Journey’s end
marks a new beginning
Fr. Gregory Coelho, SJ (left) and Fr. Hector D'Souza, SJ, both of the Kohima Region in India, concelebrate Mass with the
Wisconsin Province's Fr. Peter Klink, SJ, president of the Red Cloud Indian School, at Our Lady of the Sioux Church
on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Twinned with Kohima
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BY PHIL NERO
Two Jesuits from the Kohima Region of Northeast India, men from the other side of the world, walk under a South Dakota spring sky down a path toward a Lakota sweat lodge. The experience is part of their trip to visit Jesuit ministries on the Great Plains, just as Jesuits from this part of the world had visited them less than a month earlier.
Fr. Peter Klink, SJ, Red Cloud Indian School president, one of those visitors to India, walks with them to the lodge. He introduces Fr. Gregory Coelho, SJ and Fr. Hector D’Souza, SJ to the school’s director of campus ministry, Bob Braveheart, who greets the strangers with enormous warmth and Lakota generosity. A short time later, a group of 15 enters the sweat lodge. Braveheart explains that not all Lakota people choose to share their tribal spiritual rituals
with outsiders. However, he believes that sharing creates openness and understanding, which can help create pathways to a better world. Then, shrouded in the darkness of the lodge, Braveheart begins the almost three-hour sweat ceremony.
Water cast on hot stones fills the lodge with a deep, drenching heat. This experience is part of a cultural connection
and exchange that began several years ago when
Jesuit Fr. General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach suggested at an international gathering of provincials in Rome that the Wisconsin Province and the Kohima Region might prosper from a formal working arrangement known as a twinning agreement.
Typically, the twinning process pairs two provinces or regions (one usually in a developing nation or area) to establish an agreement of mutually beneficial support. Fr. D’Souza was Kohima regional superior at the time, a position now held by Fr. Coelho. Jesuits in the Kohima Region and the Wisconsin Province work with tribal cultures. The agreement is in keeping with guiding Jesuit documents that urge all cultures to be open to each other’s ideas and
traditions. This allows an exchange by which not only can the Gospel introduce something new into a culture, but a culture can bring something new to the richness of the Gospel.
To help clarify and finalize details of the agreement,Wisconsin Fr. Provincial Jim Grummer, SJ traveled with three other Jesuits to Kohima in late March. John Sealey, provincial assistant for social and international ministries, was the only lay person in the group. His account of that journey begins in the article below.
In mid April, Fr. Coelho and Fr. D’Souza came to Milwaukee where they spent a day visiting Jesuits and their ministries before going to South Dakota, stopping first in Rapid City. It would be difficult to forget the excitement in Fr. Coelho’s voice when he spotted a drawing while visiting a Jesuit residence there.
 
Above Left: Fr. Coelho and Fr.
Klink pray at the Wounded
Knee Monument. Above Right: Fr.
Coelho visits with a Lakota
girl at a Jesuit grade school.
“They are almost identical,” he exclaimed, pointing to the portrait of a young Native American girl. Charged with equal parts enthusiasm and surprise, he continued in amazement at how closely the image on the wall resembled a young girl from a village back in Kohima. The moment was almost poetic, a metaphor for what Fr. General had hoped for in Summer 2000.
The next two days comprised a whirlwind tour of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Everywhere the Kohima Jesuits went, their brother Jesuits from the Wisconsin Province and the Lakota people greeted them with warm, genuine hospitality – much like the Jesuits of Kohima and the people there had welcomed the group of travelers from our province.
Now, as the Kohima visitors neared the end of their visit here, they gathered with a group inside a sweat lodge – 15 people, young and old, women and men, Lakota, Indic-Asian, Americans of Irish, Italian and German descent, mostly strangers to each other. Inside, the melting heat of hot rocks and steam combined with mutual prayer and meditation to open hearts to the hope and possibilities of things Ignatian and Lakota.
Almost three hours after they entered, in the cool air outside the lodge, it seemed clear that Fr. Kolvenbach knew exactly what he was doing.
Agreement pays dividends in faith, hope, and love.
