Little Assisi Special School

I peered through the windscreen and said to Adelina, “But is there a road?”  All I could see was a pile of heavy stones and rubble.  “Oh yes, Sister, round the corner!”  Sure enough there was a road which narrowed to an eroded track twisting in and around densely populated small mud houses, and after negotiating the nearest we could park our battered little Ford to Willie’s house, I reversed in amongst the scrubby shrubs bordering a back alley, grinning at the little children’s faces peering in intently at me from all the windows of the car.

Willie is a hefty 16 year old cerebral palsy teenager whom Sr. Helen had wanted me to measure up for a “strong” wheelchair.  I’d rashly decided to bring him directly to the workshop on the other side of town, but had not worked out all the logistics!  It was his little “sisters” (cousins) who pushed me aside and lumped him into the back seat of the car, after we had half lifted, pushed and tugged his dilapidated, plastic wheelchair down and round the stony, muddy paths to the car- and I might add, on flat tyres!  Tough, determined hands deftly manoeuvred 60 kilograms of dead weight. Then off we shot.  I loved the way Willie was measured and fitted in the workshop; the one measuring was in crutches, the secretary who gave me the Proforma at the workshop desk was limping, the Manager with one arm prosthesis was supervising- and all working expertly together in an established and successful business. www.disacare.org.com   Willie was smiling by now (no smile when we arrived as he was hungry, reported Adelina) as he was enjoying a rare outing, the first in weeks.  No wonder, I thought, remembering the sheer physical effort of bringing him out.  How vital it is he gets a strong and durable chair to get him out of that matchbox of a house!

Sr.  Helen, one of our Irish Sisters started “Little Assisi Special School,” in 2005 with only five children; now there are at least five times that coming to school daily as well as those we visit in the compounds and others who come for afternoon activities.  Sr. Helen had asked me to “measure Willie for a wheelchair” and laughed when I described our expedition, complete with Willie himself to Disacare.  Helen celebrated her Golden Jubilee last month and her special guests were all somehow or other part of the Special School for physically and mentally handicapped children or part of our Franciscan circle of friends. She loves those children!

Disability in a compound household is painfully difficult, where economic survival is on the knife edge.  Every kwacha counts and few children are lucky enough to remain long at school.  I shudder to think how Willie’s older sister and guardian keeps her little household going.  She came with Willie, often cuddling him and talking to him at the back.  Willie is her late sister’s child and she was not at all well herself- I could see that.  There is also a second little girl at “Little Assisi” looking for a sponsor to buy her a wheelchair.  She comes each day to morning classes. Can anyone help us buy these two wheelchairs? They are K1,900,000 each and in A$380 each.

Last month I sat in on Mariyo’s class of ten squirming, moveous children with hands, legs, arms all going in different directions; watching in wonder at the skilled, patient prompting of her teaching; in this case, holding Velcro stuck pictures on a large card, while pointing and singing out the questions for the children to answer!  These are severely impaired children of variable concentration span- and the Special School is right in the middle of N’gombe compound, ten minutes from where we live. 

Mariyo, a Japanese volunteer last year gathered 25 fellow Japanese volunteers from other projects for the School’s “Sports Day.”  Everyone had a wonderful time, including the parents and family members, watching the children all dressed up in new T Shirts and logo, competing with all the ferocity of the Olympics in Tug of War, races and ball games.  Such a day helps wipe reduce the stigma and silence around disability, into a social occasion with justifiable pride and dignity, and puts such children in the limelight for once!  Mariyo herself concludes two years voluntary work and leaves Zambia with an English language generously sprinkled with Chi Nyanja! Again, Sr. Helen is looking for a donation towards this event which will cost A$400 for this years Sports Day. This covers food for the children, T Shirts, transport costs and hire of the sports ground. I would love it if we could do this for these children. Let me quote from the school's flyer:

“It is by

the care we show

to the most weak

and vulnerable

in our society that

civilization can be

judged"



Holy Saturday 2012

OUR LADY’S SABBATH  by  Robert Crooker, CSB.

I’ve read your book now, Luke, and even though you asked me to correct or amplify those parts about the days before my son began to teach and preach in Galilee, not one line of it would I change. But oh, the memories it stirred! I never tire of thinking back to all he did and said, and weighing it anew within my heart.  Even the things that you learned from me came to me with new force. A case in point: I told you when we found him in the Temple, we did not understand, Joseph and I, the word he spoke to us, how he must be about his father’s business; but now it seems to me that everything he said was full of deeper meanings than we grasped, and only on the Last Day shall we know all that he meant.

You know Elizabeth said to me at our visit, “Blest is she who has believed”. The more I think on that, the plainer it becomes that my belief is dearer than my motherhood itself. (You also wrote how Jesus told that woman, the one who called the womb that bore him happy, that happier are they who hear God’s Word and keep it). True it was that day that God Almighty did greater things for me, but greater yet are those that God has done since, although in ways so hidden and sublime no human words can tell, even to one so docile to God’s Spirit as are you!

