Baptisms at Ba still happened despite the floods - Photo:Fr Pat Colgan
Cancelling Masses and sacramental services in favour of direct aid to flood evacuees – is this the ‘new normal’ for a priest on Sundays in the Pacific.
Recently Ba experienced heavy rains and was inundated. Somehow, we were still able to celebrate Mass and conduct baptisms in the parish church. I cancelled my other Masses knowing that both villages were impassable. So instead, a number of us went to visit our parishioners whom we knew were set up in three school evacuation centres.
In one school, we had 10 parishioners with their catechist from Nadrugu Village, who had chosen to keep selling their produce in the market despite the bad weather. Their weekly trip to the market is their main source of income, and the schools after a one-year hiatus, were willing to take the risk, needed the money for their children’s stationery, uniforms etc.
We had given these people food and shelter in the basement of the presbytery until the evacuation centre opened and they were taken there. The place was already full of people from a neighbouring parish who had chosen to keep selling their produce as they couldn’t get home.
As we visited, we noticed that most were already leaving, because the government had ordered the clearing of all schools in preparation for the resumption of classes and exams. This directive was changed later in the day, and schools remained closed because of the uncertain weather.
The parishioners of Ba seemed to have no money for transport, so I took them to a house in Vunisamaloa (about 6kms out of town) through two quite deep floods on the main Ba to Navala road.
As regards the second school, there were about 40 people there from the village of Votua, which is well known for flooding. We lent them a two-burner stove, gas, and two cartons of biscuits. They eventually left at 2:00pm, going back home in a combination of boats and a large police truck.
Another small group were sheltering at Namosau Methodist School to whom we donated rations from our cupboards.
Recently Ba experienced heavy rains and was inundated - Photo:canva.com
The situation in Votua village was, as usual, quite dire. There were 59 evacuees (14 families) sheltered at the primary school. After the ground-level kindergarten was finally cleaned all the evacuees were able to go home. The power and water supply remained in most parts of Ba.
I have had a number of Sundays like this where I have had to cancel Masses and sacramental services. It is challenging my idea of what a priest’s ‘major’ job on a Sunday should be – say Mass or get my hands wet and dirty helping others?
Maybe there isn’t a contradiction? (I’m still trying to figure it out). The evacuees in the second school talked of how touched they were when the Hindu teachers there dropped their cleaning of classrooms to start cooking food for almost 100 ‘guests’.
Perhaps those teachers ‘did’ Sunday in a way that was very pleasing to God – theirs and ours?
Columban Fr Pat Colgan lives and works in Fiji.
