From: David Cullen <davidcullen6@gmail.com>
Date: 23rd Oct 2011

Missionaries of Africa
P.O. Box 511154
Chipata
Zambia




Dear Robbie

Once again you’ve sent me a donation, through the WFs in Dublin and Lusaka. Many thanks for two donations I was told of, 500 euros and 100 euros. I’ve got some faint memory of 100 euros being donated and a word coming from Dublin about that donation. My memory gets more holes in it by the day. If you have any clue about it you can let me know. Anyhow as always I’m mostgrateful.

• Robbie writes : Some donations were sent to Fr. David via Dublin but on behalf of the Pelicans.

You did a great job over the car. The fortunate thing was that my 14-year old Hilux pick-up which probably over there I would have had to pay to be carted off to the scrap yard here was much in demand. Despite its having a few flaws the one I sold it to was very content; and I was content too as with what I got for it and the donations received I’ve been able to buy a Toyota Noah, 3 years old, but in good condition, and very suited to the town, as also able for the not too many rough roads that even here I’ll have to negotiate. Also being an 8-seater, I can still use it for helping small groups that have to get around. In fact, although I’ve paid for it, the former owner still has to fill in all the forms to hand it over to me and I’ve given him a loan of it this weekend to take a group of Marriage Encounter families to Malawi. He himself is a member of M.E. and trustworthy.

Thanks a lot for what you did to make that possible.

I’m writing this from Chipata, not Mphangwe. Having been in Mphangwe Prayer Centre for six years I’m back into a WF community here in Chipata where I’ve now been for nearly 2 weeks. My room, a very pleasant one, is still in chaos as I’m still unpacking and trying to get everything in order, trying to decide what to keep, what to give away and what to throw away.

Anyhow I have to say that I’m relieved to be no longer the one in charge of parish and institute. Here, so far anyhow, with the two other oldies and me, it is very peaceful and quiet.

Br Simon, my co-worker there and I had a very wonderful send-off from the people on October 9th. The Mass lasted about 4 hours and even then the representative of the bishop who came to lead it shortened the program a bit. The youth had prepared a sketch and it was shunted to after the Mass instead of being part of it so that a lot of people left before then which was a pity. I didn’t see much of it either as there were many who wanted photos with us. There were surely more than 500 people in church. We received all kinds of gifts, including 8 chickens and a live sheep and quite a bit of money, something much appreciated as people really have so little for themselves.

I should soon be installed as hospital chaplain, but there were a few problems as my predecessor had too much on his plate to give quality time to the job and the authorities restricted him to visiting only during the official visiting hours when families and food are all around; also they took away his office and gave it to someone else. So there will be a few bridges to be mended if I’m to do the job properly. Anyhow pray that we can get things sorted out. I won’t have all the other jobs he had and I will try to give the hospital priority.

Anyhow the bishop is going to give me a letter of introduction so that next week I’ll be able to meet the hospital authorities. Besides the hospital I’m sure I’ll pick up some other jobs. I’ve already been twice to say Mass for a secondary school for girls in our area, and this morning had to say Mass in a parish in Chipata. I hope to get involved in retreat work too as I was in Kabwata. We shall see what the Lord’s plans are.

Inevitably I meet with the poor, some of whom I was helping before I came to Chipata. I’ve had to help Brenda whose husband has just come out of prison. I already help their daughter Mable who though about 9 or 10 years old had never been to school. She’s now in her second year and seems quite bright. The husband was a welder and they are looking for help to start him off with a machine and want me to lend them the money to buy one. Loans here are extremely soft. Anyhow for the moment Brenda’s husband has to regain his health. It seems he has problems with his legs and has gone off to one of his relatives to find help.

I’ve also helped Ailedi who is here without any proper place to stay together with her youngest sister about 2 years old. Their mother, Misozi, is in prison for a year for misusing about £30. If I’d known about it I could have helped, but she had already been sentenced before I discovered where she was in jail. Ailedi and I visited her last week. Last time I went I took some food and a bit of money that one of the warders will use to get her some necessities like soap, and had also to take rosaries as a lot of the women asked for one. The family of Misozi is pretty disjointed. Ailedi’s younger sister, Brenda, 16 years old, is pregnant it seems and Misozi is HIV positive, her husband having died after given her the disease. The children are being cared for by Violet, a step-grandmother, who has at least 8 in her house now. Ailedi it seems, about 18 years old, has been coming back to the family house with men. When she was at school she was the victim of what they call here ‘damage’, being given a pregnancy, though the child did not survive.

