Life in the Submarine - The Mill Hill Missionaries

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introduced at the time, became the signature tune of the Bilenge ya Mwinda.Having the founder and chief initiator of this striking pastoral initiative at thehelm of the diocese exercised a huge attraction young people all around. Manyof the students at Bonkita, where I was teaching, also got involved. Iexperienced this development as a real gift of the Spirit and was grateful forthe opportunity it afforded to acquaint the youth with the Gospel message in alanguage and a manner they could understand and relate to. Regularly everyyear bishop Matondo would write an extensive letter in the form of a brochureto the Bilenge ya Mwinda all over the country. It took a while to fully appropriatethe thoroughly African process of initiation which lay at the roots of the methodproposed by bishop Matondo. The fact that most young people had noawareness or experience of traditional tribal initiation also did not help. But atleast everyone could recognise the approach as truly African.Africa has a rich oral tradition. In Central Africa there are no written sourcespredating the colonial period. Important historical events were handed on byword of mouth and committed to memory with amazing accuracy. A well-knownBelgian scholar, Jan Vansina, has been able to trace back the lineage of theKings of the Bakuba Kingdom in Congo to the sixteenth century using oralsources. David van Reybrouck in recent his history of Congo, published tocoincide with the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence, makesextensive use of informants.Similarly Bishop Matondo was conscious of being heir to a culture centredaround ‘le Verbe’, as the French expression goes. “And the Word was madeflesh”. He was an excellent orator. His sermons and conferences were alwayswell prepared. I often saw him walking up and down the veranda of hisresidence’ thinking ‘aloud’ to test and develop the flow of an sermon or a talk.His lively sermons in true African style would be peppered with proverbs,stories, an occasional song and plenty of rhetorical questions to which theaudience would respond instantly as they would at a village gathering. Oftenhe would be carried away by his own enthusiasm, sweating profusely andgesticulating wildly to the point of almost losing his mitre (bishops wear theirmitre when they preach!). African oratory is generous in its use of time too. AEuropean style ten minute sermon leaves most Congolese ‘hungry’. AEucharist celebrated in the Zaïrean rite typically lasts two hours or more – thesermon taking half an hour at least. The art of exuberant celebration – religioncan be fun! – is one of Africa’s most precious contributions to the universalChurch, in my estimation. The longest celebration I ever attended was anEaster Vigil at Basankusu Cathedral which started at 8 pm and finished wellpast midnight! Some inveterate smokers among my fellow missionaries would
at times, abscond during the sermon, have a smoke, and find the bishop stillin full oratorical swing when they returned!In a supporting roleIn 1980 bishop Matondo asked me to become his Vicar General and appointedme Conseiller Pédagogique of secondary education in the diocese. JosephBongwele had been appointed chief Coordinator of Education at the same timeand we were to work closely together to build up secondary education in thediocese. I was truly delighted to be able to work as an assistant to Congoleseleaders (Bishop, Coordinator), no longer in the driving seat, but in a supportivecapacity as I deeply felt the position of the missionary should be at this stageof the development of the Church in Congo.There had been a sudden and quite anarchic explosion of the number ofsecondary schools all over the diocese – Catholic, Baptist, Kimbanguist,Islamic and State – in response to changing government policy. To say that inthe absence of even the most basic infrastructure, with no textbooks or writingmaterial to speak of, and a host of poorly qualified teachers, giving somedirection to this chaotic growth was going to be an uphill task, would have beenthe understatement of the decade. But Joseph Bongwele was not easily putout by adverse conditions. He had the trust of the teaching personnel and abasic honesty in handling money. Dick van de Riet, who oversaw the financialdepartment of the Education Office, was a huge support as well.For the school at Bonkita with its onerous boarding facility, which proved moreand more difficult to maintain, this proliferation of secondary schools provedfatal. The new préfet, Nyenge,valiantly struggled to keep theplace going, but in the end fellvictim to the wide spread habitof ‘creative accounting’ andwas transferred. Not long afterthe entire school was moved toBasankusu to cramped andinadequate accommodation atwhat had previously been aCycle d’Orientation (the firsttwo preparatory years before
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Life in the Submarine - The Mill Hill Missionaries

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