The kings' garden

FAITH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER

Lungi Mission – Sierra Leone
2003-2006

A contribute to the Benefactors
of the Lungi Mission Project

The first mission in Kaffobullom

Seen from the sea, the visitor is struck by the red laterite hill covered by the thick vegetation of African acacia and the ramp of cement and iron which climbs from the beach up to the courtyard of the Center of Faith and Development, which is run by the Xaverian Missionaries’.
Before climbing up, the visitor is welcomed by the smiling statue of Our Ladythat stands on the broken trunk of a yemani, almost as if to offer passers-by the pure water of the wells dug by the nearby Mission to quench the thirst of the village’s fishermen. The branches sticking out at the feet of the statue, which the people invoke as the “Fishermen’s ‘protector”, and their evergreen leaves always are the flowers that the devotees would struggle to find among the ravines of the cliffs. The Center can be also reached on foot, by traveling along a road that is quite easy during the dry season and especially difficult during the rainy season. However, once the goal has been reached, the traveler’s efforts and fatigue are rewarded by the sight of a Missionary Center that possesses classic features and a modern soul.
Lungi Mission has been home to the Xaverian Missionaries since 1953 and they founded Holy Cross parish there, as a center of evangelization and human promotion for the benefit of twodistricts, the first of which is called Kaffobullom, which numbers about one hundred villages, and the second of which is called Lokomasama, which numbers six hundred villages. More than 50 years after the arrival of the Xaverians, Holy Cross parish had become so populated and rich in Christian communities that bishop Giorgio Biguzzi of Makeni diocese took the decision to divide it into three different parishes or new pastoral centers, entrusting the first to the Salesians, the second to diocesan priests and the third pastoral zone of Lungi to the Xaverian Missionaries.
The civil war scourged this West African country for ten years (1991 - 2001) and almost led to its total annihilation and the destruction of the religious and civil values of the people of Sierra Leone. At the end of the conflict, the Xaverian Missionaries’ Faith and development Center was established to contribute towards the rediscovery and defense of those values in Kaffobullom, by creating opportunities and offering moral certainty, aspirations and ideals so that the people may win back faith in themselves and build their country’s future with their own hands.

A center of many opportunities

In February 2003, the Xaverian Missionary Vito Gabriele Scagliuso, free from the responsibility of a parish, began his pastoral service in Lungi working for the moral and social rehabilitation of about ten single mothers. On their behalf, he badgered friends, parishes and charitable associations in order to obtain some adoptions and establish a fund for taking these women off the streets and providing them with an honest profession. The Xaverian house in Lungi, which had been the residence of the parish priests of Holy Cross and the parish activity center, had some almost entirely unused rooms which the missionary decided to use as laboratories. Thus was born the Vocational Fauith and Development Center, which was initially dedicated to female arts and crafts, offering courses to about forty students in the areas of dressmaking, African batik and the manufacture of soap.
When the St. John of God brothers and a Xaverian nurse (who had been guests of the Mission during the civil war) moved away from Lungi together with their hospital, they left the missionaries with a program of assistance to undernourished children. Since the local people looked upon it as a very important initiative, the person in charge of the Mission accepted it as part of the Faith and development Project, thanks also to the funds made available to him by the Italian Government. It made it possible to provide a second a service for the benefit of 160 children and their mothers, who attended the center in groups of 40 four times a week. Three nurses, a dietician and two cooks assisted, measured and weighed the newly born infants, they fed the babies and supplied the mothers with a ration of milk and doses of vitamins to take home. The St. John of God brothers have taken over the program once again in Lungi, and they now need a solid International Association of friends to ensure that these small children continue to benefit from a healthy diet, without which they cannot survive the many treacherous childhood illness, which are easy to contract in this part of the world.
A girl who needed the Mission’s computer to prepare for her exams in Media and Communications suggested the third opportunity. Ten computers were acquired and 50 students attended the Center at night (like Nicodemus) after finishing their work at school, a hospital, some district office or at the airport. All the courses and programs were supervised by many teachers and echnicians. In order to ensure access to the Internet, the mission laid three miles of underground cable to establish a connection with the nearest police barracks in Lungi Tintafor, thereby supplying the Center with 3 telephone lines, fax and other benefits, such as a digital photocopier, a machine for plasticizing documents and a scanner.
The last opportunity (but not the least important) offered by the Project was a carpentry course. This was initially There were also some carpenters, an electrician, a welder and an expert builder who worked occasionally at the Mission. Thanks to them, new opportunities were provided for the young people who arrived at the Center from distant villages in order to learn a profession. The school of welding was much appreciated and provided training in the welding of metal and steel sheets for the production of doors, windows and the repair of agricultural and industrial tools. The program began quietly with a welder left unused by the Xaverian Bruno Menici, who had some notion of welding; his hobby was resurrected by the new man in charge of the Mission and made available to the Project, which began to produce a wide variety of artifacts, not only for the needs of the Center but also for external clients (for example, the many doors and windows of the house of the Paramount Chief Konkanda of Lungi Mahera; those supplied to the new “Mummy Ann” infant school in the Dumbuya district of Lungi; the work done on many private houses in the surrounding neighborhoods and on the first stage of the Faith and development Center, which is only a few hundred meters from the Mission. This was initially established to serve the Center itself, but it too soon began to accept work from external clients; its laboratory-showroomsold doors, desks, blackboards, beds, chairs and sofas to the public. The supervisors and five students apprentices helped to repair the ruined house purchased by the Center: their contribution was a robust roof of wood and zinc and a plywood ceiling above the building’s six rooms.
The roughly 150 students of the Faith and Development Center were asked to pay a tuition fee that was very modest in comparison to those charged by other Professional Centers in the area and in the capital Freetown. They were also asked to wear a simple uniform consisting of a blue tee-shirt bearing the symbols of the Mission and the Vocational Faith and Developm consisting of a blue tee-shirt bearing the symbols of the Mission and the Vocational Faith and Development Center. There were so many requests for these and other courses that the Mission could not remain indifferent to the desire of so many young people to train for work, bearing in mind that in Sierra Leone too, certain jobs are given only to people who are qualified and competent in their field.
There were also requests for courses such as gardening and brickwork for the building of houses and pavements, drawing and sculpture, thanks to the presence in Kaffobullom of three artists who are famous in Sierra Leone. These lived only a few miles from the Lungi Mission and had assured us of their availability. The artist Kele Mansaray had worked various times in the missionary Center on paintings for the chapel, the Domus, the parish hall and in other rooms in the School. The sculptor Marco lived in Masoila, where he directed an arts and crafts which was attended by about twenty students. The giant wooden statues and panels that adorned the atrium of the International Airport of Sierra Leone were his work. The Xaverian house and the Mission still proudly display his skilful works that portray the various professions of the local people, such as fishing, hunting, musicians, and women in traditional costumes. Another artist, who exhibited magnificent African batik by Abu, was working in Rotifung.

