By Fr. Efren de Guzman, SVD

After I got back to Angola from my medical check-up in the Philippines I was expecting to see better changes in the life of the people here in Luanda. But, to my dismay and deep sadness, the situation here is getting worse everyday. The poverty of the people is becoming more insupportable, the rate of criminality is rising, the number of the unemployed is growing by leaps and bounds. The general picture of Angola is a country beset by all forms of human affliction and torn apart by conflict and division.

Like beasts

Here in the city of Luanda, children are dying en masse without getting the benefit of minimal medical attention. Uncollected garbage clutters up the streets of the capital. Gun-totting members of the Armed forces and the police prowl the city thoroughfares like beast, desperately trying to augment their meager earnings through corruption and intimidation. The daily income of an ordinary man is eight million Kwanzas, equivalent to eight bottles of beer. Eight million Kwanzas cannot ever buy a can of NIDO milk in the only viable supermarket in the city. (Kwanzas is the peso of Namibia. The exchange rat of Kwanza in dollar is 1:1, 500, 000).

In the face of this vast scene of suffering and sorrow, I could only sight with a sense of helplessness. You may note that what I’m telling you is all bad news. Yes, but I have also some good news to tell – things that pertain to my pastoral activities here.

Bitten by a scorpion

I visited the homes of my old friends in one of the interior parts of Angola. While walking around in one of the villages where I worked before, I got bitten by a scorpion. It was so painful that I had to go home at once, but, with God’s help, my antibodies resisted and subdued the sting of the poison, and I recovered almost immediately.

It is a joy for me to know who my real friends are. We know them in times of misery and in moments of crisis.

Malaria Again

I received a letter here in Luanda from one of my friends who took care to write and give me some encouragement and help for our scholarships program in the Philippines. It was a very reassuring letter and I felt good. More new arrived—one of our orphans here was tortured and killed by the bandits. Hearing all the news I felt so bad that I threw up and had to stay in bed. Later on I found out that I had contracted malaria again.

Liberating Death

In one of my moments of prayer, I had some sort of a dream in which I saw some familiar faces of my friends who are lepers and amputees, but are now dead, in that sort of vision, I saw them so beautiful, so pure and so bright like angels. I believe that it was God’s way of telling that life after death is such an ineffable experience and that the reality of death is just a passing through from our earthly existence to a higher and more fulfilling union with God; that death is a liberation in which we can have the joy of seeing God face to face. For my friends who have gone ahead of us, death in Christ is a real joy and real happiness and liberation.

Pinoys in Prison

Two days ago, we went to a military prison camp in Viana (20 km. from the capital, Luanda) and brought some food to the prisoners. We have two Filipinos, imprisoned there because of a frame up. They caught a thief, but, unfortunately this thief has a sister who is a judge working in the Judiciary. So, as bad luck would have it, our fellow brothers found themselves in prison, while the thief is now free. With the help of our friends Etienne Albert Bretchet, a Swiss who is a director of SERVE EQUIP, we are hoping to get our brothers out of prison soon.

We were touched to see some prisoners praying and singing in jail. Their joyful witness is a powerful testimony that makes the prison a graced place, in spite of the fact that, since more than a month ago, twenty five prisoners have already died of malnutrition and malaria in the camp. We have shared that we too can make an impact for Christ wherever we are – whether in prison, in office, in our home, in the fields, or wherever we find ourselves. A little light in a dark place can give life to many.

This is all for now, I wish to thank you for your continual prayer.

In the face of this vast scene of suffering and sorrow, I could only sigh with a sense of helplessness.

“Darkness cannot put out the lamp... it can only make the light seem brighter.”