AFRICA

THREE STORIES
VINCENT, MICHELA, AND FRED:
WHEN LIFE HAPPENS

They told his teachers that he was dead, and they sent him to another family in a nearby village. His stepmother had an idea: she wanted his scholarship to go to her biological son. When social services caught on, Vincent Okello was entrusted to a third family. Today, he is 22 years old and attends the Luigi Giussani High School in Kampala.
When he arrived, the young man was restless. He was a disaster at school, though his teachers recognized his intelligence. Then, one day, a classmate invited him to the School of Community run by Rose Busingye. “I went without many expectations,” Vincent recounts. “But when I heard Rose say, ‘Each one of you has a value,’ I was shocked. No one had ever said anything like that to me. She said, ‘Christ died for our nothingness; He loves us just as we are made.’ Back then, I really felt like a nothing. I thought that my life was useless. Hearing those words won me over, and I kept going to the meetings with Rose.”

Vincent was alert, observant. He started to attend Masses, and noticed that when it was time for Communion, they signaled to him that he should stay seated. Why? Because he had never been baptized. Without delay, he asked for Baptism. “The family with whom I lived at the time were ‘born again’ Christians. When they found out that I had become Catholic, they threw me out, saying, ‘Why do you need to change religions? Catholics are demons.’” When Rose heard about this, she asked to speak with the family, but the mother wouldn’t even open the door to her: “I don’t want to talk with that demon.” “Auntie Rose [as the kids call her] took me in, gave me a home, found the money for the boarding costs of the school, and told me, ‘Don’t worry, you will receive the hundredfold.’”
This happened in 2011, and since then Vincent has come a long way. At first, he was on and off with his friends from the Movement. Then, during a vacation, another phrase of Rose’s broke through to him: “Christ is making us now and in every instant.” For Vincent, it was a new turning point: “Those words changed my life; it was there that I understood that only He can fill my heart. And it is through this friendship, the companionship of the Movement, that I can deepen this way of knowing. A great desire was born in me, the desire to live in the memory of Him.”
These are important words, the sort that one wouldn’t expect from a boy of his age. But what does this mean for his life? What has changed? “It’s a change within me. With this awareness, I can no longer treat myself and others like I did before. If you treat yourself like a dog, then you will also treat those around you like dogs.” What does he have in mind when he says this? “At school, they ask us to contribute to the cleaning. And I see that I’ve started to help without having to be begged. The school isn’t mine; it’s given to me. But the beauty of the school, the furniture, the facilities, is for me. But I don’t stop at that. I realize something more: this beauty is Christ.”

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“I don’t know the Movement well–that is, the Italian part. I saw it for the first time last summer, at the international assembly in La Thuile. I didn’t know about all of these things: the works, politics… They are a bit far from our reality, and yet they are there.” Michela Marazzani met the experience of the Movement eight years ago in Addis Abeba. “In La Thuile, I saw Fr. Carrón for the first time in person. Later, back home, I insisted that the rest of the group in Addis Abeba come here to the Beginning Day in Nairobi.”
Michela has two Italian grandfathers and two Ethiopian grandmothers. She was born in Ethiopia, but at age 10 she moved to Cento, Italy (near Ferrara). At 24, she returned to Addis Abeba with her husband, who is also Italo-Ethiopian. Two children were born, Jonathan and Matteo, who are currently 15 and 13 years old. Ten years ago, Michela and her husband divorced, and life’s difficulties multiplied. “It was at that point that I sought help in a prayer group at the parish, and its participants included Elena and Stefano Rizzi. They are the ones who introduced me to the Movement and Fr. Giussani’s texts.”

