Summer 2012 - The Mill Hill Missionaries

Summer 2012 Advocate:Layout 1 19/07/2012 12:14 Page 10port of Matadi. A large crowd gathered towatch the ship dock. Custom officers andimigration officials rushed about as passengersprepared to disembark. A Franciscanpriest met us. He took us by car to his residence,and treated us to cool beer and agood lunch before seeing us off on a coachbound for Kinshasa, a journey of about 450kilometres. In Kinshasa, we made our wayto St Anne’s Procure, where the Scheut(Belgian) Missionaries welcomed us. Therewe also met Fr Noel Hanrahan (our SuperiorGeneral), who had arrived by air fromLondon and was on a pastoral visit to meetMill Hill missionaries in the diocese ofBasankusu.The Journey ToBasankusuOur stay in Kinshasa lasted for five daysbecause our Air-Zaire plane for Basankusuhad mechanical problems and the spareparts had to come from Belgium. Everymorning before dawn we went to the airportand checked whether our plane had been repaired.Eventually, everything was in orderand we took off for Basankusu via Mbandakaand Boende.In Mbandaka we had to come off theplane and wait until it returned fromBoende and then fly on to Basankusu. Butwithin an hour the plane returned becauseone of the engines was malfunctioning.Passengers for Basankusu were given theoption to return to Kinshasa or be leftstranded in Mbandaka.We made new travel arrangements thatmeant that we would continue our journeyby road from Mbandaka to Basankusu. OnEaster Sunday morning at 5.00am, long beforedawn we set off in a Volkswagen van.The road was basically a mud track withlots of potholes and wooden bridges - in urgentneed of repair. After a long bumpyjourney of over 400 kilometers through thetropical rainforest, we arrived in Basankusuaround midnight.The following day Bishop William vanKester welcomed us to the diocese and wereceived our parish appointments. JohnSmith and Brian Thorp were assigned to theparishes of Basankusu and Mampoko respectively.Brian Coffey and I were appointedto the east of the diocese, anotherjourney of around 600km. I was appointedto the parish of Yamboyo and Brian headedoff to Yalisere, one of the largest parishesin the diocese.Ten years - undersurveillance!In Yamboyo, there were two Dutch MillHill priests; Jacob Boss, was parish thepriest and Kees Vlaming was the curate.Nine years previously three Mill Hill missionariesof Yamboyo parish had been murderedduring the Congo Uprising – storiesof which were still very much alive andsomewhat disconcerting for the new arrival!Like every new missionary, my first taskwas to learn the local language: Longando,- a task that was made extra difficult sincewe had no textbooks or grammar. Eventually,I learned enough to venture out and saymass in the local language and administerthe sacraments; but because I was not verycomfortable with my knowledge of thelocal language I decided to learn the moregeneral language in the country: Lingala, -this made life much easier and more enjoyable.After two years, I was appointed asparish priest to the neighbouring parish ofDjolu, where Brother Marinus de Grooteworked as carpenter and mechanic.9