

The Rector of St Edwards, the hostel where the WF students stayed, invited me one day for a conference. I do not remember what I said during this talk but later, I was told that I had upset some of the formators. These formators seem to belong to an inner circle of their Congregation. They knew each other like the proverbial old boys and appointed one another to important positions. According to me some of them had been in formation much too long and lost touch with reality, with the hard work in the mission fields.

It became upset when on a rainy day  I received a letter from my Regional Superior in Zambia ‘As I was now fully employed by the Missionary Institute’, he wrote ‘would I not be ready to leave the ‘Zambian circumscription’ and become member of the British Province?’

 I exploded. Why were they so eager to see me leave a country, of which I had been part for 37 years?  Fr John Gould, the down to earth Provincial of Great Britain, laughed and advised me not to get excited.

 “We are inclined to put people in slots or categories”, he said. “Think about it”.

 I replied that I did not need time to make up my mind. If my health improved, I was still ready to return to Zambia[15].

By then I felt fine again and the future looked bright. The British Province asked me if I could assist them with the many appeals which were made in the parishes of the country. Each year the Missionary Society was allocated a diocese in which parishes they were allowed to make an appeal for money for the missions. I decided to accept the challenge and asked my classmate, Fr John Sandom, also in Oak Lodge, to help me with the sermon.

These appeals took me to places all over England during the weekends. It was tough but also very attractive. On a Saturday afternoon one would arrive in a parish and find the parish priest waiting with a bunch of keys, even the ‘key of the drinks’ He would see to it that I was comfortable, hand over the whole parish, and give himself a free weekend.

In some of these inner city parishes it was obvious that in the past there had been three, even four priests, ministering to a hundreds of parishioners, mainly of Irish descent. Their children had moved on to better housing and a higher status leaving their dwellings to immigrants who were not Catholic. I roamed through all the empty rooms of the presbytery, which now, with the smell of dry rot, felt hollow and deserted.

The sacristan and the volunteers were always very kind. When they saw that I was lonely, they invited me to their homes. I made the appeals in and around Birmingham, Coventry, but also along the south coast.  One parish priest in Highcliffe remained with me all the time and challenged me by saying just before Mass:

“I will double the amount of money you collect during your appeals, so do your best!” Later that day, before the last evening Mass on Sunday afternoon, he took me for a walk along the beach. He told me that before becoming a priest, he had been in the army and served as an officer. He was of the opinion that now the Catholic Church was too kind, too forgiving, talked too much about love.

“We need more discipline and strong rules”, he said.

 

I became more involved with the gardens and the beautiful grounds around Oak Lodge and made it a point to do a few hours of manual work each day, weather permitting. One day I was among the roses, in front of the house, when Stan Dye came out.

“People from the Midlands have phoned just now and ask for a chaplain during a forthcoming pilgrimage to Lourdes. What about you? Will you be willing to join them?

I had never thought of such a pilgrimage and, to be honest, was not highly interested in places like Lourdes and Fatima. But, to my own surprise, I heard myself saying yes and agreed that  I would could make myself available during the Easter recess.  

It became a journey I will not easily forget. They told me to arrive early Sunday morning around 7 a.m., stand in front of an Underground Station and wait for a coach to pick me up. I stood there all alone in the cold morning, waited until 8 o’Clock and began to wonder if its was not  a big hoax  But, suddenly, from behind the corner of the street a big coach loomed up and stopped in front of me. I climbed inside and was greeted joyfully by the people, and given a front seat, next to the lady operator. As soon as I had settled down she announced pertly through the microphone: “Father, will now lead the rosary for us”.

How long ago had I recited the rosary in English, complete with all the different mysteries?

I tried my best but made a mess of the mysteries, the ‘trimmings’ and the pilgrimage prayers to the great hilarity of the pilgrims. But the ice was broken. Afterwards I went around and became acquainted with all of them. We crossed the Channel and drove into the direction of Lourdes. It was Sunday and the pilgrims wondered whether there would be a Mass that day. There happened to be a Mass Box in the coach.

