"I was recently going through the website of the Archdiocese of Nairobi. They have Caritas Nairobi which has become a socio-economic window of the Archdiocese to reach to the grassroots and carry out a lot of initiatives, even at the level of Small Christian Communities,” Fr. Ezama said.
He added, “We have fertile land. We may not grow crops at the industrial level, but for the needs of our communities, it is possible and doable.”
Fr. Ezama, who has been to different places as a missionary, explored the joys, the challenges, and the opportunities of being an African missionary to fellow Africans, and to Europeans and North Americans.
Fr. Ezama’s mission as a newly ordained Priest in 1994 was to the Catholic Archdiocese of Cotonou in Benin, where he was the only African. Today, he said, MCCJ members in the West African nation are many, and that a significant number of Priests of the Italian-founded Congregation are Africans.
“When I arrived in Cotonou, there were only five members in our religious community. Four of them were Italian. I happened to be the only African. People were not used to seeing Africans become missionaries,” he recalled.
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He added, “As I speak today, the province comprising Togo, Ghana, and Benin has over 90 members who are Comboni missionaries.”
He ministered in the Archdiocese of Cotonou for six years before going back to Uganda. In his native country, he worked for two years in a Parish that he said had an interesting characteristic. “The region I served in Uganda had 90 percent of Muslims, six percent of Catholics and four percent others.”
The Ugandan Comboni Priest also served as the vocations promoter in Uganda and was later assigned to North America, and then to the United States. He has also served in Canada.
Fr. Ezama recalled that while navigating financial hardships as a young missionary in Africa, he would find out the importance of Small Christian Communities (SCCs). He said it was SCCs that footed half of the bill of his Priestly ordination.
“At the time of my Priestly ordination, more than half of the money that was asked for the preparation and the feast was raised by Small Christian Communities,” he said, and added, acknowledging the importance of grassroots resource mobilization, “A big amount of money required is brought to the grassroots for the people to share it out.”
Agnes Aineah is a Kenyan journalist with a background in digital and newspaper reporting. She holds a Master of Arts in Digital Journalism from the Aga Khan University, Graduate School of Media and Communications and a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communications from Kenya's Moi University. Agnes currently serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.