|
The Appeal |
Contact |
| An update from Chipata (Zambia) February 2010 | Fr David Cullen |
| News from Chipata (Zambia) September 2009 | Fr David Cullen |
| News from Chipata (Zambia) April 2009 | Fr David Cullen |
| News from Chipata (Zambia) January 2009 | Fr David Cullen |
| Books for the Prayer Centre (August 2008) | Fr David Cullen |
| Robbie Dempsey writes (August 2008) : I am forwarding this email letter on to you as you may like to add it to the website and it shows the PELICANS up-to-date contact with the Missions through the amazing work of Fr Dave Cullen. I am sending him a batch of books from time to time to build up his little library. I think he has a room set aside for this facility but uses it for other emergencies instead. |
Keep us in your prayers as I do you, and may this New Year bring you many blessings. Sincerely yours, |
|---|
Mphangwe Prayer Centre Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Greetings to all the Pelicans I hope and pray that the Lord showered on you many Easter blessings. You all had a very special place in the Masses I offered at the Easter Eve and Easter Day Masses. I’m sure that I was also included in your prayers. We had plenty of time to pray during them as the evening Mass lasted four hours, but the day Mass a mere three and a half. Both at Easter and Christmas at the day Mass the people offer us gifts, what they have to give like groundnuts, bananas, eggs, chickens, beans, cabbages and pumpkins. We had over 20 baptisms plus four others entering the Church on Easter Eve, the end of quite a long haul as they would have begun their journey as catechumens at the beginning of 2007. In many ways they are better instructed that a number of our ‘cradle Catholics’. Anyhow, long though the ceremonies might be, they are very vibrant. Only the small children go to sleep on the church floor at the evening Mass out of tiredness, not boredom. At the morning Mass our youth put on a very meaningful sketch as they also did a very dramatic mime at the Way of the Cross that for us involves a couple of kilometres walk through the hills, ending at our small Marian chapel. Many parishioners spent the whole of the Sacred Triduum at the parish. As they ask for no more than a reed mat on the ground and organise their own cooking under a shelter outside we can put up a good crowd, especially now that we have 3 very spacious rooms in our new parish building. Next week again our parish choir will be back as on Low Sunday our local Radio Maria is coming to record the Mass. You are great people the way you have given us your help us spiritually and with those very generous donations. I’ll be repeating myself I know, but I thought of giving you a fairly comprehensive picture of where your help goes. We now seem to be at the end of the rainy season and are dearly hoping and praying that we won’t have as last year what was probably one of the consequences of the climate changes in the world, heavy rains after what we thought was the end of the rainy season that badly affected the harvest. This month people will begin harvesting and we shall heave a sigh of relief as these last months have been very difficult for people whose stocks of maize, that which forms the staple food of mealy meal here, had run out months ago and there was a lot of hunger and for some there still is. Many of the subsistence farmers who make up the vast population in our area were not able to find the money to pay for fertilizer, the price of which was doubled last year, and are likely to have a poor yield. Yet whilst at times the diet of some people is reduced almost to living on mangoes during January and February I have not heard of anyone dying of hunger in our area although there is surely malnutrition. Every day we still get requests for ‘piecework’, odd jobs that can provide a little money for food or some item of schooling like shoes or uniform particularly for those in post-primary school who are sent home if they don’t have them. Another request is for money to get to the hospital some 20 miles away as people can’t afford to pay the bus fare of about £3 to go and come back. We also have a lot of requests for loans, especially for school children who can’t pay fees. These might be very little according to our standards, about £30 to £40 a term for boarding secondary schools and often a lot less for day schools, yet for people here that is a lot of money, especially as families are large and in almost all families there are orphans of relatives who have died, usually of AIDS, to be cared for. We also gave a number of loans to buy fertilizer. People promise to return the debts when they have harvested whatever cash crops they have planted, cotton, hybrid maize, sunflower, groundnuts and occasionally tobacco. Some people do return the debts, though it doesn’t happen all that often I have to say, not due to bad will in many cases, but there are always unforeseen expenses, funerals being amongst the most common, sickness, thefts, school expenses and so on. Those who do return the loans quite often see that as a justification to ask for another loan. Anyhow the gospel says something about not asking for loans to be returned and the level of poverty all around is such that the loans have to be very soft. On my last visit to Chipata, and again today, I bought powdered milk and porridge for mothers who are HIV positive and are not allowed to breastfeed their children after six months; or maybe it’s a grandmother who has to care for a baby that a grand-daughter had ‘by accident’ and has gone back to school, or for a grand-daughter whose mother has died. I also bought some medicines, especially for malaria and common illnesses as I run a mini-clinic