Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: My Experience at the Tamale Children’s Home

Monday, October 21, 2013

My Experience at the Tamale Children’s Home

Shortly after our arrival in Tamale, Brothers Tony and Con took us novices around Tamale to see the ministry sites, and I was deeply touched when we came to the Children’s Home. These delightful children captured my attention and led me to request this as my regular ministry.

My experience there has been enriching. The home has children of various ages, but I have been involved mainly with the infants and toddlers, while the older ones go off to school. At first it was not easy. I had to learn the mother’s gentle art of changing the nappies and washing the children. I helped in cleaning the house, playing with the children and engaging them in different activities to keep them active. By lunchtime they will all be sleeping. Sometimes I find myself among them having a siesta as well.

Volunteers from overseas also come and spend some time in helping look after the children. Men and women, youths, students and various organisations also take time to visit and donate what they can, in food or in other supplies. The administration is short of the funds needed for renovations and looking after the children’s basic needs, like clothes and food. They depend heavily on donations from generous individuals and organisations, in Ghana and abroad.

One challenge at the orphanage is the small number of staff. The number of children at the orphanage is greater than the number of staff and this makes it a difficult for the staff, especially to give the individual attention that children want and need. However, when visitors come, the children run up to them to greet these visitors without fear. This shows how they have been well looked after by the few staff, but also how much they respond to some extra attention from visitors and volunteers.

PAUL KAKULUNDA

Developing skills that are not usually taught in the novitiate!

There are always plenty of little ones needing care and attention.

By the end of the morning, some children are drifting towards siesta.

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”