Today is a public holiday here in Tanzania and it is nice to
have an off day. When I told the little
scholars yesterday afternoon that today we wouldn’t have class but would rest,
one of them said “Oh, yes. We don’t go
to school tomorrow either. I’m going to
sleep late, then get up and have breakfast, then play all day.” Now he knows how to make a plan!
President Nyerere continues to be an inspiration for
Tanzanians and it is a day like today when he is especially remembered for his
wise leadership from before Independence until he retired as President, and
even beyond. In 1970 he was invited to
the Maryknoll Sisters General Assembly and gave a keynote speech which is well
regarded as a model of how the church should be.
At the end of that speech he quotes from the Encyclical
letter of Pope Paul VI on the development of people, “If someone who has riches
of this earth sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does
the love of God abide in him?” The pope
then quoted St. Ambrose, “You are not making a gift of possessions to the poor
person, you are handing over to him what is his.” Later Nyerere quotes the letter again, saying,
“To wage war on misery and struggle against injustice is to promote, along with
improved conditions, the human and spiritual progress of all men, and therefore
the common good of humanity. Peace
cannot be limited to a mere absence of war; it is the result of an
ever-precarious balance of forces. No,
peace is something that is built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order,
intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men.”
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| Students at Secondary School |
We’re still a long way from that ideal even all these years
later but all we can do is keep on trying.
It breaks my heart to see the news of ebola and how it is wreaking havoc
in West Africa. Last evening on BBC
there was shown those in Liberia whose job it is to pick up the dead and bury
them. It showed the group in their
protective clothing going into a very small mud house to collect the body of a
young woman who had died, the mother of a three month old baby. The reporter didn’t know what had happened to
the baby but there was a picture of the husband, standing at a distance as his
wife’s body was collected for burial, with none of the traditional and usual
ceremonies usually associated with burial being carried out. The day when all people can get decent health
care, when everyone has access to education, when dignified and productive work
is available for all – maybe that will be the day when there will be peace.