myself. Sometimes the local clinic runs out of medicine or it’s difficult to get there of carry the child there, the nearest clinic being a walk of about 6 miles. I’ve also regularly buy blankets for our SVP as quite often people have to sleep on the floor with nothing but sacks as their ‘mattress’ and have no blanket. It is especially the elderly we try to help. Then to most weeks I buy quite a lot of exercise books as also at times ball pens and pencils. It quite often happens that children can’t go to school as they have no exercise books or a pen and their parents have no money to pay for these things. I usually get the children to come on Saturdays to do a bit of ‘piecework’ for what they need. We have two link roads with the main road, one of 5 km on one side and the other 4 km on the other and, especially after the rainy season, they need a lot of maintenance. It should be the job of the Council, but it seems to fall to us to maintain the roads. Part of the piecework we give is to carry a few stones or broken bricks to one of the pot holes in the road. Both adults and children are used to carry heavier loads on their heads than I can lift, and knowing the kind of work we ask, they bring old paint tins or buckets to do the work. Several weeks ago though we had a meeting with all the local village chiefs asking them to mobilise the people to carry stones to fill a gully that is making one of the roads impassable for cars and even ox-drawn scotch carts. Three times now the people have come in large numbers. We shall have to buy some cement to make mini-bridges that can make certain parts passable even during the rainy season, but it won’t be a great expense. We hope that in a couple of weeks we shall be able to use that particular road as it will save us an enormous detour when going to an out-station. Another thing I was arranging last week was to invite to Mphangwe a Sister Janine, a Canadian nun who has been many years in Zambia and is quite artistic. We have that chapel that I mentioned earlier as dedicated to Our Lady up on the hill above our Centre which is a favourite with the retreatants who come here and from which you have a stunning view of the countryside around us, but which is also badly in need of renovation. We need curtains, repainting and some basic furniture as also beautifying the statue of Our Lady and buying a tabernacle so that we can keep the Blessed Sacrament there; and all that will cost a bit. This month too we are restarting our literacy classes that proved very popular last year. We had someone from the local council to give a training session last year and 10 of our better-educated young people attending it and did very well over the year. The Council promised to give a little ‘thank you’, about 15 pence a lesson, but it has not materialised. Not to discourage the teachers I have given them each something to encourage them, asking them at the same time to begin again to teach. The lessons should in fact be starting this week and the Council has promised to provide a few more text books. We had to stop the classes last November as the ‘pupils’, mostly women who never had a chance of going to school, had to concentrate on work in their fields.
|
We’re also planning to start this week with some short courses in tailoring, carpentry and cooking, especially for young people who have not been to school or had to drop out early. We got a bit of help with tools, knitting needles and wool from the local Council but will have to do quite a bit of supplementing. For a start we would like to buy two sewing machines. We have a local tailor plus a skilled seamstress who will help with instructing the young people. It seems that a lot of them want to follow the courses are so are joining our Kadzakalowa Youth Club. Brother Simon, together with the club’s youth leaders will organise them. Another expense is that we soccer season is about to start and the local clubs want to launch a league. I get footballs from India of good quality and cheap. Already we have had a number of local clubs asking for ‘piecework’ to earn a ball. As our new road needed a lot of work on it, both we and they were content with the contract. In fact we have already handed out 20 balls in exchange for work on the road, mostly to the boys’ clubs but also several for the girls. Yet I still have to pay a debt of $650 to a fellow White Father who sold me his share of the balls we got last year from India. I get a lot of requests from the priests in other parishes for the balls too so will probably have to arrange another consignment in the near future. As sport is the only healthy pastime that young people have in a rural area like ours, I see it as a very good thing to be able to supply balls both for the boys and the girls. Having to keep the area round the Centre quiet for retreats we have had to abandon the sports ground in our own property that is too near to us so we have had to look elsewhere for something suitable. We thought we had one for the modest price of about £120, but having handed over the money the relatives of the one who sold it to us objected and part of the money has been returned. However the owner agrees that the youngsters can play on his ground and in the meantime we have found someone else willing to sell a field that could be used as a sports ground. Br Simon will look at the suitability of the field. There are still needs at the Centre itself. We have completed the building of a large structure some distance from it for the parish where I now have my office, although there remains quite a lot of work for its completion. We have a local carpenter who is gradually making benches and chairs and we will also need tables. Only