About 56 years ago, I began my first year of secondary school. The teacher had seated us alphabetically. The boy who sat in front of me turned around and said, “Hi, I am Kevin Donelson. What’s your name?” Who would have thought that the alphabet would have something to do with a friendship of over 55 years!
Last summer I was at Kevin’s house for dinner, and I mentioned that it would be great if he were to come for a visit to Tanzania. A few months later, he informed me that he was coming for three weeks. Fr. Daniel and I picked up Kevin in Dar es Salaam after his LONG flight from Toronto to Amsterdam to Dar es Salaam (with a short stopover in Kilimanjaro).
Kevin has fit right in, joining us for prayer and meals. He even attended two classes that I taught last week on Sacraments: a three-hour class on Wednesday and a two-hour class on Thursday. He joined 90 third-year theology students and contributed in small group discussions. He impressed everyone when I called upon him to recite the Confiteor in Latin from memory. He learned this prayer as an altar boy before Vatican II and still remembers it!
Kevin was also able to make the acquaintance of our friends in the Formation House. Once Kevin was on tour, everyone wanted to see who this new person was!
We have three sows and they each gave birth to piglets over the course of a week. There are now over twenty little pigs around. We are in the process of building a new enclosure for them so that they can grow large enough for us to eat. If we sold them as piglets, the price would be quite low, so we are helping our budget this way.
Next stop was to visit the chickens. We are in the process of building a new enclosure for them as well. Our trial of purchasing 200 chicks was quite successful. We were able to eat over 100 chickens around Christmas time. The remaining ones are supposed to lay eggs, but I have not seen any so far! Our plan is to buy more chicks and to raise them for food. Kevin commented about the noise that they make. Like Kevin, I thought roosters only crowed in the morning. NO! They crow all day long! Like most things, you get used to it, but it is a bit jarring when you hear it all day and you are not acclimatized to it.
We have three people working on the construction of the small buildings for the pigs and the chickens. They work very hard and very long hours. Everything is done by hand, and they are very skilled at their work. We had some old materials around that they were able to use, saving us some money. Valentino is taking the lead on this project, and he is doing a great job.
We had to cut down a few banana trees to make room for the new chicken “house.” We still have many banana trees, as well as our mango and papaya trees.
Here the “fundies”—the name given to workers who make and fix things—are showing off the results of their labor so far.
Kevin and I have gone on many walks, catching up on events in each other’s lives. Kevin will be embarrassed that I write this, but he has been a wonderful friend to me over these many years. Kevin is also a wonderful friend to the Resurrectionists in Canada. There is nothing that he would not do to help the Resurrectionists. As a community, we are very fortunate to have friends like Kevin. God has blessed us with many such friends, and we are very grateful.
Kevin is standing in front of the new home for the piglets.
The road to Tanzania is a long one, but we are glad that Kevin Donelson made the journey!
More to come on www.resurrectionists.ca
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