Life for Christ

We recently had the chance to go to the ordination of a Comboni friend of ours, Harold Gomanjira. We travelled 2 ½ hours to his home parish near Mulanje mountain where his family, friends, and almost all the Combonis from our province had gathered for the celebration. The four hour Mass seemed to pass quickly. In true Malawian form, the service was filled with singing, clapping, and dancing. Spence captured on video the priests, Harold’s parents, and some Malawian sisters congratulating him after the Bishop and priests had laid hands on him which we have posted to share with you. I was touched by the beauty of the role the parents play in the ordination. Harold’s parents presented him to the Bishop at the beginning of the rite and following his ordaination, he blessed his parents after first blessing the Bishop and the priests. For me, this captured the essence of what we are called to as parents. God gives us the incredible gift of children and we, as parents, then have the opportunity of offering our children back to God (expressed in many different ways). And then in turn, we are twice blessed by how our children serve God.
We hope you enjoy the video. Congratulations Father Harold!

Getting Fat

Yesterday I saw a Comboni temporary deacon soon to be ordained a priest (Malawian by nationality) that I hadn’t seen in a long time. One of the first things that he said to me was, “You are getting fat!” Feeling quite pleased myself, I thanked him and we continued chatting. Two things struck me as funny as I reflected on his comment later: one that a man would tell a woman (still rather recently post pregnancy) that she is getting fat and two that I was genuinely glad to hear it. I took it as a sign that I now feel comfortable in this culture.

Although in America, a woman might react with horror at being told that she has gained weight, here it is received as a compliment. The difference resides in the disparate realities of these two places. In America, we assume everyone has enough to eat and so food issues revolve more around overeating. Contrarily, in Malawi, because of poverty and problems with food security, overeating is an uncommon luxury. If you see a person looking very thin, the first thoughts to come to mind are that the person must be suffering either from hunger or some kind of disease. To be chubby and full-figured shows affluence and is taken as a sign of success and well-being. In noticing my weight gain, my Comboni friend was flattering me.


Here’s to getting fat and no longer taking food for granted!

The Market

Every week, usually on Sundays after church, I venture down to our local market at Lunzu Trading Centre and purchase our weekly supply of produce. The market—teeming with activity on each of its market days of Sunday and Thursday—is always alive with vendors calling out their products to shoppers as they go by. I’ve always enjoyed this time as a chance to interact with the people and to practice my Chichewa.

Gradually, over the weeks, I have come to realize that the social organism that is the Lunzu market, is an entirely other species than the supermarkets, local grocers, and even farmers’ markets we have back home in the U.S. Saying this, I am not just referring to the reality that as you walk in the hot sun, through a maze of wooden pole stalls, while everyone is speaking a Bantu language it is nearly impossible to confuse your situation from being in an air-conditioned, neatly aisled, modern supermarket or even a tented, ordered, farmer’s market with signs and prices easily seen by the unassisted eye. While the Lunzu market is not necessarily chaotic, and there is an order to it all—certain vendors of certain products placed in different locations—there is a fundamental element to it that is not easily grasped by those uninitiated in its ways.

Initially, I would bargain with the vendors over the price of everything. Quickly I realized the price was much more negotiable the more you were willing to buy. Then, after awhile I realized the great benefit of becoming a consistent customer of one vendor. Rewards of “bonuses” (extra produce being thrown in with your purchase), a greater willingness to bargain, or even offering products at a former price when the market price had risen are all ways of enticing customers into remaining faithful to their suppliers. And the suppliers value their customers—even to the point that last week two old ladies were arguing over whose customer I was, because the one I had been recently buying from was gone one week and I bought from her neighbor.

While all of this adds up to a very different approach to the economy of produce distribution, the real factor separating it from the way we do things back home is the relational aspect of it all. Occasionally, I stop to greet a person I see every week, converse casually about how our families are, and then notice they don’t really have anything I want or need. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a sucker for buying just anything for the sake of feeling sorry for someone and there have been times I’ve greeted someone and then bought nothing. But the difference between here and Publix is that you hesitate to do it. Or at least you hesitate to do it frequently to someone who has gotten used to a certain amount of income coming from you each week.

Many economists have written articles these past few years with the basic message of the recession having resulted from our having lost any semblance of a face to face economy that prevents an overemphasis on the bottom dollar. Nowadays, when I go to the market, it’s less about finding the best price and buying exactly what’s on my list. Rather, it’s about seeing what my friends have brought to offer to me for the upcoming week’s meals.

Malawian Mourning

We stayed the night at the Comboni Provincial house in Lilongwe and it happened that our stay coincided with their neighbors experiencing a great tragedy. The family, including the adult children, had been gathered together and unexpectedly the mother collapsed and died. We arrived after the family and friends had already begun mourning. Throughout the entire evening you could hear singing, crying, and wailing. The most heart-wringing, however, was the adult son crying out in anguish, “Amai, Amai!” meaning, “Mother, Mother!” The sounds of grieving continued as we settled down for sleep that night. We awoke the next morning to hear the crying and singing unabated as the family, their friends, and community had held an all night vigil to lament the loss of their mother.
I saw their mourning as an incredibly beautiful healing process. Loosing someone you love opens a great wound in your heart. To gather with loved ones and share the pain together not only recognizes that it is ok to feel that pain but it also becomes a cathartic release. As a Westerner I have neither openly grieved in this way, nor am I sure I would be able to do so easily. This Malawian family, however, has opened my eyes to the value of unabashed communal grieving as an important and natural healing process.

