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The Kohima Q & A’s
Over the summer of 2003, Fr. Tom Doyle,
SJ, Andy Jaspers, SJ, Daniel Hendrickson, SJ, and Chris Collins,
SJ were sent to the Kohima Region of India as part of the
ongoing twinning agreement the Wisconsin Province has with
Jesuits there. They share some of their experiences in the
following Q&A.
What was your experience of the Church and the Society
in Northeast India?
T.D.: I was amazed the vitality of the Church
in Northeast India. While a minority in the region, and certainly
in the country, the Church is confident and growing. The work
of the Society in the region is very exciting. In a very short
time the Society has accomplished tremendous things. Its creation
of vibrant ministries and its increasing number of native
tribal clergy is very exciting.
D.H.: The Church in India's Northeast is
young and vibrant, and the Society of Jesus well rivals its
energy. The Kohima Region is full of Jesuit pioneers who are
preaching and teaching to God's poor in the hills and down
on the tea estates. These Jesuit pioneers and the lay and
religious they work with are distinctly happy. The Church
is happy. It is full of men and women and a spirit of creativity
and playfulness that looks toward a bright future.
A.J.: The New Evangelization is fully under
way in Northeast India. Both among Jesuits and the laity,
there is a deep desire to share the Catholic faith with all
those separated from it. There is a profound generosity among
young people to give their lives as priests and religious,
and, most notably, young women are eagerly joining the laborers
for the harvest.
C.C.: I was struck by the joy with which
these institutions and the people who comprise them are operating.
It seemed to me that this joy was possible because there is
a profound sense of confidence in their Catholic faith. There
seems to be no doubt among the religious and laity that the
Gospel is truly the good news which everyone needs. They are
not at all hesitant in proclaiming it. This plays out in concrete
ways, in teaching, running clinics, taking care of the material
needs of the poor and elderly, and many other efforts.
What can we (Westerners) learn from their understanding
of the Gospel?
T.D.: Because the Salesians of John Bosco
are very established in the cities of the region, the Society
has committed itself to the poorest and most forgotten people
in the rural villages of the Northeast. Their solidarity with
the poor and with one another is wonderful to see. With less
than 50 ordained members in the region and an average age
in the 40s, members of the Society have to be supportive of
one another in order to further the mission. Most impressive
was the region's planning. They know who they are, and they
know where they're going.
A.J.: The people of the Church of Northeast
India show us the paradoxical conjunction of material want
and spiritual joy. The Jesuits, in washing their own clothes
by hand, gathering very regularly for community prayer, and
taking great risks in their apostolic endeavors, show me that
by God's grace I can be a much more fruitful laborer than
I seem to think.
C.C.: They have purpose, and acting on that
purpose allows them to be bold and joyful both in the apostolate
and in community life. I felt like I was living in the midst
of the Acts of the Apostles, or that I was able to have a
peek at what the first generations of Jesuit missionaries
might have experienced on an interior level. It was a tremendous
privilege and provided a genuine boost to my own sense of
Jesus' call to companionship on mission.
What singular experience most captures your summer
in Kohima?
T.D.: My final two weeks in India were spent
in Maweit, a small village in rural Meghalaya. The village
has no electricity, no running water, no telephone, and virtually
no access to the outside world. The Society hopes to establish
a mission in the village by February 2004. Currently, the
Church in the area is represented by two Missionaries of Christ
sisters. While in the village, a 1-year-old girl died of cerebral
malaria. I had the privilege to bury the child. I will never
forget the mother crouching at the grave side of the child
with her face covered by her shawl. The sobs and the wails
of the mother told the entire story of the region. The poverty,
the early death, and the injustice of the area do not need
to be the reality. Malaria is curable. No one needs to die
from it. It is this injustice that calls the Society to rural
India. I would like to see where the village is in five years.
Given the plans that the Jesuits have for the area, I believe
changes are on the horizon.
A.J.: I was most struck by the dedication
of the Catholic laity in India. My home parish in Minnesota
cancelled the Saturday anticipatory Mass a few years ago as
the parish priest had to cover two parishes. I considered
this a frightening sign. But if there was no Mass in my home
town, my parents would need to drive 12 minutes to the next
parish. In Maweit, some Catholics will walk two and a half
hours each way through the jungle to go to Mass once a month.
The importance that they give to their faith is remarkable.