“Well” I said “let us stop along the road, and do like in Africa on safari and celebrate the Eucharist wherever we are”.

France has excellent lay bys along the highways, equipped with wooden benches, places for a picnic and even a small playground for the children. I prepared the altar on one of the stone tables and introduced the theme of the day. Not only our British pilgrims but also other people who happened to pass by, gathered around that improvised altar. We prayed together in the  afternoon sunshine of the south of France in spring.

Later, much later, some of the participants wrote:

“We will never forget that Mass along the road. Somehow it determined the success of our pilgrimage”[16].

In Lourdes we took part in the ceremonies as much as we could. The food was simple, accommodation almost Spartan but the atmosphere remained excellent until the very end. One early morning I queued up for the healing waters, found by St. Bernadette. There were not many men around and before I knew it,  it was my turn and I felt myself being dipped in the icy cold water. I walked back fresh and happy.

One English-speaking bishop gave the sermon in the underground basilica. He asked the congregation to pray for their priests:

“Do you realise” he said “that the life for a middle-of-the road priest who wants to remain faithful to his vocation, becomes a real nightmare at times”?

We sang hymns all the way back, visited the convent in Nevers where Bernadette had stayed and had died. After a long journey we finally stopped in front of that same Underground  Tube Station in London. They sang a departure song, thanked me and waved me goodbye.

I knew that most probably I would never see the singing pilgrims again but felt that something very sublime had happened to all of us in that week.

 

From then life seems to be on the rebound. In June I saw Benny Bohan and together we went to their house near Windsor. I also visited the place in West London where the college of Corpus Christi had been and where I had followed a course on Catechetics in 1966. The buildings were still there but they looked abandoned.

Were had the euphoric mood of the 1960s gone? Were was Hubert Richards, Peter de Rosa and Charles Davies ? Were we all the men and women who had followed the course in its short life? The college had been closed by Cardinal Heenan and the resolutions of the meeting in Liverpool of the National meeting of the English Pastoral Council, held in 1980, had gone into oblivion.

The Anglican Communion decided to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood. People had discussed the issue for and against almost every day. When it finally took place, a number of priests in London decided to join the Catholic Church. Among them was our friend from Chipata, John Kleiberg, now the bishop of Fulham. Others joined us at the MIL and for some time there was no shortage of lecturers at that Institution. One of them was Fr Tim Edgar, a young man with wife and small children. It was the first time in my life that during a long meeting  I heard someone saying: “I must excuse myself to go and collect my children from school”.

At home, in the Netherlands things were not going well with my huge family. My eldest sister Toos, who had always been so near me all these years, phoned me one day and told me in tears that her youngest son Jeroen, had been diagnosed with serious brain tumours. The doctors would try chemo-therapy but the prognosis was not favourable.

During a work shop on Prayer at the Grail in Pinner I heard by phone that Sr Hugolina had died, the last person of the ‘Vermeulen’ family of my mother. I got a lift from one of the Dutch participants and even managed to cross the borders without a passport or identity card. 

When I finally conducted the funeral in the convent garden, I hardly could control my tears. She had been part of my life, contributed to my vocation for so long and most probably prayed for me during her endless years of pain and suffering in that small room.

 

Benny Bohan, like a good soul mate, invited me for a trip in Ireland. I got myself a cheap plane ticket via Stansted and found him waiting for me in Dublin with an old banger. We visited Dublin, went to the theatre, walked through Phoenix Park where Pope John Paul II had been welcomed by over a million people and ended up in Templelogue with the White Fathers. There I found my old teacher Chris O’Doherty and my class mate Tom Bradley.