I’ve told her that if, with Violet’s approval, she comes us with a business proposition, I’ll do what I can to help start her off. When we saw Misozi she asked Ailedi to pick up 2 of the younger children from a different area where they must have been in the care of some relative or friend and take them to where Violet lives. Now the smallest child, the two-year old, is in hospital and I’ve had to leave some money with Ailedi to care for her.


I went to Lusaka for a few days last week, mainly to get set up with medicine that you can’t find here, stuff for the old men’s problem or prostate. I always try to keep my coming secret, but it never works. The word spreads round like a bush fire and I had at least 30 visitors from Misisi, a part of my former parish of Kabwata. It’s an illegal compound, so no drainage, no proper roads, practically no electricity, plenty of mosquitoes, flies, rats and rubbish, but no clinics, no schools, except the one that the White Fathers established, a community school catering for the children who cannot afford the government or private schools with requirements of uniforms, shoes and fees. When the rains come, as they are just about to now, there can be flooding, one of the consequences of which is that the contents of the pit latrines come to the surface. So whilst I would prefer to remain hidden I can only think it is not the Lord’s idea, and I was besieged, but running out of money after about helping about 15, I’ve promised I’ll try to send something little by little through the post office to those I could not help. The needs people have are mostly for paying long overdue rent for what I would call the hovels there, school fees, help to get a mini-business going, paying medicine prescribed and so on.


Though I did invite to Grace come and see me. Grace is an orphan who suddenly appeared on our doorstep in Kabwata about 10 years ago, totally lost. Eventually we tracked down a grandmother with whom she went to stay, though it was really she who was caring for the granny who was often in hospital and recently died. Grace is a very good young lady, very involved with her parish, and struggling to care for herself by platting hair and backing cakes and buns. I want to help her make some improvements to the tiny dwelling that she and her grandmother occupied.

Another was Matilda, again an orphan whose parents died of AIDS though she is ok. I’ve been helping her with schooling over the years. She too is a very good girl, a member of the ‘Young Franciscans’. She came with her aunt, Agnes, an ex-nun, who cares for Matilda and her younger sister. They needed, besides overdue school fees, help to start a mini-business of selling what they call here ‘salaula’, bales of second hand clothing that I think come from the States. As they had had to walk a very long distance to come and see me, having no money to pay for a bus, that was for me another convincing reason that they were the genuine article.

Then came Ireen, an untrained teacher who is paid pretty poorly, wanting to continue a course that would provide her with a diploma. Finally came Albertina, a grandmother caring for the children of 3 of her daughters who have died of AIDS; caring too for a son who is also HIV positive. Besides needing help with school fees, she’s trying to complete the roofing of the house she’s living in with what is used her, corrugated iron.

Another one who came was Steve. I was pleased to have his company whilst shopping in Lusaka to be the guard of the car we are able to hire from the WF’s there. He needed a bit of help to finish the course in carpentry that will help him in life. He’s a great support for the Junior Legion of Mary in his parish and is a good man. He tries to help himself as much as possible with a mini-car cleaning business.

So what you gave this time and have so often given in the past is very precious. Almost certainly I shall have to give some help to patients and families I meet in the hospital.

I’ve had to leave the library at Mphangwe not completed. However all the work of painting and repairing windows was done and I paid for six book shelves as well as putting into the care of my successors all the books you
sent for the library and I’m sure that the job will be done. The two priests who have taken over from me are more project-minded than me so I have confidence they will extend this project.


Thanks again for everything Robbie. Wishing you and all your loved ones the Lord’s on-going loving care.


Fr David Cullen, w.f.

From: David Cullen <davidcullen6@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:13:38 +0200

Box 511154

Chipata



January 25, 2012



Dear Robbie,

It’s a bit late in the day to wish you the Lord’s many blessings in this New Year, but still the wish and the prayer is there.

Christmas is still further away, but you may like to know how we celebrated it here. My sister Anne’s parish put on a concert especially asking us to do something for the poorest at Christmas and so our local St Vincent de Paul Conference organised a Christmas lunch for 64, using one of the local schools as the venue and organising transport for those who would not have been able to get there on their own. Also at the hospital where I’m chaplain, Chipata General, the local Small Christian Community put on a Christmas lunch for the women staying in a very basic shelter on the hospital premises, mostly pregnant mothers-to-be whom the hospital very wisely urges to come to have their babies safely delivered. I was supposed to say Mass at the hospital, but about an hour before it was due, one of the local parish priests asked me to go to his sub-parish as no priest was available for the 32 children due for baptism, having completed their 2-year preparation, plus 18 others awaiting first confession and first communion. He said he would arrange for the Mass at the hospital. Actually I discovered afterwards he sent 3 nuns for what they call here ‘the Sisters’ Mass’.

