Cards from an other world 2

A Way of the Cross in the savannah April 14, Good Friday. The appointment is at seven o'clock, in front of the parish hall that now serves as a church, waiting to finish in the work of this new and larger desired by Damiano to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the mission. The dawn sun lengthens our shadows, while a soft, warm light turns golden reflections in the air. We are ten including a Karimojong shouldering a cross. Damiano has a bullhorn and begins to recite prayers in the local language. I let myself be lulled by the singsong of the words. I do not understand a word that is one, but the pauses and cadence of the phrases remind me known prayers, that suddenly emerge from the memory of a child to the Way of the Cross on Good Friday who went to accompany aunt Nene. And so, in this dawn to Matany, I remember her and distant Easters, echoes of a past of faces and gestures and words that still nourish my heart. Good morning Aunt Nene and happy Easter, wherever your spirit is. Thanks also for the way of the cross; I became a man, but it is the child who brings you with him today. We begin this journey of prayer. No one speaks, everyone "is alone on earth," and maybe he's looking into himself for something that at least looks like a meaning for what he is experiencing. There are also Sarah and Erik who wears on his head a nice straw hat with wide brims: reminds me of what had in his head the forger Degas (Dustin Hoffman) in "Papillon". We cross the village along its only way to the sides of which the shopkeepers have already put on display poor merchandise, but from year to year it seems that quality is improved as the care in presenting them. Something is changing? The crowd that follows us thickens. I think of the words of Scripture, of Christ, whose cross is carrying a young Karimojong there before us, and who drew behind him the people only thanks to His passage. Let us pause for reading the Stations. Catechists alternate with Damiano and on their lips the harshness of the local language seems to relent in prayer. Then we enter the savannah. The earth has hardened into a smooth plateau, carved by ditches and small wadi dug by early rains. The vegetation appears bright green, as if pulled a sigh of relief after the long dry season. We walk among thorny bushes that seem rolls of barbed wire and patches of trees that stretche their green arms to form umbrellas of coolness. They arrive in groups, taking with them also herds and cows, all dressed in the party signs, even those who wear only the bare poverty to whch they added nothing to be a bit more than anything, at least for a day. Damiano lokks like a Biblical chief driving his tribe toward the fulfillment of the journey that has been written and at his gesture these people will stop as one man; in the vastness of the savannah he kneels and bows his head under a blue sky that to me, small and confused stray, appears too large and far. When we arrive at the foot of mount of Matany, which is nothing if not a volcanic hill, but from the top of which the view extends into the bush to infinity, we stop in the shade of the branches of a giant tree. The people seek the coolness, but also the protection of this son of the soil beneath which since ancient times, as under the tree of every village, gather the elders and it is decided the life of the community. The young man who carried the cross is now symbolically crucified and crowned with thorns. Around him are recited scenes from the Passion and mimed the sins which mark the daily lives of these people: violence, theft, adultery, drunkenness. The actors have a spontaneity and incredible facial expressions and their interpretation often raises laughter, shouts of approval or condemnation. Then Damiano indicates the path of ascent. The crowd opens, spreads like colored confetti on the rocks of lava rocks that lead to the top where we can expect a metal cross shining against the sky. I go with a group of Karimojong children that challenge me in a game of dexterity to climb among thorny shrubs and trees with bark wrinkled like the skin of an old man. I arrive at the top and without breathing hard, I feel a secret pleasure. My little friends smile amused at me. The cross is there. It was waiting for us, always waiting, waiting for everyone. Damiano prays aloud, a hundred voices answer him and right away are lost in the light and cool wind that carries them away, in heaven, on the savannah, to the mountains on the horizon. I look up to the cross and the sky seems to me less distant.

Agostino Gaglio

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