PASTORAL EXPERIENCE REFLECTION AT HOME OF HOPE

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Bamutaze Jean-Marie Vianney
One of my profound moments in my three-year-journey in Lavigerie House has been in the pillar of pastoral work, one of the four formation pillars. I have done pastoral in various places in the three years and they have all been moments of joy, challenge, strength and growth, but I would like to put to light the one of my final (third) year in Lavigerie House: which is Home of Hope, where I have worked for a full year.

Home of Hope is a home or center for children with multiple disabilities, they offer internal and outreach (home based) services to handicapped children. They offer different basic services, among them are; parental love and care, basic needs, education, empowerment, therapies, the list is endless. This is done after studying the nature of the debility of the child and then assess what he or she is able to do.

Before my appointment to Home of Hope, I had had and heard enough prejudices, biases and rumors, all these were surely negative. I had developed a disinterested love and appreciation of the place. Honestly, except developing these through here-says from people, I had no idea of what Home of Hope is! Not even the location! However, upon appointment, just imagine how my first spell to the place was-like!

Jean-Marie and Moses serving at Home of Hope

Nonetheless, I realized, upon arrival, that I had been to places of the kind before; like Sheshire (Katalemwa), Kampala, but this memory came later. It is justifiable for one to assert that Home of Hope needs a person with a strong but passionate heart to be there for even thirty minutes. What challenged me is finding all the children, each with his or her own incapacitatedness but happy, smiles all over, I was first welcomed by one who hugged me over six times in a single minute, Oh My God! Though I embraced him as well, I was hesitant, for it was my first time in the place, our first encounter with the person and etc.

The other side of it is that I cannot really explain how my love for the place and the children found place in the deepest bosom of my heart. Really this is the place I have loved and desired to do more for, always, as long as within my potentials. I thank God, the staff was kind enough, to offer special help to the place, as a community in our common pool of Samaritan Fund, we were able to extend more support to the place. I feel privileged to have had that experience which I really found indispensable in my life.

I think Home of Hope and the prisons have been the most visited pastoral places by the formators this academic year. This was a noble image; formators accompanied us (I and my pastoral mate Moses Ashango). Many people from both within and outside our community could once in a while accompany us, different movements like Peace and Justice Club of PCJ also worked hand in hand with us.

The challenging moments were when it came to riding especially under and after the rains, as the road network is still poor and the place is somehow distant. However, the greatest challenge was when some of the people who accompanied us, sworn never to go back as they could run impatient with the situation, some could fear to touch the children, some even refused to enter the house and kept regretting why they had visited. It raised many questions in me because it was a time when my love for the place had found immensity in my heart, I was happy with the children, we could play, make fun though we largely employed sign and body languages. What kept me strong are the such beautiful moments I used to have with the children and the other people who worked there, I just imagined how they push on day by day before I could hate the one day in a week that I visit the place. The other comfort were the words of Cardinal Lavigerie, “Be nothing but Apostles and nothing but Apostles.”

My joy was when I felt loved by the children, they could play and laugh with me! I could sense how our arrival would bring in a new gear, I felt proud of the place. These children, though incapacitated, they knew who loved them and they reciprocated these feelings.

Home of Hope reminds me so much of my first year, first semester, when old as I was, became debilitated for almost the entire semester. I was down with a fracture on the right leg, carrying the cast (POP) for at least two months, yet little signs of healing were realized after removing the POP, all that time I was walking only by the help of either the clutches, wheel chair or people around me. Honestly, on my own I could not do anything of the kind, in a way I was handicapped. I feel this is the climax of the history I share with my beloved friends at Home of Hope. The love and care I got during my time of disability is the debt I felt always. Meeting such friends who are immobilized like I was in my first year, I felt I had gotten the chance to payback or even reciprocate the love and care I got during my incapacitation. I always felt I owe them this love and care! Love and care that is fully unconditional. Perhaps God took me through all that first year experience to prepare me for Home of Hope! Thanks Lord! The humane feelings I developed during my faintness in which I experienced the “beauty of pain” are the same that have driven me through this year’s pastoral experience at Home of Hope. The happiness I lived that time is what I share with others I meet in the similar state. I neither regret the fracture nor having worked at Home of Hope!

What I can say is that all human kind is in the race towards a destiny, the destiny is happiness and absolute happiness rests in God, as St Augustine put it “our hearts are restless until they rest in you, oh God”, much as I need my happiness, I acknowledge that the disabled are human beings who need happiness as well. My duty to them is not limited to love, peace, justice, appreciation and empowerment thus, happiness. This is what Cardinal Lavigerie called the “ultimate call to humanity.”

This also reminds me that before God, each of us is in one way or the other handicapped, given our human struggles, failures and limitations. Through his son, Jesus Christ, God empowers and capacitates us in the unconditional love the Lord had for us, to the extent of giving up his life for our salvation. Sin had enslaved us, sin had incapacitated us physically, socially, morally and spiritually, but through the blood of Jesus, poured for our redemption, we are made a new and fully empowered, abled and strong. God’s healing touch also reveals itself to these immobilized children through us. Though they are of different disabilities, metaphysically God has endowed and abled them with various talents; some are excelling learners, some are good at art, music, relating, powerful intuition, telepathy, to mention but a few, I do not even feel happy to use the words; “disabled or handicapped” while referring to them. In all I have come to tell that; Disability Is Not Inability! I pray and believe we have been MESSENGERS OF HOPE TO GOD’S PEOPLE!

By Bamutaze Jean-Marie Vianney

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