Chronicle 5 of the General Team’s visit to the Province of Africa

Between November 2024 and January 2025, Sisters María Teresa Cuervo and María José Meira (Dedé) travel on behalf of the General Team to the Province of Africa.

Below we share the fifth and last chronicle of their trip, between December 16, 2024 and January 4, 2025. During this time, they approached the reality of the three communities of Kinshasa, Limete, N’Djili and Kimwenza, knowing and sharing life, in an attitude of reverence and listening, exchanging views/visions in the key of synodality and shared leadership. They also came in touch with the process of recreation of the Vedruna Charism in this reality.

Finally, between December 26 and January 1, they celebrated the Provincial Assembly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they met with 43 sisters from the communities of this country. In addition, 3 novices and 7 pre-novices were attentive and collaborating in the services of preparing food, setting the table and taking care of the house in Kimwenza, where they met.

These are their closing remarks at the end of the visit:


On the eve of our return to Rome, we met with the provincial team to exchange impressions, thank them for everything we received, suggest some ideas, clear up some doubts and tell them that we will send our letter to the Province after our two-month visit.

We come back to Rome feeling very satisfied, because we feel that we have fulfilled the objectives we brought with us for this visit. We have seen the effort that the sisters are making to move forward with the Province and their awareness of belonging to a larger family. Of course, with much humility, remembering what St. Joaquina always indicated and indicates not to believe that we do everything very well. We always have to improve.


Limete

Kinshasa has about 20 million inhabitants. Limete is one of its communes which, in turn, is subdivided into several districts. In 2018 it had a population of almost 600 thousand inhabitants.

In Limete there is a house for all the sisters of the Province, as well as for the people who come to volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is also the headquarters of the Provincial Team, Secretariat and Commissary, so from this community some of the purchases are made to provide for the communities that are farther away from the capital. It is also a house of student sisters, because of the ease of places to study in Kinshasa.

One of the sisters works in a private school, others travel to work in N’Djili, both in our school and in our health center there, and others help in parish ministry.

Here we enjoyed sharing with the sisters of the community: Mª Núria Solà, Marguerite Mbima, Julie Nzonzi, Myriam Munenkliwi, Valérie Madianganu, Lucie Mbala, Mireille Mbulabie, Francine Sindani and Rita Mbwaki.

We also participated in the Eucharist in the Community of the Marianist Fathers, neighbors of our community, and we had the visit of the Bishop of Kinshasa.

N’Djili

On Friday, December 20, we traveled to N’Djili. There we found the Vedruna Health Center, which offers a quality service helping sick people who do not have the means for health services. It covers many areas: maternity, family planning, pharmacy, laboratory, infectious disease nursing, accompaniment of AIDS patients and operating room. The two medical sisters of our community work with the State, not in our Health Center, although one of them attends to emergencies, such as cesarean sections; other sisters accompany the center in different areas. The team of workers gave us a joyful welcome when we visited, with precious words about how they follow Joaquina de Vedruna in her work for the glory of God and the good of the neighbor.

N’Djili is also home to the Vedruna College, where quality education is provided at the preschool, primary and secondary levels. Our sisters are in management positions: Consolette Impuni in preschool, Chanceline Kayongo in primary, and Valerie Madianganu in secondary. Their students and teachers received us with great affection and enthusiasm.

Next to the community house is another house where a group of second year aspirants live, accompanied by our sisters. We were able to share with all of them: Pascaline Kikula, Consolette Impuni, Chanceline Kayongo, Lablonde Kitata, Antoinette Kumbi, Marie Thérèse Lukengo, Mathilde-Agnès Lutumba, Edith Metelo, Micheline Ngolo, Clarisse Yengi and Arlette Makangu.

We participated in the Saturday Eucharist at St. Therese of the Child Jesus Parish, celebrated in Lingala, the predominant language in Kinshasa. We also attended the Eucharist on Sunday the 22nd, during which the parish priest dedicated a beautiful greeting to us with meaningful words about the value of our presence in the school, health center and pastoral work of N’Djili. He told us that the sisters are very present in the lives of the people, especially the most impoverished.

Kimwenza

On December 23rd we traveled from N’Djili to Kimwenza, through a very chaotic traffic. We were impressed by the number of people walking between cars or traveling by truck in the direction of the Port to look for work for the day.