Twinned with Kohima
BY JOHN SEALEY
On Palm Sunday, with family visiting from both coasts, I leave for Northeast India with four Jesuit co-workers thinking I will surely miss the familiar sights, sounds and rituals of Easter at home. As miles and hours pass, I wonder increasingly about the unfamiliar people and unknown places I’ll encounter 11 time zones away.
Incense and diesel fumes fill the air. Curries and chutneys delight our palates. Bright silk saris, marigold necklaces, and emerald tea fields dazzle our eyes. This Easter, I will feel the rough hide of an elephant, without a chocolate bunny or brightly colored basket in sight.
Northeast India, home to the Society of Jesus Kohima Region, is one of the world’s final mega-biodiversity zones containing an immense variety of mountains, valleys, rivers, and forests. Some Jesuits work near 
Two fishermen haul their catch up the south bank of the Bramahputra River in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. |
the Bangladesh border where rainfall is among the heaviest in the world. Others labor in rocky arid elevations bordering Tibet. In the Kohima
region alone, more than 240 distinct languages are spoken, and family structures range from matrilineal to polygamous.
Geographically,Wisconsin and Kohima could hardly be more distant, located at 90 degrees west and 90 degrees east longitude respectively. Yet they are remarkably similar. Both comprise seven states. Both have significant works with indigenous populations. And like their Wisconsin Province brothers, Kohima Jesuits work in a variety of settings from cities, to vast plains, to mountains.
Our journey through Kohima begins in the city of Guwahati.While not a metropolis like Delhi or Bombay, it is a natural location for the Jesuit regional office due to its significance in the Northeast. A predominantly Hindu city, Guwahati sits on the banks of the Bramahputra River, which winds through Assam, a state with a population of about 20 million.
Life along the Bramahputra bustles at dawn as people begin their ordered daily rituals – working, cooking, and bathing. Fishermen unload their night catches. A coordinated group porters fish up a muddy bank while others sort, clean and sell the catch. Work is repetitive, yet the air rings with happiness and frequent laughter. The city pulses. In nearby markets, flowers are cut, vegetables are washed, spices are weighed, and goats are butchered.
 
Left: Two children frolic outside Kamakshya Temple, the city's best-known Hindu place of worship. Middle: Village elders in Phesama, Nagaland take a morning walk. The bright red shawl signifies status as a wise warrior and leader. Right: A young man near the Nagaland border decks out his face in bright
blue to celebrate the Hindu Feast of Colors, a three-day springtime festival celebrating life.
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Along with evangelization and education, Kohima Jesuits stress the importance of social research to support apostolic priorities. The Jesuitrun Northeast Social Research Center in Guwahati provides academic and intellectual voice to the
concerns of the poor, presuming the inherent dignity of each person.Work focuses on human rights, living wages, religious dialogue, sustainable development, and respect for the environment and indigenous cultures.
On Holy Thursday we drive five hours to a new Jesuit parish center in Balipara, a fertile area on the sun-soaked plains of Assam.Mass at St. John de Britto parish competes with our Hindu neighbors celebrating their three-day Feast of Colors, which includes all-night live music.
In Balipara, Fr. Oscar Pereira’s social action/self help center addresses two regional Jesuit priorities: working for marginalized ethnic groups and building self identity through education. He targets the Adivasi, indigenous people brought from Central India by the British in the mid-19th century to work in the tea gardens. Today the Adivasi remain tea garden laborers, earning low wages and having no basic citizenship rights as internally displaced people. Like
many who struggle in the Northeast, the history of the Adivasi is complicated by scarce land, enormous needs, and colonial ethnic rivalries.
Besides Fr. Oscar’s center in Balipara, Kohima Jesuits team with Jesuits from Ranchi Province (Adivasi homeland) to run a vibrant parish, school, and literacy program. Regional Superior Fr. Gregory Coelho, SJ says Kohima Jesuits fight for
the indigenous and the poor. There is an admirable assertiveness and tenacity in their work. Through education, the
Kohima Jesuits are extending new potentials to indigenous people.
The desire for Christianity is tangible as the Jesuits establish new churches and communities. There is a remarkable variety of men in formation representing the first generation of local vocations in the Northeast. Strong lay leaders work closely with the Jesuits.We witness the exhilaration that comes with establishing, building and letting go of
some projects for others to administer, and then venturing into new territories and challenges.
