Mission TODAY
Vol. XVI No. 11
DECEMBER 2004
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Eloquent
Witness
by Fons Eppink, MHM
A GLIMPSE OF MONASTIC LIFE IN KENYA
Mill hill Missionary Fr Fons Eppik reports from Kenya on a recent hands-on experience of life in an African monastery.
“Don’t take the first turn-off to Kipkelion”, I was told, “the road is awful. Proceed as far as Londiani and make your way to the monastery from there”. I was grateful for this advice of a friend who had recently made the trip to the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Victoria at Kipkelion.
As I progressed along the meandering road into this remote and picturesque corner of the Kalenjin region in Western Kenya I picked up a few people along the way as much out of a need to be assured that I was heading in the right direction as out of charity. An old woman bent almost double under the weight of an impossibly heavy load beamed back a radiant smile when I temporarily relieved her of her burden. “Huko mbele”, she indicated in Swahili when our ways parted again – go “straight ahead” and you’ll find the monastery.
Rich harvest
After about an hour’s drive on rough country roads through lush green hills laden with the promise of a rich harvest of maize and other crops, I finally caught my first glimpse of the rectangular towers of the monastery in the valley below. Its robustly austere architecture and the heavy grey stone structure of its buildings stood in sharp contrast to the rolling hills around.
I had come for a week’s retreat and was looking forward to some days of much needed quiet, relaxation and prayer. I was soon to discover that the Lord has other plans. After the customary word of welcome brother Charles, the youthful assistant guest master, was quick to tell me: “You’ve come at a time of sadness in our community. Dom Paul, our novice master, died suddenly yesterday”. Instead of a quiet retreat the next two days were to be a powerful experience of celebrating death.
I was fascinated by the life story and personality of the deceased Dom Paul Hennessy, as it gradually lit up for me from conversations with the monks laced with anecdotes. He had come to Kenya from Mount Melleray Abbey in Ireland in the early 1980s in support of the Kipkelion community. His colourful personality and striking simplicity had made him into a living legend. “A generation has passed”, one of the young African monks confided, expressing his admiration for the European monks who had founded this abbey in 1956 from Holland. In many ways Dom Paul was the last of a generation of “founding fathers”.
African leadership
In truth, for the past almost two decades this Monastery of Our Lady of Victoria (named after nearby Lake Victoria) had already been under African leadership. The only one of its kind in Kenya, it is home to a community of some thirty monks, novices and postulants of different ages and from a variety of East and Central African countries. Elsewhere in Africa there are another seventeen Cistercian monasteries for men and women continuing - not without interruption - a long tradition of monastic life in Africa dating all the way back to the earliest contemplative traditions of St Anthony and St Pachomius in the Egyptian desert.
Dom Paul in some ways stood for the return of that tradition to Africa enriched with Western monastic experience. At the funeral Mass the young and dynamic second African abbot Charles Lwanga painted a picture of towering intellectual ability combined with great humility and simplicity. “We are sad at his passing, but gratitude and joy prevail because Dom Paul has lived his life to the full. At 75 he has completed, as he put it himself, his ‘final pilgrimage’”. He then proceeded to regale the congregation with a string of anecdotes surrounding this larger-than-life monk.
A long quietly joyful procession accompanied Dom Paul to his last resting place in the cemetery adjacent to the monastery where he was laid to rest next to Conrad Kortooms, the last of the Dutch founding monks who died in 2002. A generation had passed indeed. Although the abbey had been under African leadership for over 15 years the passing of Dom Paul clearly was an important transition. As we left the cemetery a young Kenyan born novice of Asian origin threw his arms around me smiling broadly: “Isn’t this marvellous? Dom Paul has started his new life. If this is not true then what are we living for?” I felt deeply moved by the joyful simplicity of his convictions. Yes, we are indeed “resurrection people”.
Rigorous rhythm
The following days I surrendered to the rigorous monastic rhythm of early risings and regular times of chanted prayer. I skipped the office of vigils but managed to get up for Mass at 4.30 a.m. The daily schedule left plenty of room for personal prayer and opportunities for long walks across the beautiful surrounding hills and into what I was told are the Easternmost reaches of the Equatorial rainforest in Kenya – the Tinderet forest.
Conversations with two Congolese monks with whom I felt a special affinity because of my own extended missionary experience in that country, gave me a glimpse of the challenges as well as the struggles and fragilities of monastic life in this part of Africa. “The monastery where I come from was ransacked and completely destroyed a few years ago at the beginning of the troubles in Eastern Congo. We had a flourishing monastic community at Mokoto near Goma which was largely self-sufficient both materially and in other ways”, Fr Marc told me. “Now all that has to be rebuilt from scratch, and there is no end to the troubles yet”. His story brought back to mind the tragic kidnapping and subsequent killing of almost the entire Trappist community of Tibhirine in Algeria some years ago and the powerful witness of forgiveness of its prior, Dom Christian Le Chergé.
Challenging life
Africa’s monastic communities share the pain and suffering of the people they live amongst. But such extreme situations fortunately are rare. Most challenges relate more directly to the nature of monastic life itself. Reaching some form of material self-sufficiency obviously is a huge challenge also at Kipkelion. Steeped in the “ora et labora” - pray and work - tradition of monastic life the monks maintain a variety of income generating activities such as the traditional dairy farming, carpentry and gardening. The discovery of a source of clear and healthy spring water has sparked a new initiative which proves promising. Of recent Kipkelion abbey has started bottling its own brand of mineral water appropriately labelled “Monastic spring water”, and, in French, “source de l’abbaye la Trappe”!
Marc, a young novice, spoke of his admiration for the simplicity he had observed in Dom Paul Hennessy adding thoughtfully: “The vow of poverty is an enormous challenge for us. Our situation now is very different. My generation often comes from disturbed backgrounds, our education is incomplete or sub-standard. What does the vow of poverty mean and how should it be lived in an African context?” He proceeded by giving concrete examples from personal experience – the use of mobile phones, desire for comfort and so on. African family solidarity and how to deal with expectations and needs of family members are another area of struggle and searching. “The need and obligation to assist our families is something we have imbibed with our mother’s milk”. How to reconcile this with stewardship of common property, he wondered?
As I drove back to Kisumu accompanied by an aspirant who had tasted the monastic life for a month and was now sent home to think things over and report back to his family I reflected how monasticism, born on African soil in Egypt in the early Church, had indeed ‘come home’ after so many centuries to take root on the Equator. The Cistercian community at Kipkelion together with other monasteries across Africa from Benin to Angola are eloquent witness to that.<WMCopyright © World Mission Magazine