by Simone Hoedel, published Winter 2004
Collins Okeny is resting with his family in his Yorkton home, relaxed and at ease. Although he now works as a blaster at Leon's Manufacturing Company in Yorkton, he reflects that only a few years ago, he and his family had escaped a harrowing ordeal in their native Sudan.
He and his family have come a long way since leaving Sudan in 1998. A member of the Acholi tribe in the south of that country, he and his family witnessed much violence in the 1990s civil wars in Sudan.
“My kids, like a lot of people, they saw it,” said Okeny. “They don't forget it: they're still having nightmares.”
Arab militias would threaten and kill members of his community, pressuring them to convert to Islam. He and his children have seen the cut up bodies, left as warnings.
He doesn’t want to convert to Islam. Neither was he interested in joining the rebels.
The last straw came when Okeny's father was killed by government forces in Khartoum. When he began making funeral arrangements, security officers came looking for him among his friends and family, to arrest him.
“That's when I said, well, if I stay here, I am going to die,” said Okeny. “I have to go now away from here.”
Okeny fled to a safe place on the Nile River, then asked that his wife and family join him. The family escaped Sudan by a perilous seven day hike through the jungle towards Kenya. Once they were picked up by Kenyan patrol officers, they were considered refugees and handed over to the UN.
In Okeny’s culture, the more children, the more status a person has. Which puts he and his wife high on the status scale with their 8 children. Two are in post-secondary school and the youngest is a toddler, born in Canada. Grandfathers on both sides of the family, he said, have many wives and children, which is the custom in Sudan.
Most people in the village where he lived built thatched roof structures, unless they had enough money for an iron sheet roof.
The Okeny’s last year received their Canadian citizenship. Okeny feels blessed. “I never expected that we were going to be alive,” he explains. “The journey to Kenya, not a lot of people make it.”
Okeny is happy to be in Canada. They have adjusted to the cold weather, and the quieter, safer environment. “Very good. I like Canada, especially Yorkton.”
“Because I've never been in peace,” said Okeny, “I want to enjoy this maybe short time, to enjoy the peace.”
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Dinners Warm Empty Stomachs
By SIMONE HOEDEL (published in the Voice, Fall 1993)
It's Thanksgiving on the downtown east side in Vancouver. On this sunny day, street people are lined up on Cordova Street around the block outside the Union Gospel Mission, near Oppenheimer Park.
They're here for the food: a hot turkey dinner with dressing, mashed potatoes, carrots, gravy, pumpkin pie and coffee.
But first, each group of one hundred people is led into the chapel for a church service. The group, mostly Native, sat with their heads bowed until the folk songs are over. From there, they are led to the spotless dining room next door.
Brother Daniel is a Franciscan friar, a brother in a Catholic order, who manages the daily sandwich line two blocks west of the Mission on Cordova at the Sisters of Atonement. The Sisters feed 800 to 1,000 street people a day.
Brother Daniel says most of the people on the streets are addicted to alcohol and drugs and can't manage their own lives. A large number are mentally ill. Many more are elderly or street kids. A lot of the people in the food line-up are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, crime, and substance abuse. Most live in cockroach infested hotel rooms and rooming houses that don't have kitchen facilities. That's why they use these soup lines.
The standard rental rate for a hotel room on the downtown eastside is $325 a month, exactly what welfare allows for accommodation expenses. The remaining $210 is supposed to pay for all other essential living expenses, which for many includes not only food, but a drug or alcohol habit, and cigarettes.
Rich MacHale, who lives at Salvation Army's Harbour Light Center on Cordova Street said that 75 per cent of the people on the streets have drug or alcohol problems. MacHale said he lost everything because of his alcohol problems and ended up living on the outskirts of skid row in Vancouver.
"When you have nothing, your self-esteem is low. How do you go and apply for a job when you don't have any clothes?" MacHale said.
Three blocks east of the Harbour Light, members of the Quest Outreach Society prepare turkey dinners in the basement of St. James Church. The organization, which serves about 6,000 meals a week to the homeless in Vancouver and Burnaby, is staffed by volunteers.
Jim Georgica, a volunteer with Quest for the past year and a half, has been living on the streets for more than 25 years. He was put in an orphanage in Saskatchewan for a while when he was ten years old and said he never really got over feeling rejected by his mother and stepfather. Running away from home at 15, it wasn't long before he had an alcohol problem and was spending six or seven months of the year in jail.
When asked if he will ever see a time when he is out of this rut, Georgica answers with a quote from a George Thorogood song .... “I’ve been down so long, it seems like up to me.”
It's Thanksgiving on the downtown east side in Vancouver. On this sunny day, street people are lined up on Cordova Street around the block outside the Union Gospel Mission, near Oppenheimer Park.
They're here for the food: a hot turkey dinner with dressing, mashed potatoes, carrots, gravy, pumpkin pie and coffee.
