family - Jubilee

Without Borders 

Setting up a household on the Dark Continent. The adventure of two doctors and their six children in Uganda. Life as the fulfillment of the dream of youth

by PAOLA RONCONI

If life is truly the fulfillment of the dream of youth, then these two people have hit the bull’s-eye. We are talking about a man and a woman who from their university days had their minds fixed on Uganda and work as doctors in a seemingly forsaken place. “At that time, Filippo and I had a lot of friends who lived in this African country, and whenever we met with them, when they returned to Italy even just for a vacation, we were fascinated by the kind of life they told us they led there.” Luciana Ciantia is our “correspondent.” She writes, because she is still there, in Uganda. We asked her to tell us a little bit about her life and her family and she agreed, using e-mail as her means of communication. “We were enthusiastic about what we saw in our ‘African’ friends. We wanted to live that same life ourselves.” This idea became more and more insistent, until Luciana and Filippo [“Pippo”] decided to ask Father Giussani for advice. “I would ask you to stay in Italy [he said, in fact, that we both would have qualified to remain in the university, on the faculty] but if you really want to go on mission, I suggest you go to Brazil. If, however, you think Uganda is better for you, go to Uganda.” We decided in favor of this last hypothesis. It was not a matter of disobedience; we had to understand what best suited us.”
Thus in 1980–after graduating and doing a year of internship, getting married, taking an English course, preparing documents, vaccinations, and saying goodbye–they were off to Kitgum, Uganda.
“Certainly it was a risk, because we didn’t know what was awaiting us, and Africa is not only what you see in the movies. But the fact of having trusted those who were expecting us gave us the courage to set out. We sensed that what was waiting for us was the right thing for us–that it corresponded to our desires for a family, work, and companionship.”
They stayed in Kitgum until 1988, working in the government and the missionary hospitals there. Every two years they renewed their contracts, first with CUAMM and then with AVSI (Association for Volunteers in International Service), enabling them to remain in Uganda.

Six plus two

Little-by-little, the family grew, with a number of children–six, to be precise. “Four were born in Kitgum, where we were from 1980 to 1988. The other two were born in Kampala, where we moved.” But that’s not all. “Since 1986, Ayoo Christine has lived with us, and we consider her our eldest daughter. She will soon be married to a young Italian mathematics teacher.” And even more: “In 1997, we brought home a two-month-old undernourished and abandoned baby. Now Emmanuele Byaruhanga is a little man, three years old. We are starting the adoption process, since we have almost completed the three-year pre-adoption custody prescribed by Ugandan law.”
Until 1986, Kitgum was completely peaceful, “except for a few illnesses, which we always managed to overcome,” Luciana specifies. “In August of 1986–our third child was only two months old–the difficulties began. The guerrillas in the north, who belonged to the tribe with whom we were working, began anti-government activity, including ambushes on the roads, kidnappings, and attacks on the town of Kitgum. Maddalena, our eldest daughter, was in her first year of school when, in 1987, the mission where we lived was attacked by the rebels. I was at the missionary hospital with Raffaella, a doctor friend, while our husbands were in the town. It was October 2nd [Feast of the Guardian Angels], and the guardian angels protected us. Maddalena was at school and Monica and Matteo were at home with another family of friends. Despite the shooting, the bombs, and everything that can happen during a military attack–at noon the front separated us from our husbands, but by evening the government forces had taken the mission back and we were reunited–we all came out of it unharmed.” More than once after that they were forced to evacuate for safety. “We are not heroes who want to have the experience of risk or danger, nor even less do we want this for our children. But we have never been abandoned by the certainty that what happens in our life is for our own good and that of our children who, besides, seem happy to live here,” Luciana goes on. “They seem to me to be very open and outgoing, and when we return to Italy for summer vacation they go with their friends to the Scout camp, where they have never had any real problems.”

From Kitgum to Kampala

In 1989 they moved to Kampala, where another family of friends was already living. For a year, Pippo commuted between Kitgum, where he worked as a District Medical Officer, and Kampala (280 miles on a road that is only partially paved!).
“Differently from other families, for whom the question of school was what made them decide to return to Italy, we have evaluated year-by-year the possibilities that existed here for continuity in our children’s schooling.” So if the conditions do not exist… one does everything possible to create them. With their friends in Kampala, they decided to start an Italian school, open also to the children of their fellow countrymen who work in Kampala. “We named it after Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli, a doctor and Combonian missionary who had taught surgery to some of us. To this day, the Italian school is still operative.” This year they have also introduced an international section, because there are few Italian children. “The greatest help for our children’s education has come and still comes from the school teachers. In recent years, mainly teachers who are Memores Domini have taken their turn teaching here, and over time they have left their mark on the institution itself,” so much so that the school and teaching quality always receive positive evaluations from the annual inspectors.
Certainly, we are not speaking of a fairyland: “We have been through periods of tension, of incomprehension especially with our eldest daughter, whom we have allowed to make mistakes and choices with which we did not agree, but without ever taking away our trust in her. Then events led us to decide to send Maddalena to Italy. She now lives with her paternal grandmother and attends the Catholic University in Milan. Monica, our second child, is finishing high school in New York. With her, we accepted the risk of sending her so far away at just 16, still so hesitant and reserved, but we were sustained by the fact that there we had friends willing to take her in like their own daughter.”
This might seem like a life marked by mal d’Afrique (the melancholy that settles on those who have lived in Africa). But between the lines of her e-mail messages can be read something that goes much further: “Now, twenty years after those first suitcases, I think I would travel this same road again, because I feel fulfilled.”