Good Friday finds us among the indigenous people in the lower Himalayan Mountains in Nagaland state, an under-developed area by Indian standards, distant from Delhi culturally, politically, religiously, and economically. This area, where we spend the Easter Triduum, is where the Kohima Jesuits established their first works.
Kohima Jesuits describe a good deal of their work as tribal ministry. Initially, the term sounds harsh to me, as if imposed by an arbitrary “civilized” standard.We meet many parents and children and I find myself reflecting on my own childhood and my daughters (ages 6 and 2) – essentially my own tribe. I think of the remarkable opportunities and comfort we enjoy through no personal merit.
Here in India’s Northeast, as with much of the world, the poor struggle to survive on-going threats from violence, disease, disasters, pollution, accidents, poor health care and nutrition. As we meet people and faces take on names and stories, I wonder if the very structures which have served me so well may simultaneously hobble them.
On Holy Saturday we visit 160 children at Eden Garden Children’s Home.While there are no true “orphans” in communitarian Naga villages, sometimes extended families need help.We arrive an hour late, yet the children still wait to sing for us during a cloudburst which also waits for our arrival. Staff workers offer enormous care for each child, even with the growing needs and numbers. Director Fr. Raymond D’Souza, SJ, one of the first 3 Jesuits to arrive in Kohima 30 years ago, tells me that the 7-year-old girl next to me
recently lost her parents in a flood.
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Top left: An older resident of the Eden Garden Children's Home, a Jesuitrun orphanage in Jakhama, Nagaland, proudly wears his traditional Angami attire. The orphanage was founded and is still directed by Fr.Raymond D'Souza, SJ, one of the first three Jesuits to arrive in the Kohima Region 30 years ago. Top right: Adivasi women labor in the vast tea garderns of Balipara, Assam, where about 25 percent of the world's tea is grown. Left: Fr. Tom Stegman, SJ tours the Kohima equivalent of a dormitory room. To accommodate students who live far from school and others who cannot live at home, Jesuit schools in Kohima frequently provide self-help residency hostels. Children prepare their own food contributed by families and are responsible for cleaning and maintaining the hostel. Jesuit scholastics often serve as on-site house managers to these vital centers which provide a social and formational ministry to students.
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In Milwaukee, I live distant from this sort of suffering. This distance induces what Dean Brackley, SJ (a Jesuit working in El Salvador) calls a “low-grade confusion” about things that are important in life – things such as life itself, and love.
In Northeast India, many live with such daily proximity to death. In some areas, there is a 60 percent infant mortality rate. And in Nagaland, as recently as the 1980s, there are widespread reports of entire villages being burned if residents were even suspected of supporting insurgency movements. Today a low intensity conflict between the Indian military and separatist groups compromise civilian lives, rights, and freedoms.
Shouldn’t such hardship along with the hopelessness of endless work earning less than $1 a day foster resignation and submission? Doesn’t the broken- heartedness of losing loved ones at an early age gradually build a fatalism or numbness? Instead, we find a general joyfulness and a faith among the people that something greater is possible.
On Easter Sunday, no village building in Phesama is large enough to hold Easter Mass.We celebrate outdoors. The crowd spills beyond the grass field onto a hillside.Wisconsin Fr. Provincial Jim Grummer, SJ weaves a marvelous anecdote into
his homily. He tells of learning to ride a bike and the sensation he felt when his father let go. Pedaling on his own, initial terror gave way to the realization that had his father not let go there could be no excitement of riding freely. I think of the faith of Kohima Jesuits as they establish new ministries. I think of my own family 11 time zones away and how they encouraged and let go of me for the sake of this trip.
 
Decked out in traditional Angami attire, Fr. Peter Klink, SJ, president of the Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, SD, presents a Lakota bolo tie to a tribal and church leader in Phesama, Nagaland, following Easter Mass. Wisconsin Fr. Provincial James Grummer, SJ celebrates Holy Saturday Mass at a small village church in Viswema, Nagaland.
A feeling that I am among new friends and experiencing a new and different sense of family in India nurtures my love for those I’ve left behind. Pedaling through this experience, I realize that God’s grace, working through the enduring witness of these new friends in Kohima, has invited me to live with more boldness and a greater appreciation for God’s great gifts of life, faith and love.
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