Namitembo Mission

Come to the African Connections Conference, April 18th, 2009

Namitembo Mission

[See the September newsletter on Trade School Graduates! or the November issue that includes the latest note from Fr. Owen and an article on Trees and Agriculture.]

St. Bridget has had a very active sister-parish relationship with the people of Namitembo parish in Malawi since 1997. Our involvement began when Fr. Owen O'Donnell and Fr. Harold Quigg (our pastor at the time) met while both were on sabbatical in Ireland. As they talked, the idea arose of having some kind of relationship between the two parishes. Both parties were somewhat careful at first, and St. Bridget invited Fr. Owen to visit Seattle so that the Pastoral Council could speak directly with him. The visit was very fruitful, and after a matter of a few months, there was a signed agreement between the two Pastoral Councils.

Namitembo has a central parish church, plus 7 "outchurches" for the mission. The mission is administered by Fr. Owen, who is a Montfort ordered priest, along with another elderly Montfort priest and a native Malawian priest who is diocesan.

Fr. Owen O'Donnell has a keen insight into what works and what doesn't work. He has years of experience in managing construction projects, to go with a disarming sense of humor and a balanced mixture of both rock-steady common sense and simple, easy-mannered pastoral skill.

Fr. Frank Loughran is an elderly Montfort priest, 93 years old, and he has been in Malawi for 65 years. He still maintains a regular pastoral schedule of Mass/sacraments and home visitation, and has a wealth of knowledge of Malawi.

Over the last 50 or 60 years, the Montfort missionaries have developed the network of small Christian communities that is the heart and life of the Church. Namitembo has perhaps 10,000 people in the parish area, with three priests, a couple of catechists, and a couple of religious sisters. The "neighborhood Church" of 76 small faith communities makes it all work. The small groups meet together every week, to share the scriptures, pray, and talk about the ongoing work within their local area. Neighboring groups will come together for worship at one of the seven outchurches.

Each of these seven outchurches has an elementary school connected with it, all but one of which is sponsored by the mission. The government of Malawi supplies teachers to a school if the community provides housing for the teachers. The largest part of our original commitment was to provide funds for building five teacher's houses.

This project captured the imagination of St. Bridget parishioners. It was a very tangible work which was within the means of the parish -- even within the means of individual parishioners, as a few parishioners covered that expense for building a house themselves, which the community named after those individual donors. Our other original commitment was to provide funds to help fix the main church. The total cost of these was estimated at $25,000.

The arrangement with the Namitembo community was that the community would mold the bricks and that our funds would provide all other materials plus cost of construction. This arrangement thus would involve the community in its school in a very practical way. The bricks would be made from scratch by the community and fired right at the site.

Early on, St. Bridget came up with the idea of the "Elephant Stampede" as its annual fundraiser for Namitembo. The Elephant Stampede is a 5K walk/run and picnic, held in mid-September. The charge to individuals and families for the run covers just a bit more than the cost of the picnic, t-shirt, and putting on the run; the real fundraising takes place because the event provides the opportunity to ask for donations for our sister parish. Nearly everyone participating makes some extra contribution to Namitembo. A couple of larger donors have occasionally provided "challenge grants" to the Stampede, with varying incentive challenges. Attendance usually numbers 600-700.

As time went on, the relationship grew. We exchanged visitors every year, including sending Fr. Quigg and our Pastoral Council president on our first return visit. Our exchanges have usually been taken "in turn" -- one year Fr. Owen or other (diocesan) clergy will visit us, and another year a delegation from St. Bridget will visit Namitembo. The visits usually take place from St. Bridget during our summer, which is Malawi's dry season (winter). The visits from Namitembo usually take place around the times of the Elephant Stampede.

The first visit from St. Bridget was a delegation of three, including our pastor. Our second visit was from two individuals interested in youth. Our third visit was from nine individuals -- two staff members, five youth, and two other parish adults. Our fourth visit was again from nine individuals, including one family of four with two youth, a couple, and a family of three that included a staff member. Our fifth visit included a family of six, our school principal, and another staff member and his son. In 2007 there were two other visits, one from two retired couples and another on the occasion of two parishioners and a couple of other family members getting married at Namitembo! That winter a parishioner came to stay as a voluteer for an extender period of time -- until spring of 2010. In the summer of 2008 visits included a staff member, a family of five, and another parishioner. In early 2009 Ann Nachtigal, recently retired teacher from Assumption-St. Bridget school went with her husband to stay for a few months. In summer of 2009 another three parishioners came for a visit, one bringing her sister from another city.

