By: Sr. Sonia Sangel, FdCC
Dreaded Malaria
Enamasa brought her one-year-old baby, Sagira to St. Therese’s Clinic Port Moresby where I work as a nurse. The child is severely dehydrated due to three days vomiting and diarrhea associated with high fever. Looking at Sariga’s physical appearances I have the impression that she is positive to the dreadful Malaria Falciparum. She looks very sick, and is shaking with chill and she sweats. Her eyes are sunken and jaundiced and her abdomen is distended with a enlarged spleen. I at once took her vital signs and sent her blood slide to the laboratory for a malaria smear. I started administering the Oral Dehydration Therapy. The child is like a parched land, a thirst for water, I showed and instructed the mother to continue to feed her with Oresol to replace the water and salts that had gone out of her body over the past three days. For her high temperature, I gave her a cool bath and a Quinine intramuscular injection. Finally after an hour and a half the peak of crisis subsided a little. Still anxious that she might not fully recover I thought of baptizing the child.
Dilemma
We all know that Missionary work is an explicit proclamation of God’s word as Jesus commands: “Go and make disciple of all nations” (Mt. 28:19). As a young Missionary I thought my life will be more meaningful if I bring God close to people in every way possible. In view of this experience with Sagira I question myself: Do I want the child to have a life of grace through Baptism.
God as Life
Having lived closely with the Papua New Guineans I realize how God has been at work with the Papua New Guineans even before the missionaries ever came. God made Himself known to them through their experience of life, not in the life of each individual or group but in the life in which the whole Cosmos shares. The people of Papua New Guinea who depend largely for their survival on the cultivation of staple crops such as sweet potatoes and yams have myths and rituals to express all the different kinds of life flowing together and influencing each other. “They see God as life, in fullness, life for people and spirits and pigs and gardens and rivers.” (Christ The Life of PNG by E. Mantovani & M. MacDonald).
Enamasa & Sariga
And that’s why Enamasa before she left St. Therese’s Clinic gratefully whispered to me that the Good Spirit of ‘Papa God’ had brought her child back to life and to health with the water of the Earth which we gave to her child. From then on they, from time to time visit us in the Clinic bringing some fruits from her garden. The complete recovery of Sariga is a religious experience of life for them. It is their own unique way of relating to God. Indeed God meets His people where they are, in their particular environment. He meets them in particular culture. Paul confirms this in his letter to the Romans 1:19. Creation is and remains God’s medium, of revelation.
Two-Way Reality
Furthermore my life as Missionary is enriched as I join the Catholic Nurses of Port Moresby General Hospital in the breaking of the Word of God in the weekly Bible study. I have come to discover what the two-way reality of ‘Missionary’ is through the term dialogue’. As I give them my own reflection on the Word of God, the group responds to the message according to their own cultural experience of God’s revelation which in turn deepens my experience of God.
Vast Virgins Forests
On one occasion as we reflected in the Parable of the Sower, the nurses shared how the Papua New Guineans treasure their land, their forest, their rivers not only as sources of livelihood but also as something sacred to which they belong. No wonder they still posses vast virgins forests, clear vast running rivers blue sea and sky and rich mineral resources in this fast changing world. Instead the Westerners and my people in Asia tend to look beyond the beauty of the same creation to its economic potential to be exploited. They see forest to be logged, rivers to be harnessed, and minerals to be mined. I think in this aspect of culture the Melanesians have something to offer the world.