|
|
From MISNAOct. 22, 2010
On the Roads of Parà: Father Andrea Gamba (left)
listens to a discussion during a Xaverian meeting
“The Gospel travels on four wheels, motorbike, on horse and
donkey hooves and also on our two legs… faith is our fuel”. Father Andrea Gamba
doesn’t hide a smile under his short grey speckled beard when I meet with him in
Belém, capital of the northern State of Parà, in the Brazilian Amazon. He takes
the occasion of the start of the missionary month to tell MISNA of his
experience in Brazil, travelling with his mind to May 2006, when in the far
south of Parà visiting the more remote communities far from the Tucumã parish
was a real adventure.
“Not that the situation is much easier today, but I remember that it was a harsh
season: here the heavy winter rains sweep away any semblance of a road and often
even bridges, which in the summer appear sturdy and well-built and in the winter
turn into canes bent by the pounding force of the river waters”, explains the
Xaverian missionary.
“Can you imagine travelling 300km in these conditions, each metre becomes a
conquest. José would come with me, since he knew the forest because he had
worked as a ‘madereiro’, wood gatherer”. It was Fr. Andrea’s first experience of
remaining blocked with a four-wheel drive in the mud, without even being able to
get out with a winch “that, also old like the car of 1993, broke under the
weight after a first attempt… Only thanks to a tractor, two long days and
nightmarish nights we reached the first community”.
Our next destination was even more difficult: “We had no alternative but to
build a bridge to pass. We borrowed a chainsaw and after gathering tree trunks,
built a sort of ‘ramp’ to allow us to pass. Later we were however forced to
abandon the car and borrow a motorbike. There were no longer any roads, just
mud! The tiny Our Lady Aparecida community at the foot of a hill in the Cedar
Valley counts four families, and we reached them by horse, after also abandoning
the motorbike, but on our way back the river had swelled so much that even by
horse it was impossible to pass. We let the horse swim and crossed on a trunk,
set across the river like a makeshift bridge”.
Other adventures attended Fr. Andrea and José on their journeys: “Also another
time we were forced to abandon modern means and ride donkeys, then walking the
last mile after a six hour ride… The cure to our tiredness was meeting one
of the smallest communities of three families, who were filled with questions
and interest, a will to grow in their faith. There we had the joy of celebrating
the first mass of the community… This is missionary work, reaching where no one
has passed before at all costs. The sacrifice of arriving already produces
thanks in the people receiving the sacraments”.
The adventure in the far south of Parà “was a good experience to understand the
lives and suffering of people who live in these areas, where the state barely
exists and the presence of the Church is fragile. The danger is announcing the
Word that navigates 3,000 yards above the reality that people live every day.
Such experiences help diminish height and incarnate it”, explains the
missionary. The joy of reaching all the communities “cannot be compared to
anything in the world… No one was excluded from our presence, the love of Our
Father reaches all, without distinction or barriers, as also the love of the
Church reaches all without being intimidated by any difficulties”.
Without José, who everyone called Zê, “everything would have been a lot more
difficult”, remembered Fr. Andrea. Zê, a 35-year-old black man, “has a past of
sufferance and struggle for survival… He taught me the reality of the land in
which we travelled, amid saints and sinners in places far from civilization,
ideal for escaping any social controls, a good hideout for fugitives. There are
white angels and black ones, and this friend was one of the black”, said Fr.
Andrea.
“I urge your readers to leave their cars at home and take the bus, leave their
bicycles and go by foot… if we want to be people and not a solitary crowd”,
concluded the missionary.
