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| Consolata Missionaries South Africa, 1994 |
The news of his death left us without words... and at the same time brought back so many stories. I thought of sharing just one of them.
Fr Carlos (the tallest in the photo) and Fr Alexius (first from the left, seated) were introduced to the Zulu language by Fr Jack Viscardi (the one with the white beard). As usual, Fr Jack would leave his parish and teach Zulu to the new missionaries. The timetable was clear: Monday to Fridays, from 9 to 12 in the morning and from 3 to 4 in the afternoon. In this way he would be able to finish the book "Learn Zulu" in one month.
One of the last lessons in the book was a dialogue between a "big pig" (ingulube enkulu) and a "small pig" (ingulube encane). Fr Jack said: "Carlos will be the big pig and Alex will be the small one".
Few years' later with the arrival of the emails, each one of us in the group created an original one... Fr Rocco, following his own name, chose "idwala" (the rock); Fr Hector who used to be called "the hunter" as he was always looking for people became "umzingeli". Myself, using part of my surname became (until today) "bhubesi".
Carlos...? He went back to his roots in the country and chose: "bigpig@webmail.co.za". He never changed it until he was transferred to Portugal.
The Lord has now called Fr Carlos home. He was 53 years' old. In 1999 Fr Alexius was 43... Then and now we struggle to accept it... but we smile thinking that once again the ingulube enkulu and the ingulube encane are together, this time in Paradise, and continue having fun together.
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| Fr Carlos Domingos IMC (1962 - 2016) |