But first, each group of one hundred people is led into the chapel for a church service. The group, mostly Native, sat with their heads bowed until the folk songs are over. From there, they are led to the spotless dining room next door.
Brother Daniel is a Franciscan friar, a brother in a Catholic order, who manages the daily sandwich line two blocks west of the Mission on Cordova at the Sisters of Atonement. The Sisters feed 800 to 1,000 street people a day.
Brother Daniel says most of the people on the streets are addicted to alcohol and drugs and can't manage their own lives. A large number are mentally ill. Many more are elderly or street kids. A lot of the people in the food line-up are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, crime, and substance abuse. Most live in cockroach infested hotel rooms and rooming houses that don't have kitchen facilities. That's why they use these soup lines.
The standard rental rate for a hotel room on the downtown eastside is $325 a month, exactly what welfare allows for accommodation expenses. The remaining $210 is supposed to pay for all other essential living expenses, which for many includes not only food, but a drug or alcohol habit, and cigarettes.
Rich MacHale, who lives at Salvation Army's Harbour Light Center on Cordova Street said that 75 per cent of the people on the streets have drug or alcohol problems. MacHale said he lost everything because of his alcohol problems and ended up living on the outskirts of skid row in Vancouver.
"When you have nothing, your self-esteem is low. How do you go and apply for a job when you don't have any clothes?" MacHale said.
Three blocks east of the Harbour Light, members of the Quest Outreach Society prepare turkey dinners in the basement of St. James Church. The organization, which serves about 6,000 meals a week to the homeless in Vancouver and Burnaby, is staffed by volunteers.
Jim Georgica, a volunteer with Quest for the past year and a half, has been living on the streets for more than 25 years. He was put in an orphanage in Saskatchewan for a while when he was ten years old and said he never really got over feeling rejected by his mother and stepfather. Running away from home at 15, it wasn't long before he had an alcohol problem and was spending six or seven months of the year in jail.
When asked if he will ever see a time when he is out of this rut, Georgica answers with a quote from a George Thorogood song .... “I’ve been down so long, it seems like up to me.”
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Sisters reflect on helping rebuild Hungarian Church after Communism
By Simone Hoedel (published in the Prairie Messenger Oct. 23, 1995)
REGINA--When Dominican Sisters Juliana and Elizabeth Barilla were growing up in the '20s and '30s on a farm north of Grayson, Sask., they spoke their parents' native Hungarian language. In fact, they were forbidden to speak English at home.
Many years later they were grateful for it. Last year they were approached by Sister Lucianne Siers to teach English to seminarians in Hungary. Siers is the coordinator of volunteers for the U.S. Bishops' Office to aid the Catholic Church in central and eastern Europe.
"The reason they approached us," said Sister Elizabeth, "is because we know the language--read, write or speak."
The church is rebuilding in formerly communist central and eastern Europe, where for many years, as in Hungary, it was high treason to say mass. One of the places they started was in education. "They believe they have to have educated leaders for tomorrow," said Sister Elizabeth.
Sisters Juliana and Elizabeth taught English to 44 Greek Catholic priest candidates in Nyiregyhaza in northeast Hungary from November 1994 to May 1995.' Greek Catholicism differs from Roman Catholicism mainly in its rites, which are more elaborate, and the fact that Greek Catholic priests are allowed to marry.
Learning English is important for the seminarians because English is the universal language, especially for getting into universities, said Sister Elizabeth. "All the documents that come out of Rome, for example, are written in two languages: English and Latin."
But the sisters, who both belong to a teaching order of nuns and have been teaching in the U.S. most of their lives, faced some new and difficult circumstances in their new teaching mission in Hungary. The most challenging part of their time there, said Sister Juliana, was the lack of materials.
"When we arrived, these students didn't have anything - there were two or three to a book," said Sister Juliana, who admired St. Margaret of Hungary as a child. "The cost for books is not the same as they are here. It's big money because the wages are so low for the people."
The Barillas finally used their own money to buy textbooks and dictionaries from the international language bookstore for their students.
Many of the men, especially from Ukraine or Romania, could not write legibly because they grew up without paper or pencil, according to the sisters, which is why the seminary exams are oral. "It makes your heart ache for these wonderful men, who have so many obstacles to learning and to a good education," wrote Sister Elizabeth to her family last December. "Yet they are determined to win."
Much of the meagre financial aid for the seminary school in Hungary comes from ex-refugee priests who escaped Hungary during the "persecution years," when the communists drove the Catholic Church underground and out of the country.
"This is one of the beautiful things," said Sister Elizabeth. "There were these priests who were ordained underground somehow during the persecution years. These refugee priests who have been getting money from the free world are the ones who are paying for the education of these Greek Catholic priests.
"They ran away in the '50s. Now they're old and retired and spending their time helping the church in Hungary," said Sister Elizabeth. "It's magnificent!"
