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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!
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| 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