Wake. Lufubu. Day eleven.

The night above Lufubu is ruled by a dim crescent moon—low in the sky, stained red, turned upwards like the celestial sliver under Guadalupe’s feet. Two days ago, it rained. Thunder shook the house and tendrils of lightning licked at the treetops like white, evil tongues. Tonight, it is late. The watchdogs out front have long since fallen asleep.

Wednesday night, I was welcomed into my new home by Fr. Cao, Br. Phillip, and Fr. Antonio—the previous rector in Lufubu. He had stopped in for some last-minute items and shared dinner with us. Br. Phillip is here for the whole year. He is Zambian—a Salesian in formation with the Vice-Province.

We had all walked together and said a Rosary as the sun set, a dark orange streak across the upside-down sky. The stars, when they came out, were unfamiliar. Orion stood on his head, Pegasus laid on its back with legs up—a stiff and dead horse.

Later that night, after dark, I go for a walk with Brother. Somehow, it hadn’t really dawned on me that I’ve become an instructor at a college—even a very strange college, halfway around the world and with a unique program of study. Now it does. When we go around the dormitories to meet the students, I am struck by how much I am reminded of Notre Dame.

Don Bosco Agricultural Technical College is, by Luapula Province standards, a very reputable institution. Students come from all over Zambia to be certified in Agriculture, Computer Studies, Power Electrical, Fashion & Design, and more. They are young, mostly—the vast majority between the ages of 18 to 25, with some younger (having completed secondary school early) or older (having deferred schooling until their families had enough money).

As we make our rounds, I meet most of the fifty-or-so students—and am struck with a kind of uncanny remembrance of the people I had met at my own university. Under the light of the moon and between the men’s and women’s dormitories, I suddenly remember orientation, Welcome Weekend, hot Indiana nights socializing on the quad between Knott and Flaherty. I haven’t flexed that muscle in a very long time—that kind of effortless banter between young people. Yet this time, I am their teacher—strange to think of myself as such—and realize that I am, to a certain extent, in charge of these students’ formation.

For all of its similarities to that alma mater of happy memory, DBATC is a very different school from Notre Dame. A walk through the men’s dormitory reveals caved-in ceilings, leaking toilets, broken down walls. In their “kitchen”, outdoors and behind the main building, students boil nshima in steel pots on coal fires in the utter dark.

In the lighted space between the dormitories, we return to find the students dancing. Some play huge hand drums, taken from the church. Brother Phillip informs me: “Tomorrow is Zambian Independence Day. The students are practicing their performance for the celebration in Kazembe. But it is not so common for all of them to attend. It is because you are here.”

The next day, I introduce myself at morning assembly. Afterwards, I am given a tour of the grounds by Fr. Cao. He shows me cracking timbers, leaking roofs, caving floors, termite-eaten beams, crumbling concrete, broken electrical boxes. “This is where we will use your money,” he says. “I have already started planning. We will get to work right away.”

I see the farm—the chickens, the pigs, the cows. I see the broken-down solar panels, the corroded power lines, the rusted water pumps. I see the computer lab—twenty-five wonderful desktop PC’s, plenty of RAM, good CPUs, keyboards, mice. And yet, the entire school, the Salesians, and even some pirates from the village share the same paltry Starlink connection routed at the Salesian Residence. I watch as Kunda, the Computer Studies instructor, attempts to email me some course materials. “It is very slow,” he says. “If I angle my laptop just right… there.”

Without good internet, the computers are basically dead in the water. And yet, the Computer Studies program is much more comprehensive than I had ever thought. Students take courses in IT and Operations, Computer Architecture, Computer Programming, Entrepreneurship, Communication and Study Skills, Mathematics, Management, and Commercial Real Estate.

“Will you teach Programming?” Kunda asks suddenly.

“Sure, you mean the course?”

“Yes, the Programming course.”

“Of course. I guess I would start next term?”

“You can teach it now if you like. I have three courses I am teaching already. It would be a great help if you could take on Programming. The students are eager to learn.”

And just like that, I am the Programming instructor.

Kunda is very excited when I tell him I have brought a Starlink. He asks when we could install it. That same day? Maybe later? We settle on Monday. We begin to imagine the kinds of changes we could make with a better internet connection. Maybe some kind of computer server for the courses. We could manage access to the network remotely, maybe even add some extra layers of security to prevent poaching. “Everyone in the village knows the password to the wifi,” he says. “Oh yes?” “Yes. It is very simple. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight.”

