SO BITTER ARE SEPARATIONS!

The Photo From a Missionary site

“...but Mandalu, why shouldn’t we have known each other deeper than we have done?” That was a question from a friend of mine known by the name of Tausi.

Previous to her question I had told her; it would have been better if we had not met and known each other. But why say this to a friend? If I said so, then it is because it was motivated by something serious. Yes, indeed it was pushed by the pain of separation.

So bitter is separation, it can be witnessed through our everyday experiences. The baby experience is very typical: an “infant.” When it has to detach from its best friend and best home for the past nine months, it feels the pain so much, indeed so bitter it is. But it can’t do much to express itself instead it resolves to crying. Yes so bitter it is.

I had to leave my friends for the first time when I was about five or six. I was still young but all the same I felt the pain for leaving them behind. The separation was caused by the move that my family had to make from one region to another in Tanzania. The decision followed a piece of advice from our family doctor, for my mum’s health was so poor because of the cooler weather in that region.

My second separation, which I remember, was when I finished my primary level of education, ready to join the secondary school level. Here I had to separate with my friends and yes, it was indeed bitter, I think it was so because I knew I would never see again many of those friends, and yes, I have not met most of them again.

Kirinya prison is a place where I go for my apostolate; I work with the prisoners who have not attended their trials yet. Some stay there for two or even three years, they get so much used to the place and the other guys that they find in the prison. Somehow, that becomes their home for the period that they have to stay in the prison, they make friends. When their time to go home comes, they have to go, I suppose under normal circumstances none of them would want to stay back, and yet the pain of separation is still there. In one incident, a prisoner was telling me “Ssebo, I have been her for three years, these fellows have become my brothers, but back home I have a family, I feel like staying behind but I just can’t help”

This morning, when I was contemplating on the subject, I learned that the intensity of bitterness in my separations has been increasing in direct proportion to the increase of my age and the increase of commitments in life. In the same contemplation, there came the idea of the coming separation, separation from friends of the PCJ. At first I did not want it to come to my conscious and so I was suppressing it. But I realized that suppressing it won’t do me any good, instead I should better let it come out and learn how to deal with it.

When I think of the many friends that I have and that when I conceive the idea of separation, that is,when the time for me to leave comes I will have to separate from them, then I feel so sad. In the course of my stay at the PCJ and Uganda at large, for about three years now, I have been able to meet with many people and so make friends from both the PCJ and outside the institution. I have come across friends from Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Cameroon, Burundi, Benin, DRC, Sudan, UK, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, USA, Italy, Spain, France, and many more. And yet I may never meet most of them again. Yes, this is what indeed makes me sense the coming pain so bitter…yes, so bitter it is. Separations are painful and yet inevitable. I know that relationships are very important for our proper growth and yet separations are so important for that proper growth as well.

When I was five, our family had to separate from many friends that we had in the first town. But it was because of “a higher good,” that is for the health of one of the family members we all had to leave behind our friends. Should we have clung to our friendship while one of the members in the family was suffering? No, we had to leave.

Should those guys in the prison remain with their friends and forget about their families back home? I do not think so. They must go and let life continue. Furthermore, separations have big benefits to us even though they are bitter. If a baby in the womb decided to remain in there (if that were possible), then it would not have developed, as it does when it comes out of the womb. The same applies to a pupil. If she or he decides to remain at the primary school level (for the sake of staying with the friends, whom I guess they too will have to move on) then the development of formal education and other disciplines would not be possible. Thanks to our faculty of memory that we can forget our past temporarily or even permanently, and so are able to live properly and make more friends again.

Indeed separations are so painful but so inevitable and important.

Originally written by Martin Mandalu in the PCJ VOICES, Volume 11, April, 2002