The most recent visit was a trip to Seattle by Fr. Owen and his bishop, Bishop Thomas Msusa, from the cathedral in Zomba. It was an amazing trip!

With the successes of the fundraising, St. Bridget provided funds for building teacher housing for the schools, then built new classroom blocks and rehabbed deteriorating school buildings. The other churches were fixed. A youth center and a community center were built. There was new construction of rooms for guests, which has further opened up new visitors from St. Bridget. We purchased a new car and van. The Namitembo high school, was expanded, tripling it in size. The construction of a completely new high school (St. Bridget Community Day Secondary School) was built near one of the outchurches, building three double-classroom sized blocks. In the summer of 2008 the Mike Foy Hall was dedicated at the school, in memory of our own former grade school principal, who visited Namitembo the summer of 2006, before he died later that year.

A few years ago, after much discussion between the parties, including Bishop Msusa, St. Bridget began funding the construction of the Namitembo Agricultural and Trade School (NAMTAS), located at the main Namitembo site. Its purpose is to provide training for marketable skills in a rural setting. Current offerings are carpentry, masonry, tailoring, and computer skills, and others will be added over time. This project is being done in partnership with the diocese of Zomba, which oversees the administration of the Trade School, with Fr. Owen as the on-site representative. NAMTAS already has several teachers' houses, and several classrooms/workshops, along with a computer lab with up-to-date technology, plus a water tower and storage facilities.

Our parish effort within our relationship originally focused on education, but is diversifying over time. One such example is irrigation. Two years ago, though an individual donor, we began a pilot project in irrigation, providing 45 pumps to individual farmers who lived near water sources, in order to increase the farmable acreage and mitigate or eliminate the uncertainty of weather, and possibly even allow for a second crop. This project is overseen by the nearby small Christian communities of the Namitembo area, of which there are seventy-six. The project has been highly successful to date. We have begun a seed project recently, and are exploring the possibility of an anti-malarial mosquito net project. And there are still a large number of pen pals.

A teacher from Seattle visited for a few months in 2007, and worked in the schools. The computer lab was outfitted last summer with a satellite dish to provide broadband access to the internet. There is a film project in the works, to develop a documentary on Namitembo and everything that has happened there.

Communication during the first few years of our relationship was difficult, but with the advent of cell-phone communication it has provided improving accessibility by telephone and over the internet. With the installation of the satellite dish, there is little difficulty now in communicating with Namitembo. St. Bridget now has language tapes in Chichewa (see below for a short primer), which is the national language along with English (English is far less common in the rural areas of Malawi, where Namitembo is).

The St. Bridget parish office provides frequent newsletters to parishioners, and many are currently being supplied by the parish volunteer, John Duffell, who is currently teaching there, and by Ann Nachtigal. There is also a Friends of Namitembo group, and a wider Namitembo News Network that receives frequent updates. Parishioners also pass along news items from a variety of sources, that are shared with our friends in Namitembo.

To receive our periodic newsletter, you can subscribe by contacting Deacon Denny Duffell at: denny@stbridgetchurch.org.

Below you will find many sources of information about Namitembo. St. Bridget is also a member of the Catholic African Connections group, which includes parishes and other Catholic organizations that have cooperative relationships with missions or other works in Africa. See www.catholicafricanconnections.org.

See a 2003 satellite image of the buildings at Namitembo Mission on Google Earth!

For visitors to Namitembo:

A little "Chechewa Primer"

Some "to bring" and "not to bring" items

2009 Reports from Namitembo

February, 2009 Report on Food Distribution

Report on NAMTAS alumni

November "Friends of Namitembo" newsletter

2008 Reports

Denny's Letter re: 2008 Stampede

John's Pictures From Namitembo 2008