Collaboration

I’m at a women’s cooperative near Bauchi, Nigeria. It’s 1996. Participants have just described to a group of us from Canada the lengthy production process of locust seed bean cake. It’s used to flavour soups and stews.

In mid-May, Fr. Pablo and I headed out for a 4-week long journey to China. For more than a year we had been searching for an opportunity to lend our services to people with AIDS.

Life in the Congo is not easy. The Jesuit Refugee Service has a health project in the area of Wanie-Rukula, near Kisangani. Recently I found myself passing through that place, visiting a site where a health centre was being built. I was able to speak to the team and enjoy the company of the local people.

During the time I was working with displaced persons in Japan we would come up against a number of unforeseen legal obstacles and long trials. Our success, such as it was, in drawing the attention of the National Diet and the mass media seemed inadequate.

During Holy Week, the Migrations Team of Christian Life Community (CLC) in Spain, along with the Vedruna Carmelites Community and the Elín Association, sought to share the sufferings and the joys of the migrants of Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city located on the African coast of the Strait of Gibraltar.

I will never forget the day it all came together. The place: St. Martin of Porres Parish, comprising two marginalized neighbourhoods in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, a parish that has been a source of life for my Province since a group of Jesuits moved here thirty-six years ago.