Motorcycle diaries

Columban Fr Liam Carey finds a motorcycle to be a godsend when working on the urban fringe of Lima, Peru.

Motorcycle diaries

The roar of engines, a plume of dust, a mean machine slicing through the desert sands....

It all sounds like a scene from the 70s cult classic “Easy Rider” but in fact it is Columban Missionary Fr Liam Carey speeding to his next Mass in the parish of Jicamarca on the eastern edge of Lima, Peru.

Liam is a frontiersman. Most of our work in Lima is conducted on the frontier of the urban area. Lima is a typical Third World “mega-city,” with thousands of people flooding in from the impoverished countryside every year in search of a better life. As it is surrounded by desert, many peasant migrants simply squat in huge shanty towns, erecting flimsy wickerwork huts on the bare hillsides that ring the metropolis.

Life is hard for the newcomers. At first, there are no services of any kind. They must organize themselves and press the government to extend electricity lines and paved roads. Drinking water is provided by tankers, which every morning weave a path through the morass of makeshift dwellings. Sewage is disposed of in pit latrines. Rubbish is burned in the streets. People must travel long distances each day, either to work or to hunt for a job.

Schools and clinics are slow to arrive. As for housing the folk are left to their own devices, slowly improving their homes when they are able to.

Ever since the Columbans arrived in Lima in 1952 it has been a priority of ours to accompany these people and serve them from the outset. Our parishes grew like the neighbourhoods – evolving bit by bit.

In Jicamarca, the scale of immigration is astounding. "Twenty years ago this was empty space," recalls Liam, "apart from a few pig farms. Now there are over 100,000 people here, and the government reckons that when fully occupied there'll be over half a million."

Eventually, the area will have to be split into two or three parishes, each with at least two priests.
For the time being, however, there is just Liam.

Similar to the other residents, Fr Liam first lived in a tiny two-room hut perched on a steep slope. Over time he has been able to make a few improvements, but conditions are still fairly basic. From here he fans out to the 17 Christian base communities, that the Columbans have fostered to date, strapping his Mass kit and other essentials onto the back of his motorcycle. "There are still hardly any paved roads around here," he explains,"the dirt roads are just that – dirt. A motorbike is ideal for cutting through all that."
Motorcycle diaries
Faithful to Columban principles, Fr Liam works with a team of committed local lay people and missionary Sisters (mostly from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the United States). The idea is to form Christian communities in all the various population centres of Jicamarca, seek land and build rudimentary chapels (funded mainly by the generosity of Columban benefactors), and when the essentials of a parish are in place, hand the area over to the bishop and the native diocesan clergy. From then on it will be up to them to keep the parish going.

And what is in store for Fr Liam's future? Well, as a true Columban frontiersman, he'll move on to another fringe area and start all over again. Thus a new chapter in his "motorcycle diaries."

Columban Fr Liam Carey is originally from the west of Ireland. He worked in Brazil as a Columban missionary priest before journeying onto Peru. Columban Fr John Boles, the author of this article, is an English Columban who has worked in Peru for 20 years.

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