There is the Novitiate and Prenovitiate house, where the three novices, Virginie Misamu, Emerance Nakasila and Thérèse Nkuyanda; the seven pre-novices, Jeanette Afanglo, Bernadette Bieto, Jeanne Kutelama, Thérèse Mabanza, Rosa Misonga, and Beatrice Daka; and our sisters: Ange Lukosi, Elisabeth Mabangi, Jacqueline Makandala and Florence Kupay. They are engaged in various tasks: accompanying the young women in the pre-novitiate and novitiate stages, welcoming sisters who are doing university studies, and participating in parish ministry. Initial formation is combined with farming, animal care and housekeeping to help with the financial support of the community. Two sisters have outside jobs to help support the community, giving religious education classes and psychological care.

We prepared together for Christmas: we participated in the Christmas Eve Eucharist in the Jesuit chapel, where we celebrated with joy and dance together with the Jesuit Fathers and religious from various congregations.

On December 25, we celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus at the Eucharist in the Church of the Divine Mercy Parish in the Kimwenza neighborhood. There, a large procession started the celebration from outside the church: with music, dance and lots of rhythm, we shared with the numerous attendees the celebration of this day. The ceremony ended with the blessing at the Cross of Mercy and the meeting among the attendees, as it is customary here after the masses. We then shared a Christmas meal with the Kimwenza Novitiate and pre-novitiate community which was so joyful that it ended with everyone dancing.

A few days later, we participated in the Eucharist at the Comboni Missionaries’ house, where our sisters go every day.

Provincial Assembly in the Democratic Republic of Congo

We met with the 43 sisters of the communities of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the community of Kimwenza, in the house of Initial Formation.

The objective of the 5-day assembly was to deepen the theme of synodality and shared leadership. The activity was developed with different dynamics, taking into account the vitality of the group. After the deepening group work, the calls at the personal, community, provincial and congregational levels were socialized.

In a second moment, the socialization of a work sent by the province took place, in which each community was asked to express the task of the mission, its resonance in the milieu, the way of evangelization, economic subsidy and dynamics in Unique and Shared Mission.

In a third moment, the provincial accounts were presented and there was a very interesting and profound reflection on the subject.

This Assembly was the opportunity to express the needs of each presence. The Provincial Team will offer the province an order of priorities in order to determine the order in which they will be addressed according to the possibilities of the province.

Finally, on January 1, we gathered all the sisters, novices, pre-novices and aspirants. We were 64 people who enjoyed a delicious lunch with typical dishes. Besides fufu, there was roasted goat, chenille (butterfly caterpillar), roast chicken… It was New Year’s Day! Then we celebrated with typical dances from Togo and Congo. There was a lot of joy and enjoyment with the family.

It was interesting to experience that at midnight there was hardly any of the gunpowder and noise that is produced in some places of our planet… only around one o’clock in the morning they take to the streets to shout happy new year.


The aspects that have caught our attention during these days have been:

  • In Limete, near our house, on the street, there is like a “job bank”, where you see, daily, in the open air, many people, mostly young people, who come in search of the dreamed and desired job: if they manage to have some job in the day, they leave happy, if they do not find anything, they have to go somewhere else to look for something where they can earn bread for their family.
  • The most widely spoken language in Kinshasa is Lingala.
  • N’Djili is a commune of Kinshasa, with several working class neighborhoods. In 2004 it already had about 500,000 inhabitants.
  • The double cloth, worn by married women. The reason is not to show their body, as a sign of delicacy. From Vatican II onwards, nuns wore only one and a headscarf, worn differently from married women. It was an element of inculturation.
  • When a nun dies, the communities of neighboring congregations accompany her during the mourning, sharing the time for prayers and songs.
  • Dancing and singing is so important in people’s lives that aspirants, pre-novices and novices have some time on the weekend to do it together.
  • “Malembe, malembe” means, little by little, the patience that one must have in many moments of life to reach a goal.
  • You can see that it is a group of very young sisters who, when they meet, express their joy with dancing, singing and shouts of contentment.
  • In the celebrations, meetings and Eucharist, especially at the moment of the Gloria and the Holy Mass, a person emits a special shout of joy. It may have resonance elsewhere in the place where they are gathered.
  • Kinshasa is the capital of the country. But the electric power service to the population is very precarious. It is even absent for several days. One of the biggest difficulties is with the preservation of food. Also the traffic in the city is chaotic due to traffic jams or bottlenecks. It is said that driving licenses have not been issued for 10 years because there is no material to produce them, but the number of drivers is increasing, without any preparation.

We ended our visit by thanking each other for the two months and one week we had spent together.


The other chronicles are already available: