We
are all affected by AIDS pandemicChikuni 100 years later – Who are we where we are?
By Mazuba Mwiinga
Chikuni can mean anything or nothing to anyone or someone, depending on what one is trying to make sense of. To some it means a mere name they came across in some books or heard from old men and women in roads or fruitless conversations. To some it is a clan name given to some boys for continuity of family ties. But to the typical Tonga, this is just a name to call a dry log.
Much as we may have various meanings and descriptions for this, Chikuni still remains a place reminiscent of personalities like Nelson Mandela. A mention of it, even a child of crawling age will stare at you with broad smiles of approval. It’s a place that has built itself a reputation of goodness, diligence, spirituality, co-existence and companionship. Chikuni is no longer a name we come across and ignore, but we have to take a pause and get to find out what it has in stock for us at that particular moment.
Chikuni is no longer a mere noun we offer a boy for family continuity, but it’s a Mission that up-rooted a vision that will ever be there to stand even the toughest test of time.
This time around next year, this Mission will be looking back, 100 years down the line of Christianity. The question might not be where have we come from? Neither could it be where are we going? But may be where are we and who are we where we are?
As, “who are we, where we are?”, becomes a sentimental recollection of the past, we come to realise that one thing played a fundamental role in seeing Chikuni where it is now and how it operates. The nolstagic feeling is from the famous Fr. Moreau of the Society of Jesus. His part in this game, I am told has continued to spread his influence even to the newly bred children today. The life of the people in present Chikuni reflects a larger part of the way Fr. Moreau brought up the mission to the locals.
One thing so significant about him is in the recent publication of “ A History of the Jesuits in Zambia”. In this book he is potrayed as a man who loved farming and gave out hand-outs to the locals kindly without considering the future repercussions of their future lives. It is told that a Rev William H. Anderson of the Seventh Day Adventist centre in Rusangu who came almost at the same time as Fr. Moreau, would not give out an orange to someone who asked for it, but would rather say “ I will give you instead an orange plant”. But Fr. Moreau “would gladly give it (orange) to him”.
This it is said was not Fr. Moreau’s deliberate policy of pampering the locals. As the publications says, it was the “work of mercy, but he would have preferred for people to learn from him and to provide for themselves rather than to hand out for help. He had wanted to use Rev Anderson’s policy of “ Helping people help themselves”.
This farmer-like personality he was pictured by his companions, brought attacks for him for they said that “all he did, except for Mass and Sacrements at the central station (Chikuni) was to farm”. Interestingly enough, Fr. Moreau’s reply to his superiors over these allegations awakes someone’s thoughts to today’s life and living in Chikuni. He writes in French: “ A hungry stomach has no ears”. He elaborates his statement saying, “It is useless to bring hungry children to school. A person who is always hunted by the thought, ‘What shall I eat today’, has no thought for spiritual considerations”.
One might look at this notion as a pretext or run-away excuse. But looking at the people of this place today, one is able to see the bare traits of Fr. Moreau’s roots.
Much as Chikuni has been on the route of evangilisation since 1905, it was being considered in terms of a centre; “ but it was never really an evangelizing centre but a centre of agricultural training which later developed into an important centre for education”.
Looking at Chikuni today, the description is not far from being almost the same. The place has beautiful, kind, strenuous people who are so reluctant to harvest where they have planted. Time and again I hear most of them saying ‘if our crops fail we will get relief from the Parish’. The fact that they have a prearranged notion in their mind of getting help at any time, makes them fail the crops even in times of good rains.
The numerous projects on education, health, communication, agriculture, nutrition and culture that have picked to the peak in the area, is clear testimony that Chikuni still carries the historical blood of being a centre, training the locals into full human beings apart from up-grading just their spiritual lives. Just as Fr. Moreau said that a hungry stomach has no ears, even today the Parish encourages people to sweat for their sweet so that they will be able to have spiritual growth understandably.
As Chikuni looks forward for the centenary celebrations in 2005, the cardinal question still pokes my mind, ‘who are we where we are today in Chikuni?’. It’s definitely not a collective question, but one that calls for individual self-analysis. As if its enough, one like me can only say 100 years of spiritual, educational, health and agricultural growth is not a simple and fun joke to crack. Coming this far has cause for felicitations. God bless the entire lineage behind this cause.
Congratulations Chikuni.
