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| News / International There Is A New World in Kinshasa Fr. Mario Barbero, IMC It was a touching moment when, at the end of my first ME (in French it is called MR Marriage Rencontre) weekend presented in French in Kinshasa, I heard “ IL Y A UN MONDE NOUVEAU” the French translation of “There is a new world somewhere.” It was Sunday November 17, 2002. Sunday morning I received this card from Jerome and Octavie: “Dear Fr. Mario, for the two of us and for the whole MR community in Congo, your arrival among us is an unexpected grace of God. Your experience with the Worldwide ME is for us a refuge and a great treasure. Thank you for your love and availability. May God bless you and your family which has offered you to the Church.” During the closing Mass we prayed for the ME communities of USA, Kenya, and Italy who had all been praying for us during the weekend. Searching for footprints Before arriving in the D. R. of Congo in May 2002, I was confused about the existence of ME in this country. I had heard that there had been some Belgian couples who had brought the ME to Zaire, but I had never personally met any encountered couple from this country even when I was part of the pan-African ME Secretariat in the early ‘80s and now I did not see Congo in the list of the African ME. In the first months of my stay in Kinshasa, I looked for some information but nobody was able to tell me if there were ME couples. One day, in October, someone told me that there were some ME couples in a parish. So I went to that parish in Kimwenza and asked the pastor, a Jesuit, if he knew any MR couples. He did. He was ready and willing to take me to meet one couple that was very active in the parish. It was October 23, 2002 when I visited the home of my first Congolese encountered couple, Jerome and Octavie (I met only Octavie during that visit because Jerome was at work). She briefed me about the MR of Congo, which was started in 1983 (so this year is the 20th anniversary). I was given the names of the executive couple and was told that the team couples met every first Sunday of the month. With this precious information in hand, a few days later I went to look for the executive couple, Alphonse and Honorine, who could not believe the “trouble” I had taken (but for me was a pleasure) to reach them at their home. They were very excited, invited me to the team meeting of the first Sunday of November and they kept saying, “The Lord has sent you to us. In fact one of our problem has been that we have only one priest who ‘walks with us.” The Situation This is the information I have now about MR in Congo. Belgian Couples and priests brought MR to Kinshasa in January 1983. There are around 400 couples, priests and religious that have experienced the weekend. Not all of them are active, but many are involved as couples in the family apostolate of their parishes. The MR Weekend is given in the dioceses of Kinshasa and Kisantu. There are ten team couples but only four have written the weekend talks. At present there is only one team priest, a Belgian Jesuit, who has been very supportive in every way (including financially) but who is very busy in many other activities: as a professor of theology and rector of the Canisius College. Since 1998 there have been only 5 Weekends in Kinshasa, all with very low attendance. At times the weekend has been “split” into two consecutive Sundays because of the financial burdens associated with participating over an entire weekend, as well as the difficulty in finding a priest for the whole weekend. After a weekend, there is a Rookie meeting where the new couples are encouraged to join one of the sharing groups that exist in some parishes and which meet once a month. From time to time there is a Deeper weekend whose aim is not to just train team couples but to also deepen their relationship. MR has not been part of the pan-African ME Secretariat because of financial reasons and—even more so—because it is almost impossible to get the visa for traveling abroad, making it impossible to attend the meetings. The Problems These are the main problems MR is facing in Kinshasa: 1. Cost of the weekend: the precarious situation of the country, the high unemployment rate, and the financial hardship that the cost of the weekend would impose makes recruiting very difficult. The cost of the weekend (even reduced down to US $20.00 per couple) is beyond the reach of a normal couple (a professor at the university, when paid, gets US $50.00 per month, but many are unemployed and have to struggle and do odd jobs to support themselves and their family). A normal weekend, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, costs around US $50.00, but nobody can afford it. So there is a plan to “squeeze’ the weekend to one full day (from Saturday late afternoon to Sunday evening) costing only US $20 per couple. There is also another plan to “split” the weekend into two consecutive Sundays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., making the cost even lower (they pay for one meal and the rental of the hall). Certainly, $20 or even $50 does not seem very high for someone living in the USA, but for a Congolese family often struggling to survive and to send their children to school, that amount is almost a month's wage (assuming one has a regularly paying job). 