After this we set out to roam through Ireland and enjoy its country sight. The weather was fabulous, sunshine from early morning until late in the evening. The Irish themselves kept warning me that this was very unusual. In fact they said they now saw hills and mountains they normally never saw when cloudy. We enjoyed long walks, conversations with the locals and drinks in the pubs. There were pilgrimages to Clon-mac-noise near the Shannon and to Glendaloch the place of a hermit called St Kevin. Benny even took me to an old well, dedicated to St Hugh, my patron saint. Its water was said to cure persistent headaches and colds. It had not rained for so long that we found the well to be dry. He also managed to get me to the place near the river Boyne where our Dutch ‘Stadhouder’ William, King Billy had beaten the Irish. I expected a wide river. It was only a small stream, again with little water in it. We returned via the headquarters of the Missionaries of St Patrick at Kiltegan, a beautiful estate donated to their founder by a Protestant owner. Later I wrote an article for the society’s magazine.

I returned to Oak Lodge, rested and with a renewed interest in Celtic Religious Culture. Some of its tenets seemed very similar to those of the Traditional religion in Africa.

Before the opening of the academic year I made another trip to The Netherlands in order to visit my sister Toos, her husband Chris and of course their son Jeroen. I talked with him in front of the hospital where he was being treated. He knew that this was only palliative and that the end of his life was near. It was so strange to realise that this young, vigorous young man with a loving wife and two children was going to die. Jeroen himself remained peaceful and seemed to have no difficulty in preparing the hymns and the prayers for his funeral.

 

I went back to Oak Lodge and the MIL , concerned about the welfare of my family.

There I met Fr Fritz Stenger with an exciting message. Fritz had joined our community a few months before to study African Philosophy at SOAS. He told me that the lecturer, Louis Brenner, was granted a sabbatical on the condition that he found replacements for his lectures. Could I assist him with lecturing to a group of undergraduates and give tutorials on ‘Religion in Africa?’.

It was a great challenge and at that moment the temptation to drift away from Africa and settle down to a life of academic pursuit, was tempting. But what would be the outcome of it? Was it not going to be a cul-de-sac from which no return would be possible? I would be teaching for one year an elite and small group of well-to-do undergraduates. After a long thought I declined the kind offer. Professor Brenner was disappointed but understood my reasons for the refusal.

The year started with tutorials, seminars and lectures. Together with Fr Friz Stenger  I acquired a working knowledge of the African Philosophy of Mudimbe, Appiah and Musole. I summorised these books for the eager students

Life at the Mil became really interesting when I was made a member of a set of committees that prepared the affiliation of the Institute to the University of Middlesex with the possibility of obtaining an M.A. degree. For me it seemed a step ahead as regards missionary professionalism.

 I never said much during the more technical side of it all but assisted with advice and the lay out of lectures. I felt as if something important had been reached in my life.

Christmas came. I decorated the Christmas tree with Aylward Shorter who did this with the same precision with which he would write a book or give a lecture.

 Our community life in Oak Lodge improved by leaps and bounds, thanks to the hard work of Stan Dye, the superior of the community. He even gave me a small colour TV for personal use in my room. I did not make use of it very much as I was so busy with the MIL, but it remained a lovely gesture.

 We wanted to get to know each other in more detail. We men, living next to one another, rubbed shoulders all the time and usually managed to avoid tension. But we did not know much about each others’ background, about the life we had lived, and why we had become missionaries. We decided to allow each member of the community to talk about his youth, his background, his past, his desires, and his vision for the future.

Right from the word ‘go’ this became a success. Events, personal experiences, stories of pain and joy emerged about we had had not the slightest inkling of before. Later on, Fr Donnelly, the oldest member of the group, said with emotion in his voice:

“This is the first time I was invited to talk about my past and listened to. It was a wonderful experience”.

Others mentioned the things that happened to them during and after the war. Again, it was the first time they could speak about it and I realised that some had been left with a trauma.

