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Eclectic group of Jesuits, friends prepare cargo of hope for Africa
By Phil Nero
Creighton Prep students Adam Young, Matt Moragues, and Tom Andreason (left to right) help unload a truck filled with computers in need of repair before shipment to Africa.
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In March 1999, Tim Leacock, a computer systems engineer in Omaha, Nebraska made a passing remark over dinner that in 15 months would ripple across an ocean and touch lives nine time zones away in Eastern Africa.
Fifteen months not exactly the speed of light or even sound, but building relationships takes time, and if life for the people of Africa is about anything, it is about relationships.
Leacock, an Ignatian Associate, was sitting opposite Fr. Jim Strzok, SJ, a chemistry teacher at Creighton Prep, who had served as a missionary in Africa years before. (Ignatian Associates are lay collaborators who have a very close relationship with the Jesuits of the Wisconsin Province. Associates commit to the Jesuits and promise to live a simple life. They pledge fidelity to the mission of the Gospel, the Jesuits and fellow associates, and, after a two-year formation period, may be sent for service.)
Leacock mentioned that his employer, Union Pacific Railroad Company, was buying new computers and turning over older IBM 386 models for charitable distribution to the local Lions Club.
"I made a chance remark." Small talk really. "And it took on a life of its own," Leacock said.
"What about Africa?" replied Fr. Strzok.
Leacock said he would see what he could do about getting a few machines for shipment abroad.
He did wildly better. The donated computers were collecting dust. Too slow to be useful in America's rapidly changing electronic environment, 110 machines were free for the taking.
At the start of the 1999-2000 school year, Fr. Strzok and Leacock sprang into action. Along with Leacock's wife Ruth, they drafted about a half dozen students from the Creighton Prep Campus Ministry to collect the computers. The nine-person moving crew set out in August in a rented truck and a few personal vehicles, retrieved the computers, and stored them in the Jesuit Residence basement at Prep.
Ignatian Associate Ruth Leacock (above) helps move some of the donated computers. Jim Leacock
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Fr. Isaac Kiyaka and Br. Deusdedit Byebalilo, Eastern Africa Jesuits studying at Creighton University, were next to join the growing group by helping early efforts to clean the machines and identify where to send them in Africa.
The headmistress from Kalungu Secondary School in Masaka, Uganda would take all she could get for her classrooms. The Jesuit-run Loyola Secondary School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania had a similar need. Students in both places were starving for machines on which they could learn marketable computer skills. The Jesuit novitiate in Arusha could use a few to streamline office operations, as could the Jesuit Relief Services refugee camp in Adjumani, north Uganda.
In the months that followed Leacock took over the reprogramming effort, training Fr. Kiyaka, Br. Byebalilo, and eight members of CP Servers Creighton Prep's computer club to repair, update, and load software onto the machines. They turned the basement at the Campion House Jesuit Residence into a computer rehabilitation center. The cache of machines grew larger still when Creighton University donated 12 Compaq computers to the cause.
The group of volunteers grew larger still when volunteers from Operation Others, an Omaha-based high school service program, offered to run a clothing drive in conjunction with the computer project. Operations Others is about relationships too. Students from several area schools come together every year under the program to collect and distribute hundreds of Thanksgiving food baskets.
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Jim Leacock, also an Ignatian Associate, gives Fr. Isaac Kiyaka, SJ pointers on how to load software, repair, and update the machines.
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Br. Deusdedit Byebalilo, SJ of Tanzania, helps students from Creighton Prep and Marian High School organize and pack clothes for Africa. |
For the clothing drive, three sister schools joined Prep students: Duchesne Academy, Marion Servite High, and Mercy High School.
In the end, the 122 computers yielded 53 working units and stacks of replacement parts. The clothes were used as packing to stabilize the load for the rough journey ahead. Everything was placed into the shipping container in February. An anonymous donor supplied the container, which cost $7,500 to buy and ship. The Wisconsin Province Office in Milwaukee purchased additional electrical equipment and paid duty charges on the shipment.
In early March, almost a year after Fr. Strzok and Leacock met at dinner, the container left Omaha for the Port of Baltimore, to be loaded on a ship bound for Africa. The Leacocks and Fr. Strzok will travel to Kampala in June. Br. Byebalilo, who returns to Africa in May, will meet them there to open the container and distribute the computers and clothing.
Br. Byebalilo and Fr. Kiyaka are hopeful the positive effects in Africa will snowball like enthusiasm for the project did in Omaha. The Africa job market is changing. Computer skills will help students break in. When one African gets a job, it affects many because extended families are large and members work together to support one another and each other's children.
"Being employed means they are going to serve their entire family," Br. Byebalilo said. One job helps many family members afford secondary school tuition fees. Educating more family members expands a family's economic base. "The life of the people will be promoted."
Adds Fr. Kiyaka, "Having computer knowledge adds to the other skills they have and makes them more empowered."
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Creighton Prep students sort and inventory computers. They are (from left) Tim Kelley, Mike Kacer, Tim Franco, and Dan Stach. |
After securing the contents and closing the cargo container for a final time, Fr. Jim Strzok, SJ leads volunteers in a brief blessing and prayer service. |
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Without so much as a catchy name, this heart-felt computer project and clothing drive continues to form new relationships and strengthen many old ones. Ties between the states, peoples, and countries of the Eastern African and Wisconsin Provinces are stronger as a result.
"Since coming to Omaha, I see how the people in this country have a genuine interest in helping us. It also gives me a good feeling about the missionaries in Africa. I get a real sense from others that the interest is sincere," said Br. Byebalilo, a Tanzanian.
"I hope more projects like this can strengthen the relationship between the Wisconsin Province and Eastern Africa," said Fr. Kiyaka, a Ugandan.
The 27 computers earmarked for Kalungu are evidence that Fr. Kiyaka's hope is being fulfilled. The connection at the school is Sr. Hilda Bamwine, RSCJ. She called Fr. Strzok while visiting the U.S. last year in search of solar ovens and, as luck would have it, computers. However, luck had little to do with the contact. She was calling an old friend.
"She is a former student," Fr. Strzok said. "I taught her in Uganda in 1988."
SECOND PART >
To help support Jesuit foreign missions, contact:
Mr. Jack Paquette, vice president - development,
3400 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53208
e-mail at: partnership@jesuitswisprov.org
Telephone: 800-537-3736
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