austraLasia #1906
Summer with youngsters from Iraq: a nice surprise
(A note from an EAO member now 'relieving' in Istanbul)
ISTANBUL: 18th July 2007 -- The Rector said to me one
evening: "I know you were thinking of working on writing a theology
text, getting a retreat ready to preach to the Sisters and getting some
materials together in English for the course you are teaching in
September. But there's a small change in programme - Fr 'X' should have
gone Istanbul in July to give a hand but he can't get a visa...".
In Jerusalem, halfway through June we'd just got
through all the work organising diaconate and priesthood ordinations -
but now I find myself in Istanbul, once Byzantium, then Constantinople,
and my job for the month is to give a hand in the parish, especially
for Masses in English.
There's a Syrian cleric in the community, Dany
Kerio, whom I taught theology to at the Crocetta, and he invited me to
also give a hand with the Kids Summer programme: 150 Iraqi youngsters,
children of refugees who are flooding into Turkey in their hundreds of
thousands; not only Turkey but Syria and other nearby countries too.
They speak arabic and are all Chaldean Rite
Catholics. Their faith is strong. One day Dany suggested saying a
decade of the Rosary - some of the kids said 'why just a decade. Let's
say the lot'.
All the families are waiting for visas, and speaking
in English with some of the leaders, I note that their dreams have
three names: USA, Canada, Australia. Not perfect nations by any means,
but minus the car bombs at the market.
Our activities are the usual run of ones you'll find
anywhere in the Salesian world: four teams with a leader each, T-shirts
with 'Don Bosco' scrawled across them, competitions, prayer, some
manual work, mini-Olympics, outings, treasure hunts in the park.
When I see them all lined up in Indian file,
shouting, with their coloured T-shirts, young leaders out front, a
sweaty cleric with a whistle and a loud-hailer, I realise it's the same
as everywhere else in the world. There's a picture of Mary Help
of Christians on the wall. She smiles. Maybe the fact is that the
common denominator round the world is MacDonalds, Coca Cola, and the
Salesian Kids Summer Programme! I mean, what else does a kid need to be
happy?
They tell us we shouldn't be writing of such banal
matters, but let me do it just this once, because an afternoon with
these Iraqi kids is really to discover a different image of Iraq than
the one we are regaled with daily on the TV news.
Our courtyard is a bit small to hold them all.
A couple of the kids lead one to desperation. The leaders (male) are
chatting up the leaders (female). The 'cleric' has to reckon with the
bursar about the mid-morning eats - "past their use-by date but ok"
says the bursar. Oh, and there's the day the neighbours rang up
complaining about the racket....loud music.
The other day they watched a movie with arabic
subtitles. "Marcellino, bread and wine". When the lights came on there
were many moist eyes. Then the littlest ones went out to play ball, or
better play seven balls, all at once, all together. Yet another
little Salesian miracle, just telling the world "We will overcome".
(Thanks to Fr Michele Ferero, of Ratisbonne).
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