The Lost Boys (and Girls)

I found a lost colony of American students!

Ok, so they weren’t truly lost...they are students from the University of Washington on a study abroad trip. They’re living in a village about two hours away from Makeni. It is one of the parish outposts that Fr. Francis is only able to get to celebrate Mass at about once every two months. We headed there Sunday morning; he told me for the first time during the drive out that the village has Americans there. Sure, Father, sure.

They were more in shock to see me than I was to see 12 beautiful Americans sitting in the makeshift chapel/hut. Nine women, two young men, and their anthropology professor, all speaking the regional dialect better than I could imagine. Their professor has been coming to Sierra Leone every summer for 24 years and has an obvious love for the land. He prepares his students during the spring semester by covering the country’s details and a language preparation course. I later told one of the students that they had the “navy seal” training compared to my own preparation—they just threw me out of the airplane.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. The students were all amazed that I have been here six weeks on my own without knowing the language or having another American to stay with. They are only here for one month and they are all still fresh off the plane—they overwhelmed me a bit with talking about their Powerbars, shampoo bottles, and packets of instant Starbucks (Seattle water, they called it). I’ve been here in Africa long enough to have a reverse culture-shock, I guess. Yet it gave me a great morale boost to head into this last stretch of my trip. It warmed my heart to have such an onslaught of American company the day before the 4th of July. They invited me back to the village today to celebrate our independence, but I had to teach. Shame, though—they told me they would be sacrificing a goat.

As much as I have longed for that companionship, yesterday’s escapade made me appreciate (for truly the first time) my conditions and the solitude I have been given. A sheltered, itinerary-bound study abroad program wouldn’t have done me any good, especially for discerning this priesthood of Christ. Benedict XVI writes, “In order to mature, in order to make real progress on the path leading from a superficial piety into profound oneness with God’s will, man needs to be tried..…Love is always a process involving purifications…and painful transformations of ourselves” (Jesus of Nazareth, 162). My prayer life certainly wouldn’t have been challenged to the next level if I had eleven friends living in such close proximity. Check out the picture below—how’s that for student housing?

That’s all I got. Oh, and that Seattle water was delicious.

-Bob
written 07/04/11