Once the Missionary Institute was affiliated to Middlesex University we were asked to lecture, to instill knowledge and to discuss the matter according to the modern methods of the day. All subjects became modules, with much less lecturing or teaching. The students were encouraged to actively taking part in the subject matter. One had not to come to class with a prepared lecture but rather let the teaching evolve from the students’ knowledge, questions and insights. I loved it and took to it with enthusiasm.

Interest in Africa increased, also in the national churches. I was invited to become a  member of the Africa Forum but had to refuse as I was too engaged with the MIL and, by then, I hoped  to be able to return to Zambia, when possible.

Despite the upgrading of the Institute some of the lecturers who had been there for a very long, kept to the old atmosphere, the ‘churchy’ approach of the past. Sometimes I wondered if the MIL would ever get rid of its seminary background with little correcting and impartial influence from outside. I became quite shocked during a meeting of the so- called assessment board, when the marks, the examination results of the students were discussed.

Most of the students were candidates of various missionary orders, or congregations, which together, formed one consortium. These groups not only provided the necessary finance but also wanted ‘their students’ to do very well. I had already discovered that these students were protected from impartial assessment  by the teachers who came from the same congregations. They wanted me to give high marks to their students and was reprimanded by some of them.

“You gave some of our best students a very low evaluation”, they said “We want you to give higher marks”.

I refused adamantly and the more they insisted the more obstinate I became. I found this a sign of corruption and wondered if that was done more frequently by some of the lecturers. They also were in the habit pf ‘stealing’ students from some of the running seminars which they regarded of lesser import than their own ones. It happened several times that the list of those who wanted to be part of my seminars was very high, well occupied, but that slowly one after the other would wipe out their names. They were told to do so by ‘their’ lecturers of the group to which they belonged.

 

Gradually I became disenchanted by these manipulations. At the same time three married, former Anglican, priests had joined the staff, eager to take over more modules in order to increase the income for their families. I knew that A.T.R. and African Spirituality plus the seminars and modules were on the list of subjects they would love to take over.

Meanwhile I received frequent letters from Fr. Louis Oger in Rue Friant. He was very ill, exhausted and knew that the end was near. Was I ready to return to Zambia to take over the baton from him and take charge of the language centre in Ilondola? Could I come to Paris, to talk things over and receive copies of his articles, notes and also his computer diskettes?

I never replied to these letters of invitation and regret it to this day. True enough, my attention was wholly drawn by the misery of my sister Toos and the plight of her son Jeroen. I also vied away form having to speak French. But all this was not a valid excuse.

 

On the 10^th of March I heard that my nephew Jeroen Lampe had died. I travelled to the Netherlands as quickly as possible. Everybody was in tears. My sister wept and wept. She was utterly devastated.  The preparation of the funeral service was left almost entirely to me.

The service was held in the reception room of  the cemetery in the dunes, near Loosduinen. It was tearful and, right in the middle of it all, my sister Toos burst out in a horrible wail, unable to stop her utter grieve. People say that for a mother the death of one of her children is one of the greatest calamities that can overcome her. It was certainly like that in her case. I went to her to give some comfort but wondered whether she would be able to take up the threads of life in the future. Here she was, deeply grieving, my happy-go-lucky teenage sister, who I remembered chatting away, waving me goodbye on the platform of railway station in The Hague. Something had gone out of her forever.

 

I had to go back to teaching in London At the end of the month, just before Easter, our Superior General Gotthard Rosner arrived for an official visit. He was pleasant, kind and simple. It was easy to talk to him.

A few hours before he left I made an appointment and asked him if he would allow me to go back to Zambia, now that I seem to have recovered so well. He replied that there was nothing against it as long as I did not need any medical attention for at least ten months.

From then onwards things went very quickly. I submitted my resignation from the MIL at the end of the academic year. Within a week my courses, seminars and subjects were taken over  by other lecturers. It was a quick decision, taken on the spot without any reference to the ‘major superiors’ in Lusaka. That must have been the reason that I received a strange letter from Jean Luc in Lusaka at the beginning of April:

“You are now in the B-category with Zambia giving and the UK receiving”, he wrote. I had not the slightest clue what he meant and could not help bursting out in laughter. Perhaps the authorities had invented new slots and I fitted in their B-category.

