Tales of the Congo by Christian Filostrat

Author:Christian Filostrat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PIERRE KROFT LEGACY PUBLISHERS
Published: 2022-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

Memoir of a Belgian Nun

A Belgian nun has worked as a nurse in the Congo since 1945. She tells how Belgium’s colonial enterprise in the Congo ended.

When independence struck, many Belgians including prelates fled, surprise on their faces, mobs at their heels, bats and machetes held high. I thought of leaving too as rumors that the new Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, had communist leanings and was associated with the faithless Soviet Union. The thought was momentary, however. The love of my life, Mària, had died in the Congo. I told myself it would be a betrayal if I left now. As a medical nun I appreciated that illnesses knew no politics, colonial or otherwise. I had long since separated myself from my country’s colonial venture in the Congo. With all my heart, I came to believe that my healing presence was proof. Not only was I carrying out the will of the Trinity, but I was also helping people. No, I never pictured myself as a missionary. Maria wouldn't have approved, and besides, being a missionary was a racial slur. Then too, I stayed because the new authority in Wembo-Nyama, where my hospital was located, had asked my order to keep me in place. I had treated many of its members, and when they approached us, they did so with no pretense they knew how to run a hospital for the poor. Auxiliary Bishop Joseph-Albert Malula had urged me to remain as well, and I couldn’t say no to someone whose views of the Congolese church were so similar to Mària’s.

A Bantu, Bishop Malula created the Congo Rite, a local liturgy. He was made archbishop of Leopoldville in 1964 if memory serves. Five years later, His Holiness Paul VI made him cardinal. He asked that I accompany him to the Vatican for the ceremony of investiture, and I went. Also the simple fact – and I say this with utmost modesty – no one else was as proficient in treating trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness). Treatment with arsenic was effective but necessitated an expert’s hand to administer drugs like melarsoprol. A traditional nun by default, one cast in error, I became a star in my role as a medical provider. That alone would have kept me at my hospital in Wembo-Nyama, if only to train a Bantu staff and the others who came from various parts of Africa to learn from us. I was needed. Blessed are the needed. Blessed are those who love much.

There were also challenging new illnesses like the one befalling people who killed chimps for bush meat. Nothing about this pathogen made sense. It began with a cough and ended with cancers. Those infected suffered a hundred percent death rate. Travelers coming from southeastern Cameroon on the big river spread it through an unimaginable number of prostitutes in the new urban centers. Bantus were sure this disease (later identified as AIDS) was another Mbulamatadis (European) scheme to deny them independence. Those were the crucible years I thought would never end.

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