the 3 offices have so far been painted. We have built another room for two toilets and wash basins, and have just purchased them and are looking for a local plumber to install them. We will need to paint the 3 very large rooms that will be used as classrooms and meeting rooms during the day and dormitories at night. We shall also have to buy curtains plus more window fittings. At the Centre itself the large conference room that has been used up to now by the parish as a dormitory when there was a parish event on needs a certain amount of repair work and repainting, as also more tables and chairs. Likewise we have to turn one of the larger rooms in the Centre into a library which will call for paint, curtains, shelves etc. Again what we’re badly lacking is a photocopier. Several times we have had sessions here, recently one of a nuns’ congregation holding their General Chapter. They had to travel 30 km to get material photocopied as we could not help them. One day too we shall have to try to install a loudspeaker system in our church where the acoustics are not good. Also there are times when we have such a crowd here, for instance all the Charismatic members of the diocese or all the Legion of Mary members that we need to have a Mass outside and again there is a problem. Still another thing we want to set up for the parishioners is a TV. We are the only ones in the area with electricity though there is the odd family that runs a TV, often black and white, on a car battery. At present when the parishioners spend days here we let them come and watch the one we have in the hostel where Fr Mark, Br Simon and I live, but space is often not enough for all and anyhow we sometimes have to say no as we have to keep the area quiet because of there being a retreat on. We also let the children come in on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. We do have an old one that I was given as a present when I left my former parish in Kabwata but we will probably need a dish as the hills around us make reception rather poor. If we buy a new one hopefully we can use it not just for entertainment, but also for educational purposes. Another thing that we do is to try to help launch with a loan small businesses, food stalls, selling second-hand clothes and raising chickens for example. Also every Wednesday and Friday I have a 3-person team to receive those in need of a small loan, for school children, getting to the hospital, journeys to funerals of relatives, fertilizer and other needs. Also every Thursday we have our St Vincent de Paul Society that comes for the really poor. As I said above we try to get blankets for some of these as also keep a stock of mealy meal and beans to ensure that the hungry can have enough for at least a couple of meals. The Easter holidays are near. We have already been asked by some families if we can continue the practice we have done in the past of offering piecework to school children for fees and school uniforms and more are coming daily to ask. For children who have a place in secondary school that cannot be paid for is to exclude the possibility of their getting out of poverty and also doing something for their own families. We have already signed up 6 who seem to have special needs, but will surely be inundated with requests from many others. Another pressing need is for a new water tank. Our plastic one has developed a few leaks and whilst we’ve tried to patch it this kind is very resistant to patches. We plan to make another with bricks and cement. The parishioners will bake the bricks but we shall of course have to buy the cement. Still another need we have to help out with, again offering piecework, is to enable groups to travel within the deanery for various meetings, Legion of Mary, St Anna, the Nazareti, both these being women’s groups, the third order of St Francis, youth groups and others. Deanery events involve long distances, the nearest parish in the deanery to us being 30 km away. In the same vein, this week we are showing an ecumenical spirit in giving work to our neighbours at the Reformed Church of Zambia, known locally as ‘Adutchy’, from the original Dutch Reformed Church that came from South Africa to launch it here, just as we Catholics are known as ‘Aroma’. The youth group needs to travel for a choir session, so they will work digging gravel that we can put on our roads or, for the girls, carrying some bricks and stones and smoothing out the rough places. Perhaps all this gives you some idea of how we will use and are using the money you send. Again many thanks indeed for your help without which nothing could be done. The diocese is broke so I have always to source for funds from people like you. May the Lord continue to bless you all for your loving concern and help,
Sincerely yours, Fr David Cullen, WF |
Mphangwe Prayer Centre 30th September 2009 Greetings to all the Pelicans I hope and pray that you and your families are well and that there are plenty of good things happening in your lives that are evidence of the loving care of the Lord for you. I’ve now been back in Zambia for getting on for two months and as usual we cannot complain of being under-employed. Here in Mphangwe no doubt as with you all life is busy enough. We’ve already had quite a few groups for retreats, such as the Pentecostal Fellowship, about 600 of them, who were with us for 4 days, doing a lot of praying, even rather late into the night and using loud-speakers to enable us to share their hymns and lengthy prayers and words with them! Then too we’ve had about 50 members of one of our Catholic Women’s organisations called the Nazareti, married women who seek to follow the path of St Elizabeth of Hungary, concerned