The first children’s university

To 150 students of the Faith and Development Center were joined in the autumn of 2004 by 80 children from an infant school who had been evicted with their teachers from a private house. The Mission gave them the use of the Parish hall until a real school could be built for their exclusive use. The new building was inaugurated on 14 September 2005, thanks to the generosity of an Italian benefactress and the mother of the missionary in charge of the Center. The mothers of the small pupils and the population of Lungi gave it the name “Mummy Ann Pre-School”. Sierra Leone had seen many of its children die during the civil war (1991 – 2001) and many others continued to succumb each day to childhood illnesses. Several thousand girls and boys of Sierra Leone had been left without an arm, a leg or with other wounds hidden deep within their souls as a reminder to the survivors of the atrocities they had suffered as small children in a senseless war waged by adults. In the Mission Hall, the children, most of whom were from Muslim families, found a congenial educational setting. They saw beautiful things and could move around undisturbed in a garden that must have seemed like a fairy tale to them. They also encountered religious symbols, which they absorbed into their minds and hearts with a natural childlike simplicity. For the Mission it was a form of pre-evangelization.
At the beginning and at the end of lessons all the children, big and small, were guided in prayer by a Christian catechist and by a Muslim teacher of the School. It would have been absurd to do otherwise. Since they belonged to different religions, the Christian prayer of the Our Father was followed by the sura from the Koran, which is a prayer of praise to God. A Center called Faith and Development could not possibly ignore the religious dimension. Everything that was being offered to the students and those who attended the Center sprung from and was oriented to faith in a God they already knew, and faith in the God proposed to them by the Holy Cross Mission along with the other opportunities it provided. Thus, the small church that dominated the yard soon began to fill with the faithful, those who already attended, and new believers too, or those who were simply curious about the faith: adult students and many children, who all thought it was quite normal to return to Holy Cross after school and attend the church with the consent of their parents or without their knowledge.

An experiment awaiting further development

On 21 November 2005, a new Administrator took over the direction of the Project. The Faith and Development Center, which was planned as the first stage in the establishment of a social cooperative, has undergone considerable modifications. Some important works have been suppressed.
In the expectation of new programs, the first pavilion and the land purchased by the Mission for the construction of the new Social Center a few hundred meters away from the previous one, are ready to recommence the activities at the first sign of interest on the part of some other pioneer of the Faith and Development among the Muslim Soso of Lungi in Sierra Leone.
On 14 September 2004, during a speech on the day of his investiture as a local dignitary of the Kaffobullom district, the Founder of the Project declared that the work of the Center was a choral effort, thanks to the collaboration of all the local people in Lungi and many friends who supported their efforts from Italy. The seed they had all sown became a harvest, an achievement and a dream fulfilled for everyone, a monument to the generosity shown by all.
The letter of the Apostle James exhorted the first communities to express invisible faith through visible works. The concern for the development of the Muslim area of Lungi led to improved relationships between the Mission and the local people, both Muslim and Christian, and also helped to bring the Soso closer to the Christian faith. The children were no longer punished if they dared to enter the courtyard of the Mission or if they went into the Church to pray with the Christians. It was no longer rare to see Muslim soso girls marry young Christian men and agree to go to church with them (even girls who bore the name of Dala Modu Dumbuya, the famous king of Lungi, who lived in the 18th century and to whom, it is believed, the garden of the Mission once belonged). The Holy Cross church of Lungi was now full not only on Sundays or on the 14th of September (the parish feast day); during weekdays too, groups of students or the merely curious entered the church in search of truth and hope.
Has perhaps the time arrived for the Soso of the Kaffobullom to visibly unite with the Christian community of Lungi, like many other Christian Soso in nearby French Guinea?
We respect God’s times and rhythms, without forgetting that the sheep must not only be sought but, first and foremost, loved.

Fr. Vito Gabriele Scagliuso