Pilgrimage in Africa

Carole Wark kindly offers us the following tribute to recently deceased Br Charles Howard:

'[Charles] also wrote a pastoral letter to the Brothers of Africa, entitled "Pilgrimage in Africa".  This letter must have remained close to his heart since he quoted it at length in some private memoirs.  "The title may seem strange.  But it has been a pilgrimage in a real sense, a visiting of holy places, if one defines a holy place as one where God is found, where God speaks to us - through the goodness of people, through the needs of others, through the terrible suffering of many of His sons and daughters...

How often, as I saw hundreds and thousands of young people going to school in the morning, I wondered about their future... all their dreams and hopes and aspirations... knowing that, unless there were drastic changes, many of them would be frustrated in their efforts to find employment, to use the skills they had learnt, to fulfill their dreams...

Any visitor to Africa cannot but be struck by the role of women in society.  As the bishops of Zambia mentioned recently, "they are the background of our families and the leading actors in our economy."  ...  Here, as in most countries, women constitute the majority of the active Church members, whether lay or religious.  But for a variety of reasons - lack of formation, male dominance, forms of clericalism - they are often absent from decision-making in the Church.

The question for us is:  what are we being called to do?... what does this mean for us?... or do we think it is something that concerns only the politicians and other leaders?  Are there some signs of the times for [Marists] here?" '

Carole adds:

'These thoughts of Charles and his questions echo my reflections following some other reading I was doing yesterday on the numbers and patterns of attendance of girls in Kenyan schools and how the HIV/AIDS situation has impacted on the education of post-primary school girls in particular.  Our time together in Africa will have much to say to our hearts, I'm sure, and challenge significantly the work of our hands on our return.'

Thank you Carole.

John McMahon

Visiting the Travel Doctor

Hello fellow Marist pilgrims.

I hope that you are all enjoying counting down the short time remaining until we hit the skies together heading for Champagnat country. I can't wait!

As part of our preparation we were reminded about ensuring that our vaccinations were all up to date for Africa.  I had my jabs on Monday, have the second lot booked for Monday of next week and the final series one month away.  

Not being a seasoned traveller to Asia or Africa, I was interested to find that my local doctor was not able to give me the required yellow fever vaccination and suggested that I head for my closest Travel Vaccination Centre.  The doctor there was passionate about his work, and spent quite some time explaining to me every possibility for germ and virus disaster imaginable.  Suffice to say that I'd urge you, my fellow pilgrims, to make sure that you don't leave organising the jabs until the last minute.  Apparently we'll need the vaccination certificate to enter Rwanda as much as we'll need our passports.

The doctor also issued me with this advice:

When travelling in Africa and thinking food, which is me always, cook it, boil it, peel it and don't touch the animals.  I passed on the rabies shots, at $500 a pop and with 3 in the series.  My friendly doctor assured me that my travel insurance company will be happy to pay for immediate evacuation to London should I be unlucky enough to be bitten by a bat, a monkey or a dog.  I'll be relying on all of you to remind me when we're there to avoid anything with fur and teeth!!!

No pain, no gain.  Go get your shots.  See you for our meetings in just a few weeks.

Blessings,

Carole

Twelve weeks until our Pilgrimage!

A very happy New Year to each of you! Two of our 2012 pilgrims, Tracey Dorian and Steve Chapman have kindly agreed to upload posts to our blog.  We look forward to hearing from them and any others who would like to contribute.

Our 2010 blog proved to be a great means of communicating and sharing with each other and our families and friends back home.  This photograph shows Peter White, surrounded by other pilgrims, making a presentation to the Principal of one of our Marist schools in Guatemala during our last Champagnat Pilgrimage.

John McMahon

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Peter Houlihan, one of our pilgrims in 2012, has alerted us to the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which can be found at http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/  

It provides travel updates for all countries, including the ones to which we will be travelling on our Champagnat Pilgrimage in 2012.  You will be pleased to know that Kenya and Rwanda are not on the list of countries Australians are recommended to avoid travelling to at this time.

Twitter Hashtag

The Twitter Hastag for our Pilgrimage is #champilg12 This gives us an easy way to comunicate with each other. To participate, sign up to Twitter, search for #champilg12 and tweet within this group.

What Pilgrims Experience

Our Pilgrimage offers participants the opportunity to experience the charism that is at the heart of Marist mission, including:

1.  Insights into the life and times of Marcellin Champagnat in southern France and Paris;
2. An overview of the Marist Institute today as viewed by the Brothers and lay Marists at our General House in Rome;
3.  An experience of meeting young African Marist Brothers and of Marists working with the poor in schools in Kenya and Rwanda and
4. Sharing contemporary Marist spirituality in Marist communities internationally and amongst the pilgrims themselves.

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Getting to know our pilgrims

Planning continues apace for our time away next year.  We will soon be deciding on the airlines we will be selecting. Over the past week, each pilgrim has been sent a form to complete to enable us to assess what people require on the Pilgrimage and to enable us to organise the first payment of our airfares, now that the numbers and names of the pilgrims are becoming clearer.  Soon we will be asking for our first Pilgrimage deposit of $3,000 from each pilgrim, to be received on or before Friday 23rd September, 2011. Invoices will be sent to the person nominated by each pilgrim on the information form.  Pilgrims are starting to get their injections and considering insurance requirements. We wish you well in your preparations.