Maryknoll Sisters

Central Tanzania has a semi-desert climate. It doesn't rain much here in the best of times. These days, though, the lack of rain is being felt. In the region is Sister Connie Krautkremer, who tells one woman's story.

The first time I met Jane she was lying outside in the sun.  I was walking along when a woman I know called out and invited me to come say hello to her guest who was sick.

I went over and found someone all curled up in a sheet on a thin foam mattress on the ground. I said hello, cautiously, and slowly a face appeared.  A woman greeted me and sat up. We talked for awhile.  She explained she has malaria, and is taking the medicine.

She is staying at this house because hers collapsed recently during a rainstorm.  She pointed to the remains of her house across the field in Dodoma, Tanzania – a collapsed tin roof, balanced on a couple of walls that are still standing. The rest is a pile of mud bricks. She was in the house when it fell but was not hurt.  As she talked one big tear gathered in each eye and trickled down her face.

Weather patterns here in Tanzania are off, as they are in so many places.  This is semi-desert, so rains are always tricky; that is not unusual.  However, these past few years, some areas of Dodoma have harvested no food crops for several years in a row, so the area is now considered desert.

No rain means no food. Prices of foods that are available go way up, and the cycle of poverty continues. Money that could be used for education or building a better home are used for food.  Many people in this area are experiencing this cycle. 

So, we have a lack of rain, but what brought this woman’s house down was extremely heavy rain with wind one night, together with a house built poorly because there was little money for building a better house. 

I kept thinking of this woman and a couple of days later went back to see how she was doing.  I was told she was over at her collapsed house.  Across the way I could see a person sitting under the hanging roof, her back to me.  I approached slowly and said Hodi, the traditional greeting as one approaches someone’s house.  She turned and welcomed me.

She told me her name is Jane and that she was feeling better. She was cooking here because it was cooler here in the shade than where she is staying.  She offered me the pail she was sitting on and moved to a pile of bricks, her “chair,” as she continued cooking over a small charcoal stove. 

We talked about why the house collapsed (the bricks were not properly made and the exceptionally heavy rain and wind that night), her plans now, the cost of a new house, where the money would come from, and about her family.  She owns a small vineyard and sells things in the market.

Jane has now begun rebuilding.  She is carrying sand (in a pail on her head) from a dry riverbed nearby to be used for new cement bricks. 

I felt so sad about Jane’s suffering. As I listened to her story I saw, as well, a strong woman who could pick up after disappointments and illness and continue on.  Another part of this story is the kind neighbor, herself living in a simple mud-brick house, who has offered Jane a place to sleep until she can rebuild.  Jane is fortunate in that she has backup resources.  Other women who lost houses that night are not so lucky.

 – Sister Connie Krautkremer, MM

Oh, how good it is for us to be here today. And how much better it is because you’re here with us. Thank you so much for sharing this day with us.

“What can we offer God for all the wonderful things God has given to us?” The gratitude that fills our hearts today and all through this Jubilee year has inspired the theme of today’s celebration. What can we offer, what can we return to God, what can we give back to God for all the generosity and faithfulness that we’ve received?

The short answer to that question is nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is nothing we can give back to God compared to the goodness that has been showered upon us. This year has been and continues to be one of reflecting on the wonder and utter gift of this life with which we have been blessed.

We have been blessed with our parents, our families, who let us go to the ends of the earth and who love us up to today.
We have been graced by the places that nurture us: by the places where we were born, where we grew up, from the wide open spaces to city streets, this sacred space called Maryknoll, and we are blessed by the earth that provides for us.

We are grateful for the schools, the mentors, the advisors who encouraged us to follow that star, who taught us skills that have been so necessary for us throughout these years. We are blessed in Maryknoll, by those who have gone before us, from Mother Mary Joseph to those who welcomed us into Maryknoll 50 years ago; By those who came after us, those whom we welcomed and all who followed, up to the three Sisters who made their first vows so recently.

We have been blessed with each other and we are grateful for those with whom we share life every day as well as for those who have gone ahead and who live in another realm, for the seven of us Maryknoll Sisters Jubilarians and for all those whose friendship remains so dear after 50 years.