Well, ‘to be or not to be, that is the question!’.

Life became pleasant and free with the vision of a possible return in mind. I attended an interesting conference, organised by the Africa forum on ‘Dialogue  with African Indigenous Religions’ in Selly Oaks near Birmingham. Archbishop Kalilombe was present and as usual charmed the attendants with his happy smile and banter. I gave a paper on the contribution African women could make to a better understanding of Indigenous Religions.

When I returned on the 24^th of April, I heard that Fr Louis Oger had died. I was terribly upset and could not forgive myself for not visiting him in Paris when he had called me so insistently. I got myself a cheap offer of a ticket to Paris via the new Euro-rail through the ‘chunnel’ and arrived in Gare du Nord within a short time. There I went by Metro to Rue Friant  without any trouble.

I hardly managed with my poor French but happily I found Johan Tappesser, one of my students from the Ilondola Language Centre, with whom I could talk in English. I also met  Maurice Pageault, who had taught me Theology in ’s-Heerenberg in the 1950’s.

The funeral mass was said in Bry-sur-Marne, one of the houses for the elderly White Fathers,  where Fr Louis Oger had died. The rector had taken things in hand and acted according to a strict routine.

“To us he is one of the most important persons in Zambia”, I said “Please, let me have a look at his body and say a prayer”.

 “For me he is just one of many”, the Rector replied. “I have buried more than thirty missionaries since I was appointed to this house”, he added.

The Eucharist was a simple affair, celebrated in the chapel of the house. Fr. Jean Pierre Belin, who had taught me the rudiments of Bemba in 1958, conducted the singing. He looked old and burnt-out but was happy to see me[17]. How long ago it now seemed, and  so much water had gone under the bridge.  Afterward the ceremony the coffin was taken away. Nobody seemed to accompany the deceased to his last place of rest. Our Fr. Louis Oger, who did so much for the North of Zambia, our former Regional who had been so dear to us, now ended up buried in a, for us, unknown, place somewhere in or near Paris.

There was a cup of coffee afterwards. I tried to talk with Oger’s family: his sister, a nun and his brother, a healthy farmer from Normandy. But unfortunately my French was too poor to sustain a long and interesting conversation. Anyway I was not given much time as the father who had given me a lift from Rue Friant, wanted to go back as quickly as possible.

“But what about his academic papers, his articles, his laptop, and his diskettes?”, I asked.

The Provincial of France, Fr François Richard, who had worked in Zambia but had not been present at the funeral, had given permission to his representative to allow me in Oger’s room for a short time.

When I entered his room I noticed that Oger had left a small letter for me with his blessing, saying goodbye, but also indicating what he wanted to be taken by me, on my way back to Zambia. I got hold of everything, just in time, before they came to call me for the lift back to Rue Friant. While I was rummaging in the room a young girl came in, introduced herself as the grand niece of Fr Oger.

“May I take something of him with me”, she asked “I had always such admiration for my grand uncle and his work in Africa”.

I gladly allowed her to take whatever she wanted while the other members of her family were drinking coffee.

When I sat in the car, sadly and dejected I remembered Oger’s words:

 “Hugo, cheer up, smile with your eyes and continue the good work”.

He of all people had always had a clear understanding of my plans and visions.

I promised myself to continue his work, perhaps in more modern way but very similar to what he had started so long ago at the beginning of the 1960s.

 

Back in London  my time was totally taken up by the preparation for the final affiliation with Middlesex University. Both the Director and the Dean of Studies approached me and asked whether I could not stay for another two years, sign a new contract. But Zambia was beckoning,  especially after the death of Oger. Someone had to continue the work. My earlier decision remained final. Later the Director, Fr Costello sent me a letter of thanks.