That afternoon, Br. Phillip gives me the keys to the Oratory. As I go out towards the football pitch, a handful of kids are already there. “Hello,” I say. “Hello!” “Do you want to play football? Football?” I make a kicking motion. “Yes.”

I go inside the classroom and open up the bin with all of the balls. One of the boys comes over and chooses a good one.

We walk back towards the pitch. There are about nine boys of various sizes. I turn to the biggest one. “You are captain. Ok? Captain. Iwe. I am captain. Ine.” I choose teams by counting ones and twos. Their team ends up with four players and mine with five. I try to send a boy over to the other team, but he won’t go. I take off my shoe. “If it lands up,” I make the motion, “you go there. If it lands down, you stay here. Ok?” He agrees. The shoe lands up, as it always does. The teams are now fair.

—or so I think. With only three teammates, the kids run circles around me. I am wheezing within five minutes. Thankfully, I am relieved by a whole mob of children that trickle in as the game continues, and we end up with about forty on the pitch at the same time—even some girls, who, all things considered, kick my butt.

The next day is Independence Day. The students pile in the bed of the community pickup truck to make the 12 km drive to Kazembe. Br. Phillip, Fr. Cao and I squeeze in the cab. The road is terrible. The 2010 Ford Ranger we’re in jerks side to side and up and down. After some time, we arrive in the town. Fr. Cao points out the direction of Kazembe’s palace—the King of the Bemba—who apparently is Catholic, and reclusive.

The celebration is at the Salesian oratory, in a huge courtyard with an enclosed concrete stage. Br. Phillip comes up to me as we look around. “Would you like to meet the other volunteers?” “The German girls?” I ask. “Yes, your girlfriends!” Fr. Cao says, bursting into laughter.

Br. Phillip takes me across the street to where the girl live. They are just coming out of their house as we arrive. They are Sarah (19), Sophia (20) and Thea (19), from Central Germany—Frankfurt and Hanover. We chat for a bit in the Salesian residence until Fr. Jaczek comes out—another Salesian in the community there—after which we return to the Independence celebration.

The girls introduce me to the children of the oratory. They have been in Kazembe for over a month now and know the children very well. “This is Junior,” Sarah says, holding a little boy in a tattered shirt. “Junior is a ‘problem child’, but he is no problem—we love him!”

Junior comes up to me. “What is your name?” “Ambroise,” I say. He laughs. “What is your name?” he asks again. Sophia interrupts—“he says that a lot.” “What is your name?” he asks again, laughing.

“My name is Junior,” I say. He looks upset. “No!”

“Yes, my name is Junior.” He laughs. “What is your name?” he asks again.

The children crowd around us. The girls pick them up and carry them. The kids challenge me to arm-wrestling, and when one begins to lose, another comes to add their arms to the struggle—until I am arm wrestling four children at the same time.

As we goof around, the celebration begins, and I receive a text from Br. Phillip: “Your students are about to perform and you are nowhere to be found.” I return quickly to find them in costume and about to go out. They dance, and are far and away the best group in the informal “competition”. As they come back, some of them spot me.

“Where were you? You were not here!”

“I was! Just on the outside of the crowd, is all.”

We hang around for a little while longer and then leave. The next day—Saturday—there is a program of celebration for the kids of the Oratory. The day begins with Mass at 7:00. The rest of the morning consists of singing, dancing, and games. The children recite poetry in English, verses from Scripture, and compete for prizes of little sweets—bananas, biscuits, candies. They are served lunch cooked over a charcoal fire by a few of the women from the village—huge piles of nshima with vegetables and chicken.

In the afternoon, we walk to the river for the children to swim. As we go, we pray the Rosary. At one point, I notice that two boys have taken out a slingshot they had concealed in their bag. They pick up a stone to shoot it at the girls walking in front of us. “Hey,” I say. “Use something soft instead, like this.” I tear up a little bush with fluffy seed bulbs. They look at me, relieved. “Thank you,” they say, and proceed to annoy the heck out of the girls.

After the kids swim, I pick some small fruits to teach them how to juggle with one hand, and they are mesmerized when I demonstrate how to hand-whistle. A little group of them walks alongside me as we go, trying to show off their skills. “This one! This one!” they say, throwing their fruits in the air or blowing ineffectually into clasped hands.

