It is with pleasure that I am putting into writing and sharing with you my life and work in Konadougou Parish, in the western part of Burkina Faso, West Africa.

I arrived here on the 23rd May, 2006 having completed the classical six month course in Bambara language in Falaje, Mali, about 80 km from Bamako the capital city. I have been serving in the parish ever since.

Geographical and historical background of the parish



Konadougou is a rural Parish situated in the extreme west of Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa formerly known as Upper Volta.

It is one of the seven parishes of Banfora Diocese erected in 1998 with Bishop Lucas Kalfa Sanou as its first Bishop. The parish borders the country of Mali to the West and that of Ivory Coast to the South.

Founded on the 15th August 1959, the parish covers a territory of 2 810 km2, (1.04% of the national territory) with a population of about 130 000 people of which only one percent are Catholic Christians.

Almost half the population belongs to an ethnic group known as the Senufo while the rest belong to six minority ethnic groups: Turka, Wara, Ble, Natioro, Samogho and Jula. While almost 48% of the population is Muslim and 50% are traditional believers, the rest of the population is mainly Christian. The population mainly lives on food and cash crop farming.

On the 15th August 1959, Bishop André Dupont, Missionary of Africa (White Father), the then Bishop of Bobo Dioulasso signed the official text of the erection of the parish, putting it under the protection of the Uganda Martyrs with Father Joseph Verbeist (Father-in-charge), Father Joseph Meiwes and Brother Joseph Begasse, all Missionaries of Africa as founders. They were joined by Sisters Jeanne Somda, Marie-Rose Kone and Paula-Marie Somda, all Annunciation Sisters of Bobo, a local women religious congregation founded by Bishop André Dupont in 1948. Since then about forty Missionaries of Africa and forty Annunciation sisters of Bobo have served in the parish. One diocesan priest, Fr. Philip Ouattara also served in the parish (1970-1973) and six young men have equally each spent at least one year in the parish as part of their pastoral training. While all who have served in the parish are invited to the 50th anniversary celebration on the 15th August, a special Mass will be celebrated the previous day in honour of all those who have passed away.

I was received in Konadougou parish by the Father-in-charge, Fr. Albert Schrenk, a German Missionary of Africa who had been working in the parish since 2002. In August, Adrien Uwiringira (Rwandese) joined both Albert and I for his two-year pastoral training which he completed successfully in April 2008. In October of the same year Dieudonné Kitumbule (Democratic Republic of Congo), a newly ordained priest, joined the team. He already knew the parish well having done his pastoral training there (2003-2005). The Missionary of Africa community is therefore at present made up of Albert Schrenk (German), Dieudonné Kitumbule (DRC) and I (Kenyan). However, shortly before the 50th anniversary celebration, Fr. Cesario Hoyuela (Spanish) will join the community together with Franck Kalala Mbala (DRC) who comes for his two-year pastoral training around the same time.  Shortly after the same celebration, Albert Schrenk will take a new appointment in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. The new team as from September will therefore be made up of Cesario Hoyuela, Dieudonné Kitumbule, Frank Kalala Mbala and myself. I entrust the new team as well as the parish of Konadougou to the prayers of all who read this article.

My missionary duties
Every beginning of a new pastoral year (September) the team meets to share responsibilities of the different activities in the parish. Since arrival, I have mainly worked with the children and youth groups including the Mass servers and the parish vocation group. I have equally been asked to follow the civil servants who are mainly people from other parts of the country who are in the parish territory for work at Schools, dispensaries or other public services in the area. Many of them are often two or three of the only Christians in the village in which they find themselves and need special moral support in order to keep up their faith. We have in fact given them the name of “isolated Christians” and realised the importance of spiritually accompanying them in their daily life, a ministry we are yet to achieve to our satisfaction. All of us are involved in teaching catechism for those preparing for baptism and other sacraments especially in the villages where there are very few or no lay people able to carry out the ministry. Every Sunday and Feasts of Obligations and some Saturdays all the priests visit in turns the different Christian communities (outstations) for celebration of Mass and visits. In total we have fifteen of them and need about a month and a half to have visited all of them. I have equally been the bursar of the community while at the same time being in charge of the parish newsletter “teriya” (friendship) since 2007. The sisters collaborate with me in most of the different duties mentioned as well as in those of the other Missionaries of Africa.

Language difficulties
As I have already mentioned, six months before joining Konadougou, I followed a six months Bambara language course in Mali. I called it the “traditional” language course because all Missionaries of Africa appointed for the first time in a mission have always began with the language course to which our founder Cardinal Charles Lavigerie (1825-1892), insisted very much. Unfortunately for our parish having several ethnic groups each with its own language, it is impossible to learn all these languages. The Bishops of the region (West of Burkina Faso) are all confronted by the same problem and have chosen that Jula language, a lingua franca in the region, be used for catechism and liturgy. Most people originally from the area understand the language not as a first but as a second language. In the families they all speak their different vernaculars. Speaking the language of the people was one of the characteristics that attracted me to the society of Missionaries of Africa and I have therefore had to accept that in my first years of mission I will not be able to speak the vernacular languages of the parish.