 

‘We will miss your discrete but very re-assuring presence in our midst. Your keen interest in African Spirituality and African religions and your unassuming leadership in conducting your modules was just what we needed to keep alive and strong the typical ethos of our place, which is made of modesty seriousness and clear commitment. I would be simply delighted if within your possibilities of your future employment you would be available to give us a contribution in the field of your expertise. Personally I will miss you greatly, your availability, your support, your willingness to contribute was very much encouraging and it did facilitate enormously my task in promoting  a spirit of trust and dedication among the teaching staff of the Institute. May the Lord give you a big reward for that’.

 

Before I left, Fritz Stenger organised a trip to the ‘Rising Sun’, the local pub, nearby. The house was full and we had to stay standing, cramped near the bar to drink our beer. As usual I had order half a pint of beer. When we were in a deep discussion, I reached out for my glass, wondered that it seemed to have become bigger, but thought nothing of it, until some customer suddenly called out : “Someone had stolen me pint!”.

While talking I had taken the glass of someone else, near me, along the bar. There was great hilarity when I had to confess that I was the culprit. I bought the poor man another pint and, on order of the laughing barman, I had to pay a small gift in the poor box as it was allegedly the traditional custom of someone who had made a mistake or a fool of himself in the bar!

 

I managed to finish off all affairs on the 24^th of May, said goodbye but told the community that I would come back to pack properly, before my departure to Lusaka.

I arrived in Holland in time for the family camp, but again it was so cold, draughty and wet.  Together with my father and my youngest sister, Carla, we celebrated Pentecost in the church of Helvoirt. When we drove back to the camping site, my father said :

“I do not know how people will manage without religion in their life”. Times had indeed changed. Had people to live under poor conditions in order to remain religious?

After the camp I went straight into hospital for a prostate operation. The hospital had arranged for this during one of the previous examinations. Fortunately there were no traces of cancer anymore.

 I was out of it within three days, happy that it was all over. I asked the urologist about going back to Africa.

“You can go anywhere you want”, he said “as long as you return annually for a routine check-up”.

 These were sweet words and sounded like music in my ears.

I will always remember the patients I met in that little ward. The rich builder, who confided to me that he had avoided paying income tax most of his life and now felt guilty and the much younger man who was comforted by his loving wife.

We celebrated the 90^th birthday anniversary of my father on the 21^st of July. With the help of a handful of pills each morning and the loving care of his daughters he stayed in good health. After the Eucharist, the feast started and lasted until late in the evening. As main present we gave him an expensive rocking chair. He would sit in it, receive and talk with his children, grandchildren and great grand children until the very end of his long stay on Gods’ earth. Under the cushion of the seat everybody knew that he had hidden his cash, credit cards and his check books.

During a quick visit to Heythuysen I found Fr. Fons Cox in bed. He had cancer of the prostate and knew he would not live long. I had met him for the first time on the day of my ordination when he was the master of ceremonies in the parish church of ’s-Heerenberg and he had cared for me so well when I got my first bout of malaria in Kayambi.

I asked him if I could interview him for the sake of history. He agreed to the morning of the next day. I expected the interview to last one hour or so. When I entered his room he pushed himself upright in his bed and, with the help of a couple of cushions, was ready to start talking. He talked about his life from his very birth onwards. It lasted all day, with  sessions in the morning , afternoon and evening.

Fons Cox had always been known and admired for his knowledge of languages and for his talents in drawing and painting. What I did not know was that he always had been seriously dyslectic in arithmetic, in anything that had to do with counting and accounting. As a primary school boy he had suffered a great deal as, at that time, this phenomenon was not diagnosed and not treated with understanding. Young people who could not count were regarded as stupid. Even on his deathbed he had never heard of the different kinds of dyslexia and seemed to feel better, once he had found the word in his dictionary.

