EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

land. Fr Mark Raper of the Asian Bureau had been especially active
on the plight of refugees from East Timor. Fr Robert Drinan was also
very concerned with the question of refugees. He took part in a fact
finding mission to the southeast Asia camps. A very good article
was published in America on that visit. Fr Dieter Scholz had been
directing the Zimbabwe project from London. There was a project to
help Botswana and Mozambique.
So nine examples of what was already being done were mentioned,
because we realised that to encourage others, it was best to show
what we were already doing. I would like to take three examples
from those nine.
Three examples
The first example is that of Fr Nigel Johnston from Zimbabwe
who did a tertianship placement in a refugee camp near Solwezi,
in northwest Zambia. It is clear that the most valuable thing I do is to live
at the camp in a tent and share the life of the camp. This is quite different
from the normal thing of people visiting the camp, organising things very
efficiently, providing food, medicines, various services, going around taking
photographs which no one ever sees again, and then going away until
they turn up another day.
The same point was made by Fr Patrick Moloney, the then Vice-
Provincial for Zimbabwe, after visiting Solwezi: Nigel is here totally
at home in the rough conditions of the camp, living the same life, eating the
same food, sharing as much as possible the same joys and sorrows and
sufferings of the 8,000 boys about him.
A second example is that of two American Jesuits, one working
in Korea, Fr Kevin Kersten, the other in Taiwan, Fr Jerry Martinson.
In 1979 they visited camps in Thailand, and this visit was described
by an Ursuline sister, Sr Mary Robert Perillat, in a letter she wrote
to the editor of Asian Report. Describing the poor medical facilities in
the camp, and the fear and anxiety of the Cambodians in the camp,
she went on to report that ...Into that scene walked our two smiling,
mimicking, singing and strumming Jesuits, effecting the miracle that helped
transform Sae Keow from a camp of interned refugees burdened with sorrow
to a crowd of smiling and then laughing men, women and children.
Gradually the fun-loving Cambodian soul found itself once again and the
crowd began to clap in rhythm and sing along. No matter that the words
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