By: Sr. Emma G. de Guzman, ICM

Sr. Emma, a veteran Filipino missionary in Cameroon faces the age old dilemma- how to help the poor without playing God and without damaging them. She shares the anguish of all missionaries with us...

Time for Vigil
I woke up early (4 a.m.) to join the end part of the Holy Thursday all night vigil in our parish. After our community’s morning prayers, I decided to spend this particular Good Friday in quit recollection and prayer, to be alone with our Lord Jesus in reliving His suffering and death. I also thought to be one in solidarity with our modern world’s anguish, pain and deaths.

Everything Just Right
The chapel in our formation Center is good for this: its far away from the gate and I thought, it will be where I will be most undisturbed. The skies were dark and gloomy...even nature is in state of mourning.
At about 8 a.m. two young boys from the public high school where we give catechism classes asked for me: Awossomo and Bela. Feeling my day slowly being robbed off, I softly asked the two what they need. Awossomo answered in a still lower voice: “Sister, do have work for us?” (This is the usual question some students ask on Saturdays when they want to earn a bit of rice and canned meat or sometimes a bible).

Work on This Day?
My voice gradually losing its softness, answered back: “Work on Good Friday? Do you realize what day it is? Why there are no classes today and why this is not a day of work? What did you learn last week in our Catechism class about Good Friday..?”

He Looked to the Ground
I asked the series of questions eyeing Bela who is the older of the two (each question gradually rising in pitch). With his eyes looking on the ground and without answering my question he said softly: “Sister its because we have not eaten for two days, and this will be the third day...”

A Lump in the Throat
I suddenly felt a lump in my throat and a sharp pain in my guts. My heart filled with pity and trying to control my emotions, I tried to ask: “Where’s your father?”  “He had an accident and is hospitalized, he couldn’t send money since almost two months now.” And I pursued: “And your mother?” “She left for the city to take care of our father.”

They Told their Story
And the boy told their story of coming from another village, renting a room in the house near the public high school; a house whose owner resides in the city and comes only to collect the rent...actually they are left on their on their own.

Threat of Being Cheated
Visibly, their looks were haggard and hungry, but I needed to ask the questions, typical question we often ask in our efforts to evade the constant threat of “being cheated” for money or whatever. But these two boys were not trying to cheat, they were hungry.

Morning Ruined?
I asked them in, gave them a bunch of bananas and sandwiches that easily found their way to hungry stomachs. Meanwhile, I returned to my quite chapel to retrieve my Bible, knowing the morning is finished for quit prayer and meditation as giving work means also supervision. When Bela and Awossomo had eaten, and the smiles back on their weary faces they asked for the machetes and I showed them the part of the garden that need’s tending.

No, Not Ruined
An area not far from my office where I am seated right now trying to capture in words this Good Friday experience...
This is your Friday for me Lord!
I desired to spend a day of quit intimacy with you and you sent me to your hungry children.
I want to spend the luxury of a day of prayer to revive my spirit and take a breather from our active lives but you want me to feel your dying in the poor today.
I longed to touch you in the silence and prayer but you touched me instead with the lives of your hungry children here in Okola.”

Tough Life for Students
The story of Bela and Awossomo is not rare. Of the 1,300 students in Okola Public High School, the majority suffer this fate: students left to themselves. They are in school from morning till afternoon. They must cook their own food, wash their own cloths, fetch their own water from the spring, gather fire wood; walk home to their parents homes (some 30 to 70 Km.) once a month for their food provisions and study to get that much desired diploma that can assure them of jobs and a place in a fast developing Cameroonian society.

Suicide
Bela and Awossomo reflect the lives of these students, their stories are too long to relate and sometimes too tragic. Last year a second high school girl had an abortion provoked by her own mother...her boyfriend committed suicide (from a third year class) by hanging himself on a high tree in the forest. His body was already decaying when it was found a week.

Sugar Daddie
Some students are lucky when they have relatives in town or kind tutor who adopt them like family member; or when they have parents who can afforded to put them to school or are also “lucky” when some girls find a ‘bigman’ who provides for all her needs in exchange of her body.

Search for an Answer
This is part of the life in Okola toady...often we had the idea of opening a student’s canteen to feed hungry students instead of a chaplain’s office; or a boarding house “safe for girls”...hand to mouth solution hand to mouth existence. But would be the best solution? What about the parents? The big African Family? What has happened to the traditional values of solidarity?

Crisis
We have so many questions that year for answers in a society where values are in crisis, in a deep crisis. And we live this crisis, we are part of it.
“Lord Jesus, you are still crucified today, and the poor groan with your cry:
“I thirst...”
“Father, why have you abandoned me?” ...
Help Us Lord, We hardly Know what to Do
I know this Good Friday story is only one in a million of stories in our world where the poor become poorer, where power and money dominate, where profit and more profit become the new idols. Bela and Awossomo got help today, but what about tomorrow or next week, they still have 4 months to go before the school ends. I know it’s a drop in the ocean and perhaps that is why I fell I have to write their story: its for my own consolation as we try our best to share this drop in the ocean of poverty, exploitation, hunger...as the poor are still crucified everyday.

“Help us Lord to take you seriously in our preferential option for the poor.”