SHALOM my friends. I am back in north west Nigeria.
My travelling companion is Maurice Fitzpatrick, a teacher from St Mary’s Girls’ High School, Newry.
We are the guests of Fr Donall O’Cathain SMA, the young Cork priest who has been with the Kamberi people for the last 10 years.
The Kamberi are semi-nomadic farmers, primitive, and gentle with strong family values. Clachans of mud huts, huddle in compounds on the bush plains, the home places of these beautiful rural people.
We are at the St Mary’s School Project in Papiri, up close to the Republic of Benin. There is no mains electricity, phones or internet.
When the tarred roads ended on the eastern bank of the river Niger, we moved across and on into the interior where time stood still 200 years ago.
I am filled with joy and gratitude at what has been done for the Kamberi by the teachers, the students and the families of St. Mary’s Girls’ High School in Newry. £6,000 for the school building programme.
An educational outreach as well. Dear St Mary’s, please know that Maurice and I have delivered your kindness right into the hands of Fr Donall and the children.
We shall attend the weekly market at Safachi and what an experience that will be! The market place is a thronged shanty town of all the bric-a-brac of this African place.
Meats of every description, guinea corn and millet, camels piled high with all kinds of cargo, women carrying wood and water and sacks of maize on their shoulders, babies on their backs, chickens held upside down by the feet, all there for the day’s trading at the market. It is a family matter, it is a community thing.
We are staying in Donall’s house. It is a simple onestorey block building, segmented into bedrooms and dining room cum clinic, all surrounded by a veranda.
We are enclosed by strong bull wire fence from veranda edge to eaves. The gates are padlocked at night. Robbers can come in the darkness.
The veranda serves as a storage area for the staple diet, guinea corn and millet. If we can buy the food at the harvest time of plenty we can feed the 250 children for little cost. I am trying to get a one-off float to buy well for the year and then, as children bring in their food money we save it and have the capacity to buy cheaply again for the next year.
Please keep Maurice and me, Father Donall and Sister Paulina and the children and Sister Queen in the clinic in your thoughts and prayers.