On the other hand since there are no good Schools for Jula, we all learn a slightly different dialect (Bambara), widely spoken in Mali, where it is the vernacular of the Bambara people the largest ethnic group in the country. It seems that it is from this widely spoken language of Mali that the Jula of Burkina Faso and the other surrounding West African countries is born. Once one has learnt Bambara well, he is very well understood by the Jula speakers, even though he has to slowly learn to adapt the Bambara vocabulary learnt at school to the Jula spoken here in Burkina Faso and to the few but difficult tonal differences in words. The greatest difficulty for me in learning this language is mainly based on the tonal aspect. One has to be very careful as one pronounces words for slight differences in the tones of the syllable can easily lead to insults instead of the good word one may have wanted to say.

Just to give an example, a young man close to me had to correct me once after Mass on the feast of Christ the King because throughout my homily the way I pronounced the word for “leadership” ended up meaning “prostitution”. The embarrassment is very clear if you understand that I had mainly wanted to insist in the homily that the leadership of Jesus is the best form of leadership! Several pages could go further to give examples from my own mistakes or those of other missionaries. Luckily for all of us, the people are very understanding and forgiving. Four years after I did the course, I am still trying to perfect it!


Fr Patrick Odhiambo with Fr Aylward Shorter (his teacher in Kenya)

Challenges and difficulties in my missionary activity
In our life and work we encounter several challenges and difficulties many of whom we go through in faith and with the moral and material support from the diocese, the Society of the Missionaries, relatives, friends and benefactors towards whom we are very grateful. Without their support, our work would be almost impossible.

The greatest difficulty is linked to the fact that Burkina Faso, like most African countries, is a very poor country. I personally admire the courage with which people go through life with so little financial and material means. The population of our parish depends almost entirely on farming for their survival. They therefore count so much on the rains such that whenever there isn’t enough (as this year’s weather forecast makes us fear), or too much, as was the case in 2007, famine follows and many of their needs become difficult to meet. Even when the rain is good enough, the size of the farmers’ harvest does not allow them to go through the year easily. It is amazing, for example, the number of students sent away from school because their parents are unable to pay the School fees. As a result, the level of literacy is still very low in the area. The example of Joseph, a bright young man who has now spent two year out of School after finishing primary education, is just one of the many such cases. The headmaster was the first to let me know his disappointment when he learnt Joseph could not continue on to Secondary School. The father had told the headmaster he needed Joseph’s helping hand in the farming and other household task. I later met the mother who declared: “We just don’t have the money to send Jospeh to Secondary School."

With this kind of situation, it is very difficult for the parishioners to meet all the financial needs of a parish structure without external help, as is wished by the diocese in particular and the entire church of Burkina Faso which is dreaming of a period when the parishes will be financially self-sufficient enough to run on their own. One of the greatest expenses in Konadougou parish goes to travelling: fuelling and repairing the cars and motorbikes used by the priests, sisters, and the few catechists who accept to cover the long distances to meet the catechumens and Christians for catechisms, Sunday celebrations, visit of the sick, training seasons and meeting with the youth and women. These expenses often increase because of the bad state of the roads as well as the long distances, the farthest Christian community being 55 km away from Sindou, the new parish headquarters. For the year 2008, for example, we spent 4 655 660 F cfa (about 7 200 Euros) on fuelling, reparation and insurance of cars and motorbikes all of which are old and need replacement. We have been struggling through the same expenses this year, and still do not know how we would raise all the funds for the year 2010.


Conclusion
With the celebration of the 50 years of the existence of the parish which will take place in Konadougou, the entire parish community are looking forward to a new departure with courage and determination to continue to live their faith and to make it know to the others. We have chosen as theme of the feast “Christians of Konadougou parish, go into my farm.” Having in mind the words of Jesus himself “the harvest is rich but the labourers are few”, we want to get more involved in the evangelisation of the area through a more committed Christian witness of life as well as involvement in the preaching of the gospel to the good number of the population who have not yet heard of it. While the celebrations will take place in the village of Konadougou, where the parish church was built from the very beginning, the priests and sisters have moved to Sindou since September. This is a small town and the headquarters of the district of Leraba, which covers the exact territory of the parish. The aim of the move was to get into a place where communication is easier and where they could be more in contact with a large number of people—mainly civil servants who are there because of their jobs.

With the support from different places we have been able to build the priests’ house, the sisters’ house as well as five offices, none of which is fully furnished. However, a lot of constructions still need to be done to make the new headquarter worthy of its name: a Church, a hall, a borehole and tower. Equally, we need to put up dormitories which serve mainly when we receive the different catechumens and other groups within the parish for several days of training seasons. Most of them do long distances and need to get accommodation in the parish headquarters throughout the training period. We know we can count on the support of the friends for all these different needs and wish to thank in advance all the people of good will whom we know are able to support us only because of the sacrifices they make. Support can always be sent to us through the Missionaries of Africa in the countries you live. (We can supply contact information on request). We are equally very grateful to all those who have tirelessly supported our missionary work. We trust they will continue to do so in the future.

Finally, may I say that those of you who wish to visit and get to know Burkino Faso—and our parish, in particular— will receive a very warm welcome. We are confident that you will enjoy seeing our country and meeting its people.

God bless you and your families