APPENDIX I


Uganda Today - map from The Lonely Planet




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APPENDIX 2


Regarding the photo of Maison Carrée, Pat McHale writes :


 
This photograph of Maison Carrée is very evocative : I lived and worked there from September 1968 to July 1969.
Was I the last Priorian to have the privilege ?
 
The picture in Chapter 1 (above) actually shows the Mother House of the W.F.'s — they moved to Rome in the early day of the struggle for independence.

Behind the statue of Our Lady and below the clock, the chapel is to be found. It must have been beautiful and impressive. It was the school gym hall when I was there but was still full of "ghosts". Behind what had been the high altar there was a huge wall painting of a group of White Fathers and the Cardinal (I think) at the feet of the Blessed Virgin. Now ! Fr. Tom Stoker had mentioned this painting  in many of his spiritual readings at St. Columba's, telling us how it had been damaged by the climate and been restored by a Mr. Dekers and that in the bottom left hand corner was to be read " refecit Dekers".  I checked and so it was !! ( Does this make me a trainspotter ?) (No. These Earthlings simply have no eye for detail).
 
In 1967 the House was a boarding school for boys run by the W.F.s. Most of the boarders were from Kabylie where the W.F.s. had several other local schools and they would send us their promising pupils. The day boys were from Algiers,( 10 or so miles away) and the surrounding area.These kids were mostly Arabs. Co - habitation was generally good but the underlying tensions could be sensed .
 
The school was bilingual. The pupils were taught in French by priests and young Frenchmen who had opted for two years voluntary social service rather than 18 months military service. ( I am still in regular contact with two of my colleagues of those days.) There was also a staff of Arabic speakers  from the Lebanon, Palestine and the Middle East. The kabyle kids  spoke Arabic, Kabyle , French and were all keen to practice their school boy English with me !!
 
Needless to say, the school had an outstanding reputation.
 
One of the younger members of staff, Fr. Gepyns( spelling ?) a Belgian, was very helpful to me, not least because he had studied with Gerry Wynne, John Lynch and Tony Visocchi in Carthage !!
 
Back to the picture : In 1967 the House had lost a lot of its splendour . However , thanks to the tireless efforts of Fr. Bursar, the gardens, which  you can see in the photo, had been maintained.
 
The Bothers' novitiate was behind the visible buildings and the main novitiate was a few hundred yards up the road. It had become a technical college run by the Fathers and enjoyed a similar repution to the secondary school.
 
The Brothers' printing shop, run by a Swiss Brother, wa still functioning.
 
The land around the Mother House no longer belonged to the society and was in a sorry state. I gathered it had been farmed  and that the hills behind the House had been vinyards and not the housing estate that I could see. The proof of this was the contents of the wine cellars which we diligently worked to reduce knowing the government would eventually take the place over. Such devotion and abnegation !
 
Friends from those days returned to "Le collège " around 1977/8. It was then a government run school for the deaf and in a dreadful state of disrepair on the edge of the motorway.
 
Sic transit gloria mundi !!

(et hinc illae lacrimae, Ed.)



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APPENDIX 3


Robbie Dempsey kindly spent time researching information
about the author but could only find the following :

F.A. FORBES
Mother Frances Alice Monica Forbes, RSCJ.
(Religieuse du Sacré Coeur de Jesus )


She was born in Scotland in 1869, and at the age of 31 in 1900 converted to Catholicism and joined the contemplative order of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

Mother Forbes wrote a series of short lives of the saints that were published as the Standard Bearers of the Faith: A Series of Lives of the Saints for Young and Old. These books are fairly short — 90 to 110 pages each.

Tan has reprinted many of these titles.

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APPENDIX 4

 

James Hannington was born the son of a merchant on September 3, 1847. His grandfather, Smith Hannington, was the founder of Hanningtons, Brighton's leading department store. As a young man he worked in his father's business until the late 1860s. After receiving a degree from Oxford in 1873, he was ordained by the Church of England and in 1882 was sent by the Church Missionary Society to the Lake Victoria region of Africa.

Illness caused him to return to England to recover. In 1884 he was consecrated the Anglican Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. .

In 1885, after recuperating in England, he tried again, approaching Uganda from the North East. This proved to be a mistake. Uganda's suspicious King Mwanga lumped him with the Germans who were grabbing territory in that direction. He sent a thousand Ugandan soldiers to intercept Hannington.

On October 21, 1885, they took him prisoner. They allowed him a little freedom at first and he walked out to look at the Nile. His journal tells what happened next:

". . . suddenly about twenty ruffians set upon us. They violently threw me to the ground, and proceeded to strip me of all valuables. Thinking they were robbers I shouted for help, when they forced me up and hurried me away, as I thought, to throw me down a precipice close at hand. I shouted again in spite of one threatening to kill me with a club. Twice I nearly broke away from them, and then grew faint with struggling and was dragged by the legs over the ground.

I said, 'Lord, I put myself in Thy hands, I look to Thee alone.' Then another struggle and I got to my feet and was then dashed along. More than once I was violently brought into contact with banana trees, some trying in their haste to force me one way, others the other, and the exertion and struggling strained me in the most agonizing manner.

In spite of all, and feeling I was being dragged away to be murdered at a distance, I sang 'Safe in the Arms of Jesus' and laughed at the very agony of my situation. My clothes were torn to pieces so that I was exposed; wet through with being dragged on the ground; strained in every limb, and for a whole hour expecting instant death, hurried along, dragged, pushed at five miles an hour, until we came to a hut..."

After exhibiting him as a trophy for a week, his tormentors speared him to death on the 29th.

We know most of this detail because one of the Ugandans kept Hannington's journal and sold it to a later expedition. Some eight days later he was led out towards the banks of the Victoria Nile and martyred for the cause of Christ.

His last words are reported to have been "Tell the king that I die for Uganda. I have bought this road with my life."

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