That parish Mass lasted three and a half hours after which I was too exhausted to go to the SVP luncheon, though I did pop into the hospital, only to find that everything was over and done with, though the women I talked to were very grateful for what had been prepared for them.


Two days before Christmas I went to the women’s prison in Chipata where Misozi, whose family I’ve been helping, is serving a year’s sentence for failing to produce about £30 of money she had been entrusted with. That kind of treatment is very different from many of the big shots in the capital Lusaka who have stolen millions but somehow seem to be able to keep out of jail through having clever lawyers to represent them. I took her enough food and soap to be able to share with a good many of her fellow inmates. I have also helped the step-grandmother caring for her 5 children with money to start a mini-business.


Whilst there the officer in charge asked me if I could provide them with a sewing machine, cotton and material. Many of the women were in jail for having illegally sold hemp simply because they could not find any other way to ensure food for their children. She thinks that if she can teach them sewing skills they could find a job and so a way of earning money legally. I will indeed do that.


Whilst the hospital thankfully does not demand too much by way of financial help, sometimes I do have to step in, although I always do it through the local SVP. One special need is that of Feliciano from Mozambique who has no family or friends here in Zambia. Due to a very bad accident he has had both legs amputated. He needed a wheelchair which the hospital cannot provide, so we got one made in Lusaka. He and several others like him who have no family or friends visiting them we also give
some food at times. The hospital fare is either very unappetising-looking cabbage and boiled maize or beans and boiled maize given twice a day. Sometimes too I have to help discharged patients with bus fares to get home as all the money they had has been used up for food or medicine that they have had to buy from the chemist as the hospital could not provide it. Also I’ve been asked by a fellow White Father if I can take on paying the fees for one of the student nurses he is no longer able to help.

Apart from the hospital though I have a multitude of requests from both my former parishes of Kabwata and Mphangwe. I was in Lusaka earlier this month, called with some 30 other White Fathers or WF students for a four-day course on finances. One of my jobs is that of local bursar which means providing food for our small community of three but also for the many WF visitors we get, as also paying the bills and wages of our cook and gardener/handy man. At the end of it we were given a certificate of attendance – fortunately not an exam before receiving it! I’ve also done a crash course locally for Microsoft Excel, still a bit of a struggle for someone nearing his 80th birthday to get hold of that quickly.

Whenever I go to Lusaka I try, always without success, to keep my visit a secret. Though besieged by former ‘clients’ from Misisi, an illegal compound now an independent parish from Kabwata of which it was formally an out-station, I have to try to put myself in their shoes. Particularly now in the rainy season it’s just dreadful there as there are no proper roads, no sewerage system, no clinics or schools, apart from the Community school
set up by the WFs; but plenty of flies, mosquitoes, rubbish and thieves with little protection for them in the rented hovels the vast majority live in. People’s needs are mostly food, school fees, rent, starting small businesses and medicine. I did begin to help, but was besieged with 27 needy on the last day there and could no longer cope. Still I do send something at times to Sister Veronica who is working there to enable her to try to help the neediest.

When I went to Lusaka by the morning bus, that means here 5 a.m., I travelled with Steven the local SVP had asked me to help. He has a wooden leg that badly needed replacing and this can be done only at the Italian hospital in Lusaka. I had to admire one of the women of the SVP who came with him to ensure he got on the bus OK. I had to pay both for his transport and the new leg.

Also I’m visited very often by former parishioners from Mphangwe, about 40 miles from here. The priests who replaced me find it difficult to cope with all their expenses there, so again I have to try to help, especially with school fees for orphans, ‘loans’ for fertilizer, as also help with food as for many of these subsistence farmers the stock of maize they put in their mini-granaries last year is finished. I ask them to come with a letter from the SVP or prefer that the SVP gathers together a list of the neediest to save my having to pay the transport costs of those coming here.

I also help some families here in Chipata, again with food, school needs, help to pay college courses, starting small businesses and other emergencies. So you see how valuable your donation has been for these and a good many other needy.

If I’m not abusing your generosity would it still be possible to ask for the odd book, not just for me, but especially for several of our
WF students in formation who have asked me to accompany them spiritually? Often they don’t have suitable spiritual books and look to me for help. My supply is now pretty limited since of course I left the books you sent at Mphangwe.


With every best wish to you and all the family,

David

Fr David Cullen, w.f.