Sister Elizabeth wrote back to her brothers and sisters in Canada last March about how the priests were trained during the persecution years: "Today I got an insight into how the seminarians were trained during the 40 years of occupation. A priest who lived through this time told me the story.
"In the prison camp in Siberia there were a lot of young Hungarian men and priests and university professors. One of the priests organized a college curriculum for the young men. They had a humane overseer who even helped them get books.
"However, he told them they must do their assigned labour (woodcutting) first, which they did. Then they had classes and study and exams. Their diplomas and marks were written on cigarette paper (the only paper they had) and they continued their education in Italy, Spain, England, Ireland, Austria, Canada and the U.S. (where their credentials were accepted). God's watch over his church is great! Praise God" (from a letter dated Mar. 8, 1995).
"What amazes me is how much the church has done in the past four or five years," said Sister Elizabeth.
"This young priest said to me: 'The church was planning. They saw which way the wind was blowing, and they had a plan. As soon as the curtain went down, we jumped in with both feet and we've been running as fast as we can ever since.' "
"But there's so much to be done," said Sister Elizabeth.
"We're just scratching the surface," added Sister Juliana.
REGINA--When Dominican Sisters Juliana and Elizabeth Barilla were growing up in the '20s and '30s on a farm north of Grayson, Sask., they spoke their parents' native Hungarian language. In fact, they were forbidden to speak English at home.
Many years later they were grateful for it. Last year they were approached by Sister Lucianne Siers to teach English to seminarians in Hungary. Siers is the coordinator of volunteers for the U.S. Bishops' Office to aid the Catholic Church in central and eastern Europe.
"The reason they approached us," said Sister Elizabeth, "is because we know the language--read, write or speak."
The church is rebuilding in formerly communist central and eastern Europe, where for many years, as in Hungary, it was high treason to say mass. One of the places they started was in education. "They believe they have to have educated leaders for tomorrow," said Sister Elizabeth.
Sisters Juliana and Elizabeth taught English to 44 Greek Catholic priest candidates in Nyiregyhaza in northeast Hungary from November 1994 to May 1995.' Greek Catholicism differs from Roman Catholicism mainly in its rites, which are more elaborate, and the fact that Greek Catholic priests are allowed to marry.
Learning English is important for the seminarians because English is the universal language, especially for getting into universities, said Sister Elizabeth. "All the documents that come out of Rome, for example, are written in two languages: English and Latin."
But the sisters, who both belong to a teaching order of nuns and have been teaching in the U.S. most of their lives, faced some new and difficult circumstances in their new teaching mission in Hungary. The most challenging part of their time there, said Sister Juliana, was the lack of materials.
"When we arrived, these students didn't have anything - there were two or three to a book," said Sister Juliana, who admired St. Margaret of Hungary as a child. "The cost for books is not the same as they are here. It's big money because the wages are so low for the people."
The Barillas finally used their own money to buy textbooks and dictionaries from the international language bookstore for their students.
Many of the men, especially from Ukraine or Romania, could not write legibly because they grew up without paper or pencil, according to the sisters, which is why the seminary exams are oral. "It makes your heart ache for these wonderful men, who have so many obstacles to learning and to a good education," wrote Sister Elizabeth to her family last December. "Yet they are determined to win."
Much of the meagre financial aid for the seminary school in Hungary comes from ex-refugee priests who escaped Hungary during the "persecution years," when the communists drove the Catholic Church underground and out of the country.
"This is one of the beautiful things," said Sister Elizabeth. "There were these priests who were ordained underground somehow during the persecution years. These refugee priests who have been getting money from the free world are the ones who are paying for the education of these Greek Catholic priests.
"They ran away in the '50s. Now they're old and retired and spending their time helping the church in Hungary," said Sister Elizabeth. "It's magnificent!"
Sister Elizabeth wrote back to her brothers and sisters in Canada last March about how the priests were trained during the persecution years: "Today I got an insight into how the seminarians were trained during the 40 years of occupation. A priest who lived through this time told me the story.
"In the prison camp in Siberia there were a lot of young Hungarian men and priests and university professors. One of the priests organized a college curriculum for the young men. They had a humane overseer who even helped them get books.
"However, he told them they must do their assigned labour (woodcutting) first, which they did. Then they had classes and study and exams. Their diplomas and marks were written on cigarette paper (the only paper they had) and they continued their education in Italy, Spain, England, Ireland, Austria, Canada and the U.S. (where their credentials were accepted). God's watch over his church is great! Praise God" (from a letter dated Mar. 8, 1995).
"What amazes me is how much the church has done in the past four or five years," said Sister Elizabeth.
"This young priest said to me: 'The church was planning. They saw which way the wind was blowing, and they had a plan. As soon as the curtain went down, we jumped in with both feet and we've been running as fast as we can ever since.' "
"But there's so much to be done," said Sister Elizabeth.
"We're just scratching the surface," added Sister Juliana.
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