Africa
Vacation in Uganda

Where the Heart Finds Rest
Three days spent together at the source of the Nile. What is left in the eyes of 30 CL responsibles from various African nations is the beauty of a few hours spent together, looking at “what God does” that “penetrates every instant of life, revealing the profound meaning of everything.”

by Stefano Filippi

Rose Busingye is seraphic. “I’ve never rested as much as I did on that vacation.” She is recalling three days in Uganda, at the source of the Nile, with around 30 African CL responsibles and a packed schedule of hikes and encounters, bouncing buses and boats along the great river, witnesses and dialogues, amid rain and mud. These three days in early November were, in reality, a few hours. Fr. Ignacio Carbajosa finished here his Madrid-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Kampala tour; others arrived from Nigeria, South Africa, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Cameroon–too many countries to list. They came for a few hours spent together that you would call anything but restful. And yet, for everyone, it was.
There is a mysterious allure in this word: rest. To find rest. A mirage, for a Westerner. For Rose, a nurse who cares for women with AIDS in Kampala, it’s something simple: “Everything lets you rest, when you know who you are and whose you are. Before starting, you already have everything. Rest is trusting in God’s action. My ‘yes’ is enough for Him, because everything else is His work, He does it, and we enjoy this spectacle: God, who makes of us what He wants.”
The real story of this vacation is not a travel diary, a series of notes taken in order not to forget something in the future. It is a strange unity, strange because no one talks of a particular episode that was more striking than others, but of an atmosphere among the people there, a common recognition, a “harmony,” as Rose calls it. “We wanted to live among ourselves the beauty we saw at the international vacation in La Thuile and then at the Beginning Day. We planned three days together to verify the beauty that attracted us and drew us in. It was so beautiful to walk, to go up the Nile by boat, to arrive at the farthest point from the Mediterranean at which the river is born, to see that red earth and that vegetation, so green. Looking at this marvel was one with the journey that Fr. Julián Carrón has us make in following Guissani: God became man, He penetrates every instant of life, and the beauty of every flower, of the river, of Lake Victoria acquires Beauty with a capital B. Each and every thing that is given is beautiful because it acquires its identity, its face. It is a new world where the profound meaning of everything is revealed.”

A battalion. They were simple days, which began with Morning Prayer on Friday and a visit to the Luigi Giussani High School in Kampala, including witnesses from some students, teachers, and the principal. “The children danced and sang Il battaglione Aosta; the women sang Niño lindo. The singing, eating tilapia with their hands, the Mass celebrated at the river’s source: everything was united because what makes the Nile, the fish, the flower, is what is making me. The witnesses reminded us that everyone is wanted by God, that God is making us in each instant, and is giving us to ourselves because He wants our existence and our happiness,” Rose says.
For Jesús Carrascosa, among the CL responsibles, “those three days were a constant call to conversion. You perceive that the Church is like a forest: some trees die, but many others are born and grow. As if looking down from a helicopter, I can see where the charism takes root and settles. These people, here in Africa, were taken from the rubbish heaps and brought up to the point of university studies and teaching. The women who break rocks make a human journey: the questions that they ask, the smiling faces, their colorful and clean clothing, the hygiene that reigns in their shacks are all signs of the dignity they rediscovered to be stronger than poverty. Some are living communally; what they saw in Rose or in others becomes an experience of life. They are aware that it is God who does everything, and we are only passionate collaborators. The unity manifests itself in song and dance; people who live with the absolute minimum are joyful, because they are certain of having found Christ.”
Fr. Ignacio Carbajosa, Bible scholar and teacher at Madrid’s San Dámaso University, had never set foot in Africa. “As soon as I arrived, they placed a baby in my arms who had my name, and there are many others baptized Luigigiussani, Vittadini, Carras, Carrón. I have in mind the school named after Fr. Giussani: born from nothing, it now takes in hundreds of children. They were all there, singing, in clean uniforms, under the diagram with the arrows from The Religious Sense and the Benedictine motto: “With our hands, but with Your strength.” Rose’s women played instruments beautifully. The “Carrón Battalion,” as they call it, sang Alpine songs. The children witnessing spoke of the same things that we, too, have at heart, with simplicity. The next time that someone in Europe says that Giussani is too complicated, I’ll bring him to Africa to see.” A girl spoke about high school, how her gaze on her difficult reality had changed. Ignacio says, “She was 15 years old. I passed a note to the speakers’ table to ask her age. Change is not a problem of cultural level. What is important is taking Fr. Giussani’s words seriously for the journey of life.” Rose tells about another very young student, “He said he could have lost everything, his few things, his friends, even his life, but not Jesus, who was one with him.” 

No “small victories.” The Alpine songs, sung by dark-skinned African children, are striking. “They sing in order to be tied to Carrón; it’s a way to be in a relationship with him,” says Fr. Carbajosa. “At a certain point, I noticed that one of them was out of tune. In a normal choir, he would have been kicked out. Instead, he had Luigigiussani behind him, singing in his ear to help him. Someone said that he wants to ‘spy on Carrón,’ to understand how he moves in reality. Their following is not sentimental, but a desire to retrace the experience of another, to learn a way of looking at things.”
Present here are Africans from many different origins who have overcome national conflicts. Stories of persecution and encounters abound, “like those,” relates Carras, “of people who went among the refugees in Somalia and communicated the educative method of Fr. Giussani, provoking interest among the Muslims.” There are stories of those who find themselves alone in Madagascar or Burkina Faso, but who are not lonely, “and it brings hope to everyone, because the charism is possible anywhere.” The spectacle of the educative works that are multiplying is impressive. “But we didn’t talk about our works,” Rose emphasizes. “We visited the Luigi Giussani High School in order to see what God does. We know what man does, and sometimes we content ourselves with our ‘small victories.’ Instead, we wanted to become aware of what God does in front of our eyes, of how the Mystery awakens us, and which not even our suffering, sin, or poverty can diminish.”