Broadcasting Again

I’m back in Africa again now. I arrived just over a week ago, and after spending that week in Kenya am now newly arrived in Sudan. I apologize for the almost one month of inactivity on the blog. As some of you noticed I posted an entry about a week ago that only appeared briefly before having to be removed for technical reasons.

Students at Our Lady of Grace Primary School, Kisumu, Kenya

The last few weeks in the US and this past week in Kenya were a bit of a blur with a lot of movement and activity. The passage of time always seems to pick up speed as a departure or deadline approaches, and unexpected events pop up more frequently. During the week in Kenya I obtained new Kenyan and South Sudanese visas, picked up medicines and other supplies, took care of some mission-related finances, visited two religious communities (the Missionaries of the Poor and the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne) and two schools, celebrated Mass in a local parish, made travel arrangements and was able to spend time on several occasions with my good friends in Communion and Liberation (CL). I was reall glad to see how Our Lady of Grace School (for economically disadvantaged students) has grown and expanded in Kisumu, and was very impressed by the ambience of Cardinal Otunga Secondary School (a CL/AVSI initiative) in Kahawa Sukari, whose motto – taken from CL founder Monsignor Luigi Giussani – is “It is only wonder that generates knowledge.”

Cardinal Otunga School, Kahawa Sukari, Kenya (above and below).

Being back in Africa has again heightened my awareness of the many critical situations that continue to unfold on the continent. I learned from my CL friends in AVSI that there are approximately 300,000 Somali refugees in three different camps in Dadaab in eastern Kenya near the Somali border; 5000 new refugees arrive each day. AVSI has become an implementing partner with the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) in training teachers and rehabilitating classrooms for the multitude of school children there. The situation in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of instability, violence, displaced people and hunger. And tragically the rebel Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues to wreak havoc and commit acts of shocking brutality in South Sudan, DRC and the Central African Republic. According to one news story 25,000 people in the western part of South Sudan have had to flee their homes since January, and there was a report of an LRA attack in Darfur earlier this month. These incidents reinforce the suspicion that the LRA is in league with Khartoum and is attempting to destabilize Southern Sudan as the January referendum on independence approaches.

More to come on the situation on the ground in Torit, and news about another friar and a team of lay people coming soon to spend several months as a part of the CFR Sudan Mission…

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