for the strengthening of family life and helping the poor and sick. They came from 3 parishes in the area for a 3 days retreat. At the same time we had a parish council plus a week of preparation of about 50 youngsters for confirmation. On the Saturday I was the ‘bishop’ giving the sacrament. We’ve also had a deanery meeting of representatives from the 4 parishes that make up our deanery, the nearest being about 20 miles away, to prepare for a 3-days program for closing the ‘Year of Evangelisation’ that has been the diocesan apostolic task for the last 18 months. At the same time we had to open the ‘year of the priests’. We had the actual event from 10-13 September with a good many hundreds here for the occasion. Our parishioners did a lot of work to prepare grass-made shelters for people as the Masses, talks and many other events had to be held outside; youngsters were collecting firewood and there were many other kinds of preparation, including building ‘bathrooms’, outside affairs and built with long grass. Anyhow though it all demanded a lot of work it cost nothing but the effort to get it all set up in time. I was wondering if all the time, effort and money involved was really going to be worthwhile, but I was happily surprised and do believe that the Holy Spirit was indeed with us and did some good in the hearts of those who took part. Whilst in Lusaka we bought a much-needed photocopier and then a week or two afterwards from Malawi a loud-speaker system that we really needed for the event of the closure of the year of evangelisation event and will also need for many other such events as well as use in our church where I’m told the people at the back can’t hear me. Also, whilst in Lusaka we bought 155 footballs and netballs for our football and netball league from a local firm, partly a charitable organisation called ‘Alive and Kicking’ that even gives a number of balls away. Besides selling these balls they also give away quite a lot to schools and I’m hoping that schools in our area will eventually profit from the firm. A few balls have gone already, either bought (for about £10 where the teams have a bit of money) or in several cases for youngsters coming to do ‘piecework’ for a ball. The first group was a group of about 15 small girls, the oldest looking about 13, who had walked a good 8 miles to ask for work. We could not refuse more especially as they had no food with them to help them along, and though we gave them some fruit as well as the ball after their work, they still had the 8 mile walk home. Then, a week later, we had a group of about 20 young boys not much older than those girls who had walked even further, probably about 10 miles, again to ask for piecework for a ball and they too had no food with them. We gave them something they said they could use to buy some scones and bananas. Whilst I was in Lusaka I was, as usually happens, tracked down by some of my former ‘clients’ in Kabwata, for school fees in several cases, also starting a small business that I had apparently rashly promised to provide for Maureen and her friend before I went on leave. I had also promised a soft loan to Steve to buy from the Council a permit to set up with his friends a mini-business of washing cars. Steve is a good young man who does a lot for the junior Legion of Mary in his parish and even at diocesan level. The SVP from the very poor compound of Misisi in Kabwata parish also came on behalf of a few of the poorest and then I was asked to help a woman who had come from close to the Tanzanian border some 600 miles away to sell several bags of very small dried fish called kapenta, only to have them stolen from her in the market. She was grateful that I at least paid for one of them. Then, too, a young boy came who had lost track of his uncle at the market where they were selling some goods and had no money to get back home, some 300 miles away; and again I was asked to help with the bus fare. Back in Mphangwe we have quite a number of those the SVP asks me to help get to hospital some 20 miles away and who lack the £3 necessary to pay the bus fare, especially those who are HIV positive and others too weak to go by bike even if by chance they have one or can borrow one. We also have to assist the HIV positive mothers with milk when they stop breast-feeding after the first six months. Then there is Teresa, an elderly woman with cancer who is also HIV positive has had a number of operations and the doctor who treats her wrote me a letter asking me to help with ‘soft’ food. Her house is not far from us. I stopped there the other day; she showed me her bedroom, a mud hut with only a heap of plastic for her bed. We have bought her a good blanket and I’ll see if we can’t also get hold of a mattress for her. During the school holidays we gave work to secondary school children to help them with fees, shoes and uniforms. We are trying to improve our road by putting gravel on the lumpiest parts and thanks to efforts by the local people to find stones and river sand, we have put concrete on our mini-bridge that will give us a link with our Mass centres during the rainy season. Again the school children are adding to what the elders did last Wednesday. |
