A message from Former Director, Brother Frank O'shea

Malie Masi’i

“In him I live, breathe and have my being,” ( Saint Paul ) and yes sixty-seven years of it and on January 4th I let go of being a foreign missionary after thirty-seven years, four countries, three languages.

Ya tosha ( enough) I say claiming to have had a good run, especially in the past ten years in Mukuru slums Nairobi Kenya, where I was able to exercise plenty of creativity and home-made remedies for the poor and marginalized. God’s playground I called it and so I can begin with the last, yet maybe the greatest of these home-made remedies which was the birthing unit at Ruben Centre. It truly engaged me and each morning after arriving at work, I would pass through the Unit and chat with the new mothers and hold some babies and almost without fail it kick started my day. Over two and half years and well over two and half thousand babies, I never tired of being part of the miracle of new life and the associated drama that so often comes with it, and loved asking the mothers about how many kids they had and when some would give a hint of embarrassment around saying,’ number four,’ and I would say add ten more and you will be great like my mother, and I mean great now that I know first-hand the birthing drama.

Now it is my time to appreciate this same miracle of life in me and to help I found my favourite T Shirt capturing my personal way, philosophy and spirituality which I designed just over thirteen years ago when I transitioned out of Tanzania. The Way of course is God’s Way- God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7) and that Jesus taught it is better to give then receive (Acts 20:35).’. life in its fullness starts with dying to self-stuff and on January 14th it is forty-nine years since a green, naïve yet willing boy left the farm in Allansford to join the Christian Brothers. It is the third of these words which sums up these years and which adds to Thomas Aquinas’s famous statement that ‘Grace builds on Nature’ and this willing nature was all I left home with to embrace living the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty in community for life and the rest has been grace, especially these grace filled years in the Mukuru slums.

The last few weeks of my time there was filled with farewells and the most frequently asked questions, ‘ But what are you going to do Br. Frank?” and Why are you leaving? “ and most frequently answer was , ‘ I am a monk so I will return to the monastery for prayer and meditation,’ to which they would vigorously howl down as though it wasn’t my nature and to the second question my stock reply was,’ I am not an African President, only Mandela had the grace to make a contribution and move away.’

Brother Frank having a ceremonial drink.

So now into my second week of retirement and sitting on a small farm in Tanzania, I am daring to risk breaking that promise of prayer and meditation by adding writing as I attempt to be in touch with the grace of living life as per the T Shirt mentioned earlier. On the front is an image of an African girl ( former student) with the African continent as the background ( three countries became God’s playground ) and underneath it the words.

The Ordinariness of the Face of God’

My first week of doing nothing allows me to reflect on this T. Shirt and own how true something designed all those years ago was still been very much in fashion in Mukuru. The ordinariness of the sacredness of life; the new babies, the joy in the mothers, the Special Needs child staring at me from the his/her prison of paralysis, the domestic violence victim, the sexually abused young girl, the distraught father pleading for help to educate his child, the amazing staff, the lost and defeated youth caught in a web of addition to cheap and illegally brewed alcohol known as rocket fuel, the many hundreds of children turning up to school for food as much as education, the hungry family in lock down, the unemployed mother of three kids who has no idea how and when she will feed them, the family at our police post complaining about either a robbery and home invasion or the illegal electricity connection that led to the rented house being burnt down with everything she owns, and so it has been……… but as life is full of opposites and a coin has two sides so too my T Shirt.

On the back is a dung beetle rolling around a ball of cow dung, accompanied by the words, ‘ Same Shit Different Day’ and with it the challenge to put behind me all notions of being negative about life and especially about the problems of the slum dweller described above. These poor and marginalized are not dung to be rolled away and put out of sight or pitied but rather embraced with our Brother’s paradigm for mission best described by the three words of PRESENCE, COMPASSION and LIBERATION or the way of the Good Samaritan of the gospel.

Enlightened by true human presence and compassion, the problem or human tragedy becomes an opportunity for inspiration and liberation for both the giver and receiver. For me this theory lived out in so many ordinary ways and moments.

The joy of the new baby overwhelming for the moment the worry about how to feed the child.

Knowing fully the struggle, comes the desire to get in there with them and pay the school fees.
Observing the little kids just being kids and enjoying the smallest of treats and acts of kindness.
Appreciating the energy of the kids in the orchestra to seize their chance to grow and learn and celebrate excellence and beauty.
The newly sponsored students heading off in all new uniforms and gear to a Secondary Boarding School outside the slum.
Watching the empty food buckets come back to the school kitchen with not one grain of maize left in it.
Seeing the self-belief in the kids that suggests they won’t be like their parents or older brothers and sisters and they will make it and finish school.
Love the occasional sincere expressions of gratitude, rather than be trapped in the need to be appreciated.
Believe my two bobs worth of help has actually turned into a lottery win for some people.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says ‘For everything there is a season, A time for every activity under heaven………. a time for ….

Yes and now is my time for gratitude as I reflect on the past and especially these past ten years and own the words of praise and gratitude spoken so often at the farewells. This is my new call to make sure I am wearing well the T Shirt and certainly never wear it back to front, and being here in Arusha Tanzania is helping me with this time for gratitude and thanks for the miracle of my life. Maybe this is what the slum people were asking with that question of what are you going to do? Dare Frank to listen, appreciate, love and give thanks are all God’s doing.

So I have let it be known out there that I am around and lots of former students and parents from my thirteen years at Edmund Rice Sinon School have reached out to me with their stories and all I have to do is listen, own and be grateful and this is typified by one young woman travelling ten hours from Dar es Salaam by bus and spending the day with me before the return journey of ten hours. She was one of the first girls to get a Division 1 and get a university scholarship, and is now married, loves her work, earns great money and so I guess you can say liberated from the grinding poverty that is the lot of so many Africans.

Having a time for everything under heaven enabled me to travel about eighty kilometres out of Arusha to meet with an old and ailing Masai mate. He has fifty-four children and nine wives and one of the sons started reeling off the names of the children who got Secondary educated by me and later Br. Clem and it came to twenty-two. We drank sour milk from their calabash, ‘in memory of that grace filled time’ and welcomed the new 2021 year.

A group of about twenty students invited me to a meal and I sat and listened at this ‘time to Harvest’ … Stories of scholarships, sporting triumphs, music recordings, examinations results and now life’s blessings abounded.

Former students

Another day, having had the car stopped a young man introduced himself as ‘Frankie” ( no prizes for guessing the name) He was born on our back porch, because I was too busy teaching to give his mother a lift to hospital. His mother later died of HIV but I housed him and his Grandmother for years.

Then another occasion I was taken to the nearby Masai area which I had embraced and reached out to providing scholarships and hostels for the children to keep them at school. Several of the girls spoke to the gathered group about their liberation through education from the worse aspects of Masai culture namely polygamy. Goats were eaten, more sour milk drank and endless words of gratitude made this day a time for gathering the harvest.

Now as I wrap this up, it is January 14th and forty-nine years to the day since that day which began the journey of my green life as Br. Frank, the barren man ( nature ) who has become the father of a great nation of poor, forgotten and marginalized ( grace) in four countries over these past thirty seven years away from Australia.
Thomas Merton writes, ‘ Our God is a consuming fire. And if we, by love become transformed into him and burn as he burns, his fire will be our everlasting joy.’

(Seeds of Contemplation)

I would love to think some of these forty nine years have been defined by love for I certainly feel joy.

Title is Tongan, praise shouted out loud by elders to a young boy ( Masi’I ) when he is performing well some dance or small heroics for a crowd.

Br. Frank

January 14th 2021.