Giovanni and Walter came to Addis Abeba, too, and then others joined them. They got together for School of Community, but there was more going on than that. “What struck me was seeing their friendship. I looked at their way of being together; I listened to what they said. They started to help me when I had some problems with my children. I felt welcomed and loved. A friendship was also born between my youngest son and one of the Rizzis’ sons. At a certain point, I wanted to understand what was behind it all.” Why is there this gaze between them? What is this attention and this love? “What drew me was this being loved. They loved me for me–that was it. There wasn’t anything else behind it.”
Michela says that this encounter changed her life. “Before, it was as if I were drifting. Sure, I believed, I had faith. But the Movement showed me that it is possible to see how Christ works in my life. If I didn’t have faith, I wouldn’t hold up under all the weight of life–difficult children, job responsibilities... Instead, Fr. Giussani left us a method. And people notice that I’ve changed, and they ask me, ‘How can you be like this?’”
Sometimes, she thinks about the fact that she could have met the Movement when she was in Italy. “It didn’t happen, and who knows how I would have been if I’d met it in college. In La Thuile, I met people who grew up together in CL, and it struck me.” Now her old friends from Addis Abeba are returning to Italy. So she has been asked to take responsibility for the small group. Is she afraid? “Sometimes I feel panic. I asked Carrón why they chose me. I thought that you had to be ready, that there was a path that you had to complete. They told me, ‘Just do it!’ They say that it’s not about being up to it–what is needed is the heart. That I have, and I’ll put all of it into play. Now there are some Ethiopians with us, and sometimes they don’t get involved in the way that I would like. I rebel a little bit, and say to myself, ‘Why don’t they see? It’s so beautiful.’ I would like to shout it to the world.”

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He was one of the first students of the Saint Kizito Vocational Training Institute in Nairobi, in 1994. Now, almost 20 years later, he has become the director of the branch in Kibera, the shantytown in the Kenyan capital. Fredrick Hong Juma, better known as Fred, was 19 years old and wanted to become an electrician. But he left Saint Kizito with more than the diploma that had interested him. He found a group of friends, from CL. “I met Fr. Valerio Valeri, and then other friends like Zaccheus. They invited me to some sporting events, but I quickly understood that there was more to it than sports. I was struck by their simplicity, the educative proposal that they made. From then on, I never left.”
Fred started to work for a company. He earned enough, and was doing what he liked. In the meantime, he continued to participate in the life of the Nairobi community, and to see his friends and teachers. Their friendship grew deeper; his experience matured and took root. Then, one day, the proposal arrived: “Would you like to teach at Saint Kizito?” He went from student to professor, and then director.
Saint Kizito is a professional school. Courses are offered for electricians, carpenters, cooks, waiters, hairdressers, and cosmetologists. It is an opportunity, as it was for Fred. “It’s already been 10 years since I started teaching, and it’s truly a great experience.” The biggest help, he explains, has been Fr. Giussani’s The Risk of Education. “In every paragraph, there is an idea that illuminates my profession, especially in an unusual school like this one.”

Kibera is the second-largest slum in Africa, an expanse of tin roofs and mud pits, poverty and crime. “When I arrived here, I thought that I would be able to change these people. I came from an academic environment in which everything was organized, and I thought that I would be able to replicate that model. Then I understood that I couldn’t skip over the fact that these people reason in a different way. They don’t care about anything.”For example,  says Fred, the students have no problem brawling in front of the professors. Or they simply leave school, and have to be brought back from their homes. “Here, I truly understand what it means to bet everything on their freedom. The alternative is to ‘suffocate’ people.”
The friendship and the education that he received in the Movement have thoroughly changed Fred. “Those around me are often amazed by how I react to things. I, too, notice myself behaving in a different way. I even see the difference with respect to my family. Like when my mother died–my siblings were disoriented, and I found myself supporting them.”
His style is different at school, too. “Here in Kenya, the common idea is that the teacher has to be detached. Instead, the door to my office is always open, for the teachers and for the students, and there’s no need for an appointment to see me. And once, for example, I found myself publicly asking forgiveness from my students for a mistake that I had made. Their mouths were all hanging open in shock.”