At the end of the long interview he gave me his manuscript on parts of the Bemba grammar. A few weeks after this interview, on the 24^th of September, he died peacefully in his sleep.

Death remained around me. In August I heard that Ron Storer, the scoundrel, with whom I had been kapenta fishing in the 1970’s, had died in Siavonga of cirrhosis of the liver. He left his two white sons and one, very young coloured son, to fend for themselves. The kapenta fishing had never become a success, due to his lack of discipline. He left a few valueless government bonds and a badly built house to his children.

Peter Miller, the father in law of Ginny Bond, met with a fatal accident near his prosperous farm in Lilayi. His sons took over, opened a holiday lodge and a starting a building enterprise.

I also heard that the ex-brother Paddy Hayes, was not healthy any longer and was repatriated with his Zambian wife, Regina and his eight children to his home country Ireland. Later Regina and most of her children did very well in life. Regina had been a ‘Sub A’ schoolgirl in Mulilansolo and we thought that she would leave school at puberty and become one of the many simple village women. Now she ended up working as a computer secretary in Cork and owning a large house.  Paddy died a few years later.

At home in the Kokosnootstraat my father completed his memoirs and had them published for his progeny. Especially the beginning was well and movingly written. Since the day he and his brother and sisters were left on their own by their mother in the middle of The Hague, he had come a long way and looked back with contentment on a life well spent.         

I met Marja and Eric who had left Harare. They foresaw the trouble, which was looming in Zimbabwe and wanted to be away before the storm. They thought of going to Zambia, most probably with Eric teaching computer science at the university. I was delighted and hoped they would succeed.

On the 23 August I said goodbye to my dad, comfortably seated in his new rocking chair.

“Bye bye”, he said “Do not stay away too long. We all love you and want to see you again”.

In London I paid a quick visit to Fr. Ryan, now in a home for the elderly away from his little parish near Euston. He was a bit disappointed with the conduct of Dan Eiffe .

“He will remain a good lad and be a good father to his children”, he said.

 

In Oak Lodge I packed my belonging and carried them high up into the old Victorian loft. They would stay there for many years to come.    

Finally, I boarded the plane in Gatwick and reached the brilliant morning sun of Zambia on the 14^th of September. Fr Klaus, the airport chaplain was there to welcome me.

I had come back cured of a cancer and ready to try and start a new phase in my life.

 

  

 

[1]              Kabwe is, of course, also the place where at the beginning of the 20th century  the skull and some bones of the Home Rhodesiensis were found by a prospector. They are preserved in the British Museum.

[2]              Some of these Kabwe warriors were killed during the 1990’s due to a horrible plane crash, near Gabon, West Africa.

[3]              After editing by Benny Bohan, it was published in 1994, under the title Bemba-Speaking Women of Zambia in a Century of Religious Change, 1892-1992.

[4]              When Frank McCauliife left for South Africa, his confrere Benny Bohan took over and held the task of prino chaplain  for many years. Capital punishment was not abolished but never applied. In fact, due to poor  treatment, most of the men, condemned to maximum sentences died of Aids or related diseases.

[5]              RCM Dec 90, /10.3

[6]              RCM. 91/37

[7]              The Thesis was published in 1992: Spirit of Africa, Hurst, London.

[8]              H.P. Van Hasselt died  in November 2000

[9]              See Lamb, C, 1999, The Africa House, London, Penguin.

[10]            The first period, from 1891 onwards had been recorded by Brian Garvey and was published in 1994: Bembaland  Church, Leiden. Brill

[11]            1994, Cutting down Trees. Oxford, James Currey

[12]            See lists of names in  WFA,Zambia.

[13]            See R.C.M 13/93 and 25/93

[14]            Presentation of a Paper by Author , Meeting. WF, Ndola 26-2-94.

[15]            See RCM, 14/95 and discussion: 33/95.

[16]            Letters, Mrs and Mr Reading, Leamington Spa.

[17]            He died in December 2003.

 

 

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