±«Óãtv

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Francis Davis, Academic and social entrepreneur

Hope in remote places

Good morning.

From Lusaka it takes about 17 hours by car to reach Katibunga. For a day you follow the Great North Road that runs from Zambia’s capital towards Tanzania. Then, at Mpika, a small municipal district the size of Holland, you turn right. Here the road is hard but made of mud. It runs, judderingly, along the foot of the Muchinga escarpment and then, you have arrived at an important place.

Katibunga is an important place because if you live there and a leopard should damage your face it is home to the only clinic for miles around; likewise, if you are in labour and your baby is in breach. In the small river there is a hydro pump that generates electricity for the valley. A mill grinds mealie meal flour and stores this, the local staple diet, for times of scarcity. Large plantations reveal fruit, corn and other crops and there is a school.

At night it literally feels for the visitor that you are in the middle of the proverbial nowhere as silence descends so deep it can almost be touched.

And yet you are actually at the heart of a social, economic and environmental hub organised by followers of St Benedict. These young African monks have, working with villagers, established all these enterprises for mutual benefit. And at the heart of this contemporary social innovation the monastic community also keeps a cycle of prayer, silence, chant and hospitality as old as the ages.

God of ages past and present. Bless those places and people who, even when we feel at our most remote-at our lowest ebb – create the conditions of hope that will revive us.

Amen

Show less