Day 7: Focusing on Commonalities, Not Differences

Hello friends and family!

I think I speak for a good portion of the group when I say sorry we haven’t been conversing with you much outside of this blog. As one might imagine, Wi-Fi can become harder to find the further you are from Lusaka.

            That being said I personally am finding that the separation from that stream of information we are all so used to is becoming an increasingly integral part of our experience. Enough of that though, you all probably want to hear how today went for us all.

            Today was our first full day at the Chikuni Mission, which I was surprised to learn encompasses almost 10 square km. We started our day early, celebrating a mass with the local boy’s secondary school at 7:30 am. It seems that as this trip is meant to be an exchange of the cultural and musical, it has also provided us ample opportunities to experience the different styles of worship that the Christians, more specifically Catholics, of Zambia have to offer. The ecclesiological models of institutionalism that many of us are so used to at home simply melt away to the passion of the faithful here. I will definitely be keeping track of the different ways of worship that we will have the opportunity to experience as we continue our journey.

            After mass and breakfast we started down the path to what has been one of my most anticipated experiences so far, a spiritual walk with Fr. Kalyepe. Fr. K is one of the eleven Jesuits that live and teach at the schools in the mission. Besides teaching and preaching however he has his own little project that he wanted to share with us. This project was the prayer garden, more accurately in my opinion a prayer walk/trail, that follows the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Across the eight stations we had the opportunity to remind ourselves of the founding father of not only the society of jesus but also of the way of thought that guides our institution.

            After this walk and our lunch we then had the opportunity to really meet for the first time the boys that we celebrated mass with in the morning. We gathered over music and even though we struggled at first to grasp some of the text of the spritual African music the boys were sharing, we came together in the end to finish the day with loud and joyous song. For myself personally, I was also able to make some friendships with the boys. One in particular, Sean a tenth-grader, stood out from the rest. Sean and I were able to connect on many levels, we’ve liked planes since we were small kids, we both have little sisters, we are both good at math etc. however we both agreed on one thing and it is perhaps the one thing I will always remember. We both agreed that while at school, we dearly miss our families. Sean is from Lusaka, which is about three hours away, and while he is here studying we only ever gets to see his family on “Visitor’s Weekend” (not to indifferent from our own fall family weekend tradition at GU). Regardless to say I am very much looking forward to talking to Sean some more tomorrow.

            That’s it for me. I hope everyone back home is healthy and well and that we have the chance to speak with our families alone soon.


-David Barnes, Mech. Engineering class of 2019

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