How are you? How is home?

One morning this week, after daily Mass, I was hurrying to get back to the house in time to finish getting ready for work. Instead of giving individual greetings to each member of the community as I normally do, I said a general good morning to everyone. Later in the morning, Br. Luigi teasingly told me that he was mad at me because I hadn’t said good morning to him. I realized immediately that because I hadn’t greeted him separately, I had not in fact actually greeted him. Whereas in America a communal greeting is perfectly acceptable, here it is not sufficient and in some situations may even be considered rude.


During our time here, I have come to appreciate the culture of greeting others. Anytime you see a person, even in passing, you should take the time to greet him or her. There are different forms of greeting depending on the time of the day and whether or not you have already seen that person during the day. These greetings are all some variation of ‘How are you?’

Sometimes I might say to a student in English, “Good Morning” and he or she will reply back, “I am fine and how are you?” This happens because in Chichewa all greetings require a response as to how the person is. In addition to this, in the mornings, you add an additional question, “Kwacha kunyumba?” literally, “how is the house now that the sun has risen?” In order to answer this question, the person must speak to how the family and even the home is. To me this is an excellent tradition and means of truly caring for those around you.

Oftentimes, a person might reply to the first greeting, “I am well.” But then, for instance, in the second question it comes out that all is well except one child has come down with malaria. One morning, when greeting our nanny, she told me that all was well. When I asked her ‘kwacha kunyumba’ she replied that everything was fine except that she had been robbed.

If you think about it, a more reserved person upon a first greeting is rarely going to regale you with the woes of the day. But when asked a second time in a slightly different way, a person can hardly avoid sharing troubles. In this way, something that might have been kept quiet so as not to burden another now is brought into the open. Once revealed, one has an opportunity to assist or at least empathize with the person experiencing troubles forcing the community to care for one another. And so, I am grateful, that here in Malawi, I have learned how to greet others again and again and again.

Ash Wednesday

We began Lent this week with Ash Wednesday and a special Mass at the school. Before the Mass, we were discussing with a couple Comboni priests about how “Tsiku la Phulusa” or “Day of the Ashes” is one of the, if not the, most popular day with the Christians. They find it to be so, because everyone, no matter what condition they might find themselves in with the Church, can come forward to receive ashes. They joked that even the little children can come forward to receive ashes. And not just once but twice because they will rub them off and come back again in line for more.
Fr. Casagrande, during Mass, sprinkled ashes from his fingers while blowing them away, saying, “See? Nothing. They are gone.” Like ashes we are nothing before our God. In fact, we are less than nothing for we have sinned against Him. Whatever our history, whoever we are, we can all approach God, to say “I am nothing. I am a sinner.”

The remarkable thing is that, God responds to us by saying that we are His beloved and heirs to His Kingdom. During Lent, we recognize all the many ways we fail to live and love as Christ did. In spite of our failings, at the end of Lent, God answers, “You are precious. You are loved. You are Mine.”

Recognizing our nothingness actually frees us. We do not have to earn God’s love; in fact it would be impossible. Instead we have only to love in the small, insignificant ways that we can and God returns love to us abundantly. What a God we have!

We wish you a blessed Lenten journey.

Advent Preparations

Advent is a time of anticipation. Our Advent season here in Malawi has been one of waiting in a very real way. At this time of the year, everyone prepares their fields and waits anxiously for the first rains. After the initial downpour, you can see a flurry of activity as people plant their maize in order to take advantage of the much needed water. This tilling, watching for the rains, and planting has embodied for me the meaning of Advent.

In the second Sunday of Advent, we hear in the book of the Prophet Isaiah, “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!” Our Advent in Malawi has felt as a time in a desert wasteland. Little rain has come. Instead, we have seen only the glaring sun making our surroundings dry and hot. This hasn’t prevented the people from making preparations and waiting with hope. If the rains do not come, there will be hunger. But when they do come, there will be new life and growth in abundance because the people have tended their land in readiness.

We too, during Advent, must till the soil of our hearts. With prayer, reflection, fasting, we turn over our lives. Listening to the Word of God, seeds are planted within us. And at Christmas, the Lord of life showers grace upon us so that we experience the

 new life of Christ born within us. This is not merely a routine repeated year after year; it is an opportunity to truly open our lives through preparation to the gift of Christ offered to us.

We wish you a fruitful Advent and joyful Christmas! Please remember the people of Malawi in your prayers. Pray for much needed rain so that their time of anticipation may end with fruits for the harvest.

(Above is a picture of our Advent wreath this year taken during the second week of Advent.)