And so it was that my thoughts turned as I read to something that you scarcely touched upon: the Sabbath when my son lay in the tomb (of which you say no more than that we kept the rest according to the Law’s command).  This was the day the Spirit poured on me such gifts of faith and hope as to surpass, if such may be, the very ones the Spirit gave at Pentecost in tongues of holy fire.  When we had buried Jesus’ body, John insisted that I not go to my home, but come to spend the Sabbath rest with him. We said but little to each other there, and if we sought to speak our voices failed. And yet, for all the grief and pain that pierced my heart that night, there was a certitude and peace beyond expression that I would have shared with him, so desolate he seemed, had I but found the words.  (My son himself was much like that the day that Joseph died: we sat, he held my hand, we wept together, yet almost nothing did he find to say. I wondered, later, that he chose to speak so much to Martha at her brother’s tomb, more than to me at Joseph’s death—but then my Joseph has to wait for the Last Day to rise, and so the case was not the same.)

Mary and Martha, had of course, told me the words he spoke as he prepared to call their brother from his grave, especially that phrase deeply graven on their minds: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  It was those very words that came to me the afternoon I stood and watched him die: I asked within myself as once I had to Gabriel long before, “How can this be?” The answer was the same: with God all things are possible.  So, as I sat next day, and weighed these words again within my heart, even amid the darkness and the pain, that seemed to me most certain, and my soul did magnify my Saviour God the more.

Do not misunderstand: I knew not then how it all would happen on the morrow. But when they went with spices to the tomb, I sensed within that it would not be right for me to go along and seek him there.  In all the wild confusion of that day, I stayed at John’s, and while they dashed about with half believed reports that he was risen, he came himself to share with me his joy and let me glimpse the blessed, glorious light that radiated from his precious wounds.

Yet even then, I somehow could not touch: He spoke to me as through some mystic veil that hung between the mortal and the Risen. (It was the same, I later heard, with Mary of Magdala, who met him in the garden beside the tomb).  When afterwards they told of how he made poor Thomas feel his hand and side, I wondered why it was that I, who bore him in my womb and at my breast had nurtured him, was not allowed to touch and others were. I’ve pondered that, and now I see a reason for it: The Apostles are sent to tell the world what they have heard and seen and touched, but I was called to be the perfect disciple, steadfast in belief even that day when he who is called “Rock” was shaken, and had first to be restored before he could confirm his brothers’ faith.  Thus even in his rising he has left his mother here to walk by faith, not sight, until he shall return to take her home. It will not be much longer now, I think, before I share his glory to the full and drink with great delight the joys that he prepares for me.

The Sabbath is not kept, these days, the way it was when I was young. My son himself was never strict on that the way my parents were, and now of course his followers prefer to celebrate the first day of the week, to mark the day he arose triumphant over death.  I know that this is right; yet all the same I love to keep the holy rest each week, and recollect with awe and thankfulness the graces of that blest but dreadful day when I, alone unshaken, held within my heart the faith of God’s new Israel. 

This is an article written by a Basilian priest Fr. Robert Crooker and given to us FMDM’s by an old friend of my father’s, and fellow FMDM Ann Kiely.  You might like to consider a parallel between Our Lady’s feelings on Holy Saturday, a time of grief and mourning and of patient waiting and hoping, with this present “Holy Saturday,” today.

Mary questioned in herself why others seemed to receive ‘a better deal’, but after pondering she came to an understanding of who she was called to be.  Each of us has a unique role to play in our world, our families and communities.  Let us be aware that in the waiting and watching we prepare ourselves for the dawn of Easter in our lives each day.   

1950 Frank, Francis (back) Marie (front) Desiree, Kerry who died in tragic car accident at 4 years old.

1974 Frank becomes the proprietor of the "Vine" hotel, Richmond.  Desiree has multiple sclerosis.

1995 Three generations of Bourkes with Richmond Football Club: Francis, Frank and David.

Frank grieved every day for Paul who died in a car smash outside the town and for his little girl Kerry.  Desiree too died less than two years later after Paul. Yet he was fond of saying so often, "Family is great!"

1986 A new era began meeting Joyce whom Frank married following romance, courting and such happiness!

2011   Frank with Grand daughter in Melbourne.   Even with the onset of alzeimhers, he always recognised and rejoiced in family.

The Life & Adventures of Francis Michael Bourke II

1946 Xavier Chapel, Melbourne


Frank has arrived.  The bride had been driving around the block for half an hour!

Desiree Eugenie Morrell and Francis Michael Bourke with brother Tom Bourke, the best man seeing them off.

The Adventures of Francis Michael Bourke 1922-2011

1946 Francis Michael Bourke, Punt Road Richmond, Melbourne.  Frank played 16 games and kicked 48 goals in a promising career, "interrupted" by WW II and then prematurely ended with injury.