After we get back to the oratory, the crowd of kids around me is joined by more that have just arrived. They spend about ten minutes trying to figure out the hand-whistle, until a little girl tugs at my sleeve. “Change game,” she says. At this point it is late. Br. Phillip asks if I would like the keys to lock up the Oratory. I decide to resume up our play on Monday. “Bye, bye,” I say to the kids. “Bai, bai, bai, bai, bai!” they imitate.

Today (Sunday), after morning prayer, there is Mass in the main church. The villagers arrive in their best clothes, and the children I saw yesterday scrappy and dirty are scrubbed clean and presentable—for the most part. Some of them come alone.

I recognize the boys serving at the altar, the girls singing in the choir. They are all Oratory kids.

Some boys in the church play hand drums—deep, booming—resounding like claps of thunder. The women dance and sing. They are the most powerful hymns I have ever heard. I imagine David dancing “with all his might” in front of the Ark; the infant Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb.

After Mass, Fr. Cao is to head to Mansa for a few days. “Are you going to the funeral?” he asks me. “There is a funeral?” “Yes, Brother is going. One of the altar boys died today.”

I am struck in the stomach as if I were just punched. “Died? One of the boys?” “Yes, very sad. He was very sick.”

The day passes in silence. After evening prayer, which Brother and I say alone, we head for the village to attend the wake. It is pitch black. Brother lights the way before us with a flashlight. The stars, inverted, cover the heavens, and smoke from village cookfires rises into the sky. We meet one of our students from the college along the road. “We went to attend the wake, but the singers are not yet there. I am returning to the college,” he says.

We continue along the dark path until we reach a dense group of thatch houses. “Brother,” I ask. “Will you remind me how to say, ‘good evening’ in Bemba again?”

“Chungulopo mukwai. But you do not say that at a funeral. Instead, you say mwabombeni mukulilako—‘How are you mourning?...’”

We arrive at the wake to find two watchfires burning and a hundred people gathered in the inky darkness, seated on small stools. Others lay out on straw mats. “They will stay here all night,” Brother says. “The body remains inside.”

An older man I recognize from the parish offers me his seat. In church, he wears a red scarf around his shoulders, directs the collection—conducts communicants to the altar. He looks like I imagine Saint Paul’s presbyters would have looked—kindly, dignified, strong.

Brother sits as well, across from me. He leans in to speak.

“It is good for us to be here. If we want to bring God to these people, but do not go out to meet them where they are—we cannot expect for them to accept our message. We must be near to them. In Africa, to show your love to someone—it is necessary to suffer with them. We must suffer with them. You will learn.”

I am on a sort of two-person bench, and eventually am joined by another person. “How are you?” he says to me. I can barely see him in the fire-lit darkness. “He is another altar boy,” Brother says. “He has come to mourn.”

I realize that I have a question for him. “Will you ask him what the boy’s name is? The one who died?” Brother confers with him for a moment. “Amfrey. His name is Amfrey.”

Some men stoke the fire in front of us. Another burns a short distance away, dark silhouettes visible seated around it. I sit for a moment and pray, watching the smoke rise towards stars. People around us speak in hushed tones. It is not all dour. Some laugh quietly, others smile. At a certain point, the dead boy’s older sisters begin to wail. They walk in a circle around the camp, moaning with grief, repeating words as if in prayer—shadowy figures in the darkness.

“Do you want know what they are saying?” Brother asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“They are crying to his spirit. They say: ‘How can you leave us?...”

We sit in silence for a while. At some point, the singers arrive. Their voices rise—softly at first, then louder. A song—not of darkness or despair, but of hope. An expectant joy.

I notice Brother conferring with the same man from the Parish who had offered me his seat. After a moment, he turns back towards me. “You will say the opening prayer, then I will give a reflection.”

“They want me to say the opening prayer?”

“Yes. In English is ok.”

I look out at the hundreds of people around me, visible only in fire-light. I hear the voices of the singers, the crying of the boys’s sisters—still making their circuit at the edge of the darkness. I think about the kindness—the profligate, ridiculous kindness—these people would extend to me—a visitor—to speak a word of blessing over the death of their youngest son.

“Okay,” I respond.

The singing stops. Everyone is quiet. I stand in the light, and say something like this:

“God, we praise you.

We give you thanks for having created us.

Thank you for the air we breathe, and the food we eat.

Thank you for the life within us.

We ask you to remember tonight—Amfrey.

Receive his spirit into Your hands.

We pray that we may join him, one day.

That we may be with him again—in Heaven.

That we may all be together, with You, forever.

Amen.”

“Amen,” they respond.