D.H.: A poignant and defining moment of
the summer occurred in the very first week. After the initial
few days of rest and orientation, we loaded the gadi (jeep)
for the trek to Mornai. The trip was baptism by fire, really
– long hours of stopping and starting, jostling and
jerking as we inched toward Assam's western edge, and longer
hours of sunshine. The journey's end, better yet, culminated
with a raging monsoon which trumped the sun's power for a
mere 20 minutes. We were to have many similar days of hot,
shoulder-pressing, jeep-lurching travels as the weeks unfolded.
Mornai introduced us to tea-gardens and the people who have
spent their lives there. The area is new to the Jesuits. Our
Jesuit chaperone, Charles D'Souza, was there in community
with two other Jesuits, meeting people and doing crude sorts
of feasibility projects to determine not if, but where and
when parishes and schools could be established. We met and
spoke with multiple tribal groups throughout the Northeast,
but at the moment of our very first encounter with any of
these people, an elder of the Santal tribe approached us with
a gift: A copy of “A Santal Theology of Liberation.”
Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said. I was to discover
in the weeks to follow that liberation well represents the
work of the Society of Jesus in the Kohima Region. The Society
is working earnestly to free people from the traps of poverty
and illiteracy. Its main tool is the Christian Gospel, and
schools and parishes are the means by which such an important
message is able to unfold within these new cultural contexts.
The Gospel of our faith is a radical message of hope and life
for people – some at least – who know nothing
beyond the confines of the tea estate. The readings of Mass
through the summer, moreover, provided the story of Exodus
– a penultimate story of liberation – and the
wonderful ways God manifests himself to a people He loves
so desperately. Liberation is the hope of God's poor India.
And it was my summer's prayer.
If you undertake an Ignatian application of the senses
to the experience, what comes into your imagination when you
recall: Sight; Smell; Sound; Taste; and Texture of Northeast
India?
A.J.: I see the grief of a mother that lost
her 1-year-old baby daughter to malaria. I see the baby monkey
that was made a gift to me in Maweit. I see the magnificently
terraced hills of Nagaland and the Khasi hills. I smell the
exotic foods bazaar in Nagaland with eels, assorted beetles,
and dog. I hear the monkeys whooping in the early morning
and reflect that it is a welcome replacement for New York's
car horns. I hear the symphonic voices of dozens of Naga children
singing "Country Road" more beautifully than John
Denver could have managed. I taste rice beer, Naga rice, and
pickled fish. I feel the texture of the native costumes of
the Garo dancers, their hand-made drums, and the chicken that
was presented to me in the Camino village.
D.H.: India in a word: pungent. The country
is sun-ripened and monsoon-soaked, but densely populated.
The rural Northeast isn't yet spilling over its sides with
people, but it’s ever as pungent as the rest of India!
City smells are sharp: the sweat of rickshaw-wallas, the rot
in fruit markets, the sweetness of flowers from the stalls
of temple-venders, the blasts of diesel exhaust from Tata
trucks, urine on sidewalks and in gutters. And beyond the
cities are the mountains and their overpowering freshness;
or the lowlands which bask beneath an aroma of tea that its
own soil produces. Nowhere else have I smelled the rawness
of humanity and nature alike.
T.D.: Sights – the color of the women's
saris, the wild flowers, the open air markets, the bamboo
huts, the Milky Way at night, the concrete buildings, tea
estates in the evening light, Andy Jaspers butchering a chicken,
the hills and clouds of the Northeast, a leech in my shoe,
bioluminescent mushrooms, elephants in a village, jungle paths.
Smells – wood burning stoves, mildew. Sounds –
the Nagas ability to sing in multiple harmonies, students
singing, John Denver's "Country Road" being sung
all over the region, the sound of the markets, dogs barking,
roosters crowing, Tata trucks rumbling, the morning sound
of monkeys howling in the jungle, rain pouring on tin roofs,
the clunk of my head on low standing doors. Tastes –
rice and dahl (curried lentils), bread toasted on an open
fire, meat and fish masala (spicy seasoning), passion fruit,
ripe mangoes, freshly picked bananas, pan (betel nut, lime,
a leaf, candied rose petals, etc. that is used like chewing
tobacco). Texture – Northeast India is a fascinating
place. The large number of tribes, languages, and cultures
that occupy the region are amazing. While the plains of Assam
can be intolerably hot, the hills of Nagaland can be equally
cool. The region is a quilt work of diversity and surprises.
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