After a few months of holidays at home with my family, it was good to be back where home really is, in the field, by October 1971. My friend and new boss, Richard, was at the airport and welcomed me warmly, informing me that we would drive back to Mushanga, my new home, immediately without stopping – in total some 250 km. He had brought my car and asked me to drive back the whole way. I did so and was very cautious on the road and serious about security. His reaction was “you can see he has been driving in Europe!” No ill feelings about that!
Mushanga is situated in the geographical centre of Ankole and spans a radius of about 25 km. The roads are good, and there is electricity and a regular water supply. Remember water is most important as I had already found out! At a later date, the telephone company proposed to install this useful instrument, but this never materialised due to the political situation in the country!
The residence was the biggest in the whole diocese, situated on top of Mushanga hill. It was a double storied structure with six bedrooms on the top floor and one large sitting room on the same floor, with a terrace all round the house. On the ground floor there were four offices, a dining room and kitchen all covered by the top floor terrace. Outside there was a smaller building with a large room and a small dispensary where one of my colleagues was helping some old ladies with their various ailments. His medicine consisted mainly of ointments and potions! Behind the house there was a nice garden with flowers and a banana plantation with a variety of fruit trees.
In total we were five living there. There was the boss Richard, a Canadian with whom I had lived in Ibanda, and it was a pleasure to have him there as the leader of the pack. Then there was the dean of the Missionaries of Africa in Uganda, Pierre Etcheverry, aged 92. His name betrayed his origins! He had been living in Uganda since 1910 and had once been back to France for holidays in 1929. During one of our many conversations he confided to me it was not worth the trip to Europe as what he saw in France just did not appeal to him at all. That big city called Paris was so overcrowded that it was difficult to move around freely. So he had taken the decision to stay in Uganda and enjoy what was on offer in The Pearl of Africa. He must have enjoyed everything if you looked at his age and physical condition. One day when I returned from a visit to a village, he told me: “Listen, you run around a lot visiting people and have no time to pray. I will do the praying for you; you run around visiting people!” He was an unbelievable man, and over the years I would learn a lot of common sense from him.
Then there was a Dutchman, Peter, aged 76. He was a teacher and linguist, and had written a fair number of books on the Runyankole language and customs. Mushanga had become his place of retirement. He would become my language teacher taking over from my Irish friend in Ibanda. In fact he would correct my written work and help me improve my syntax and grammar. But at the same time he was at loggerheads with another guy, a Frenchman of the same age, who was also a linguist. They did not agree on how to write the language, how to interpret things etc. Their relationship was limited to written notes sending rebuffs from one to the other and vice versa. It was not always easy dealing with the man, but there was not much discussion either because he did not like how times changed. “I learned things the proper way when I was a student and, today, you people cannot be right.” He spent most of his days in his vegetable garden, from which we rarely saw the produce! I often wondered what he did with the veggies. The last resident at Mushanga was another Frenchman, George, who was in charge of the pastoral centre of the diocese, assisted by two diocesan sisters. Of course I was number five in this pack!
Mushanga parish was certainly the most developed place in the whole diocese, apart from the diocesan headquarters. There were two houses with religious sisters: one Canadians and the other diocesan. The former were residing in Mushanga as their house was the headquarters of their community in Uganda. Their hospitality was something many would relish! We were always welcome and their place was such that you immediately felt at home. The second group, diocesan sisters, were helping the parish with teaching catechumens and doing social work. They also helped at the pastoral centre. Another house was the residence of two members of the Grail community. They ran a dispensary – a real one this time! – and had a social centre where they co-ordinated many activities in the region. A big primary school was run by the diocesan sisters, and a secondary school was manned by the local clergy. In fact, these were very good schools and were appreciated by many.
And at the centre of it all stood the parish church. A building some twenty years old, built by a Canadian who had developed a brick yard and made all the bricks for his buildings: church, residences, and the other buildings on the hill. This church is the biggest building in the diocese apart from the cathedral and could accommodate some 700 people without any problem. It is impressive when it is filled, and the acoustic was excellent as people raised their voices in song during services. Over the years services would become even better as we introduced – not always in line with the wishes of the Bishop – some changes in our Sunday liturgies which made them friendly, more culturally appropriate, and family oriented.
My work was clearly spelled out by the boss, and it was with enthusiasm that I embarked on this new life: looking after the various schools in the parish and the youth movements, Xaverians, the local brand of scouts, and girl guides. My first priority was to get to know the place and during my first week I took my car and drove round all the centres the parish was running, an easy job as the parish residence was in the geographical centre of the parish itself and no single place was more than 20 km away! It gave me an opportunity to meet people and introduce myself. Thanks to my Irish friend in Ibanda I felt sufficiently at ease to talk to people and not feel like a stranger. What a good feeling it was to be able to do this! It also gave me a better idea about the needs of the parish, and soon new ideas started to bubble up and the discussions we had with Richard were the seeds of our activity in the parish. In fact we were the only two with parish duties: the old men had a life time to contemplate, while the fifth had his work cut out at the pastoral centre. Our Dutch friend made gardening his main work, coupled with constant complaining about the evolution of the Church in a direction he thought smelled of socialism!
Our meetings were frequent and our discussions proved to be fruitful as we worked hard to develop the place in the way which we thought best for all. It also meant that we could give free range to our imagination and creativity. This would become the heart of our activities and will be the subject of a later blog.
However, this idyllic life was crushed when, one morning in January 1972, we heard the news that President Obote had been toppled whilst on a trip to Singapore for a Commonwealth meeting and replaced by his Army Chief of Staff, Idi Amin Dada. A new era was about to start one that would eventually bring the country to its knees. This also would push us to even greater creativity and imagination, as our reliance on local resources increased as time went by. I will write about these years of Amin another time.
Random Thoughts 