Another help I had to give was to Irene and Vivian who came from Lusaka 500 km away. I don’t encourage these trips as it means for a start that I always have to pay the bus fare home, an extra £12 per person and have tried to persuade the needy to stay in Lusaka till I come, even refusing to give more than the bus fare back if they do come. The problem is that it is very hard to keep secrets and if I give to 2 this week I’ll have 4 the week after and in any case I prefer to give through the SVP who are able to investigate the needs and give me a recommendation. However these two have actually moved out of Kabwata and I have known them quite a long time. Vivian is from the Congo and married disastrously not so long ago. It’s not really a marriage in the permanent sense fortunately, she having children by a previous husband and he also having had a previous marriage. This man is now in jail for assault if not more as the man he assaulted eventually died in hospital. Anyhow the women were very helpful, doing all kinds of jobs here and the local people judged they were genuine characters so I gave them both what they asked for, money to start a mini-business, both promising not to bother me again. Then too came another woman from about 400 miles away, again someone I’d helped previously, she too with many needs for the children especially and because she is not known by others in Lusaka it was easier to give at least some help. What I’ve also had to do is help keep two young men keep out of jail. One young man had made a girl pregnant and her parents were demanding a cow and about £80 compensation for what is called here ‘damage’. Rather than take the case to court as was being threatened I paid about £30 on condition that the boy’s family were given enough time eventually to pay the debt. It seems though it is a real love affair and the boy wants to marry the girl once the ‘damage’ has been paid. Then another young man called William got himself into debt and was threatened with jail if he didn’t pay about £250. Again I arranged a deal by paying £30 with the guarantee that William would work for those to whom he owed the money until he finally paid the debt. And then there have been others like a widow by the name of Ruth who has a job that gives her about £50 a month, but she cannot possibly pay for her needs and those of her children at school especially as she lives in town where rent, water and electricity have to be paid for, so I have set her up with a mini-business of sausage-making. We continue to buy 5 blankets every week for the SVP, especially for the elderly sleeping on the floor in sacks. Also a lot of people who have grown beans and Soya come to sell them to us. We buy as we want to keep a stock for the leaner months of February and March especially, as also have Soya to help the victims of AIDS to give them more nourishment so as better to cope with the ARVs that they receive from the hospital. I’ve also had a visit from the head and deputy head of our nearest primary school called ‘Umodzi’, ‘Oneness. They have a big problem with teachers’ houses and are looking for help to finish them off; fortunately not a colossal amount. If they can get the parents to pay part of the sum and the children be willing when they have a work period to do something to improve the road that links us with the school that is also one of our Mass centres, I may well try to help. On a more spiritual level, since the early retreats we’ve had two more, one for the Pioneers from all over the diocese and one for the SVP from the four parishes where it exists in the diocese. Then too the leaders of the charismatic movement came for a planning session, and going ecumenical we had about 20 members of the United Church of Zambia for 4 days, including two of their bishops. Last week I was in Lusaka for an eye test since I couldn’t get new specs in England as it was too soon after the cataract operation I had in June to get them. I was doing quite a bit of shopping, especially for paint to start on our big parish buildings that we had built last year. This last weekend we had another diocesan group, this time the Franciscan Third Order from all over the diocese, together with their youth equivalents called ‘Jufra’ (young Franciscans). The Jufra are a very well formed group, committed and highly disciplined with some very good elders who do the work of formation. On Thursday evening, the first Thursday of the month, we had a good group of Pioneers who always come for an hour’s adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in the evening and then stay overnight for Mass at 06.30 in the morning, doing more praying between the two. Every Friday too our charismatic group comes for the morning Mass. On the first Saturday of the month, today in fact, our Peace and Justice group meets. The members have been following up the disappearance of money paid by our local small farmers for fertilizer. It seems the two young men responsible were caught and were put in jail until the money was returned. So the group did a good job. This week they are having another week’s formation by the diocesan team, eventually preparing them to be commissioned by the bishop as real apostles of work for justice and peace. Anyhow that gives you some idea how things have been after just a couple of months here back in Mphangwe and where the money that people like you give me goes. May the Lord continue to keep you all in his safe and loving care with peace and joy in your hearts
Sincerely yours,
Fr David Cullen, w.f.
|
Mphangwe Prayer Centre 1st February 2010 Greetings to all the Pelicans Dear Robbie |
We are also trying to make our Marian chapel something more prayerful and beautiful with the aim, by the end of the week, to put the Blessed Sacrament in it. We have brought in a couple of good painters who have done a fine work on Our Lady's statue as well as repainting the whole chapel. After that comes what I see as my final major task for the Centre, setting up a library. It will mean a fair bit of expense in transforming what up to now has been used mainly as a store for our reed mats and the maize that the people donate as the first fruits of their harvest, but it will be done.
|