We are blessed with the people with whom we have lived in many places around the world, those we have been privileged to live among, who helped stretch us and who helped us grow, those who enabled us to become whole because they love us and welcome us as their own people.

And we are grateful to God, God within each of us, the One whose still small voice we heard and from whom the grace to follow that voice has come every single day during these 50 years. Truly God has given us wonderful things. Certainly we have tasted the spices of Arabia that Mother Mary Joseph talked about.

A name for God that speaks to me is “overabundance of generosity.” God is abundantly generous, as was the widow in today’s Gospel. And so it is up to us to receive. All the blessings we have received throughout these years have been so abundant, nothing we have done deserves this abundance, and so it is up to us to receive.

How many times have I had to learn that lesson throughout the years: when a poor widow offers a gift – a chicken, a few eggs, a pound of peanuts she has just harvested – I have had to be humble and receive those gifts knowing that refusing is out of the question just as refusing the gifts of God is unthinkable. How many times have tears come to our eyes, tears of utter gratitude and humility, recognizing when we have received from the little that the widow has.

We have learned from the “poor widows” of this world, those widows who are tossed out and robbed of everything they have because they lose worth when their husbands die, those who are cast aside as the male relatives come and claim everything that the couple owned, the poor widows who are treated with such injustice. We have learned to persevere, to keep on giving and receiving, to keep on loving.

If we return to the question as to what we can offer to God, short answer being nothing, maybe we can make the answer a bit longer and say that we have tried to offer just a little. In Tanzania when one receives something in a basket or a bag, like some fruit or eggs or whatever, the basket or bag when it is returned, never returns empty. There is always a little something in it when it goes back to the giver.

Our “little somethings” that we’ve given throughout these years, with some slips and slides, sometimes crawling and sometimes walking tall, sometimes with reluctance and sometimes with generosity, sometimes with tears and sometimes with smiles, sometimes with fear and sometimes with courage, out of our poverty and out of our abundance: these may have in some small way made a difference. If so, we are grateful and count it as another blessing.

The poet Mary Oliver sums up a thought that I’d like to remember today. She ends her poem “When Death Comes” with these words:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Not only having visited this world but having been immersed deeply in it and with God’s creation, we can say and sing of every day, and this one in particular:

This is the day, the day the Lord has made.
Oh let us be glad, be glad and rejoice in it.
Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good
God’s mercy endures forever.

— Sister Darlene Jacobs, MM

For some time now, a neighbor (who I actually taught several years ago in Singida, Tanzania) has been asking me if I’d spend some time with her young son (in second grade) and help him with his English.

He goes to an English primary school and she knows that good language skills will be an asset for him in the future. Anyway, I finally agreed and told her to tell him to come at 4:00 the next day. And so he did, and we did some work in English.

The next day, he came and brought a friend. And so we worked all together. The third day he brought another friend, and so there were three. When other neighborhood children saw these kids coming, they tagged along, and by Easter I had 16 kids coming every day at 4.00.

Actually, they come starting from 12.30 on some days, knocking on the door and asking if it’s 4.00 yet!

Of course, they are of different ages and different abilities and from different schools. Some are neighborhood urchins who are often seen playing together on the roads, one whose mother brews local brew to support her kids. Some are children of professional people who are of a higher income bracket. Some go to English medium schools, some to the local primary school where they often tell me that there were no teachers that day and so they went to school “to play.”

Some are very young (one is only four and wants to write but always needs help from someone older) and one is 13 but only in 4th grade. And so I try to divide them into three different groups and set them all on the mat where they are given work to do. I do oral work with one group at a time and the others write in their notebooks, which they faithfully bring every day, and which get dirtier by the day.

This all happens on our front verandah sitting on the floor and writing with their notebooks on their laps or on the floor. I put up newsprint on the wall at eye level, their’s not mine, and they have a great time.

Some of them have progressed significantly in the few classes we’ve had. They have a lot of intelligence, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of determination, and only need a little direction. As for me, it’s exhausting but so much fun!

— Sister Darlene Jacobs, MM