2. The unending war and incidents of violence within the country make it almost impossible to be in touch with the pan-African secretariat and to travel abroad. R.D. Congo, in fact, has been at war for 4 years. There have been millions of casualties, plundering of resources, and an absence of a central government. 3. The lack of priests involved in MR make it difficult to hold weekends. In the past there were several expatriate priests who were active, but they all returned to their countries and only one has remained. At present there are no Congolese team priests. In the past, some of them have experienced the weekend and were active for some time but then they withdrew. 4. The difficulty of traveling. There is no public system of transportation in Kinshasa. Very few have a car, people travel by foot and by a kind of taxi, usually old minibuses and run-down cars full to the brim of people. Every trip is an adventure. 5. Difficulty of communications: there are no public telephones in Kinshasa (they are too expensive and once they break nobody repairs them) so most people have a cellular phone where they can receive their calls, but there are many costs to making calls. You see many people walking with their cell phone but without “unité” to call. So you have to be very careful in making phone calls because even if you have a card (minimum cost US $5.00 for 30 minutes) it is costly to call. [Note: This has probably been the hardest adjustment for me, as I was used to the phone system in the US]. With all these hardships, I am full of admiration for these couples that live and share the values of MR. There are 3 sharing groups meeting regularly every month. I have been “adopted” by one of them and we meet every third Sunday of the month. Moving On I have found the lists of the names of all the weekends presented in Kinshasa since 1983. In our December team meeting, I proposed that we organize a get-together of all encountered people. We sent out invitations through the parishes, relying on the old list of addresses, but some couples had moved out of the country and out of Kinshasa; others had passed away, and some have lost contacts with their parishes. Anyhow on March 9, 2003, over 40 couples showed up and we had our program of presentations and dialogue and sharing. We chose one couple from the very first weekend of 1983 and a younger couple encountered recently and they shared about what MR has meant to them. I also shared my experience of ME in three continents. I wanted to let them know that they are part of a “worldwide” family. We had the 10/10 and then sharing time. The question for sharing was “Do you believe ME has something to offer to the Congolese couples and families in the present situation of our country? What can I do to revive ME in Kinshasa?” The sharing was good. They resolved to start sharing groups in several neighboring parishes and to recruit couples for the weekends. We ended up with Mass and a picnic in which we shared what everybody had brought. The atmosphere was good, many couples thanked me for organizing this gathering (the first in many years) that offered them the opportunity to see that ME is not dead yet. The ME decals I had received from some friends of Washington, DC were a great success: we sold them at US $ 0.25 each as a way of making some money for the community. Now we’ll start seeing some ME decals on a few cars in Kinshasa and on the windows of MR couples (and even on my window). They asked that when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of ME in Congo next August we print some ME t-shirts that people will buy and wear. Our next goal is to present some weekends during this year, and possibly another deeper. We hope to be able to schedule at least some regular 44-hours MR weekends in a retreat center and have the couples experience the totality of the weekend without being pressed to shorten the presentations or cut the dialogue time. Some of my friends in the USA have sponsored our couples, allowing us to book 3 regular weekends for the year 2003. Moreover, the year 2003 will be the 20th anniversary of MR in Congo and we are planning a solemn celebration in August as a way of reviving MR in Kinshasa and its nearby areas, in order to share with many more couples, priests and religious in Congo the values of the MR spirituality. In this way, with God’s help, we’ll contribute to “change the world” by allowing more Congolese families to experience UN MONDE NOUVEAU. Do you hear the sound of the song?
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Fr
Mario and Octavi & Jerome