Christmas with MPI women
(Interview with Rose Busingye (Director MPI) with Lumanyika Bright)
Before this New Year of 2016, I heard about the Christmas Celebration that the women of MPI had at Luigi Giussani High school. What roused in me was the desire to know really what had happened on that day; I couldn’t hide from that fact that had happened, it was such a disturbance that left me yearning to go deeper. It was for me too that moment and what dominated was nothing but the desire to relive those memories with someone who had witnessed that feast. So I asked Rose (MPI Director) to share with me about the Christmas with the women.
What was for you Christmas with the women?
When we talk about the women, people begin to look at what they do, their mistakes, we really don’t look where they are looking and we don’t see what they have found that is beyond the mistakes they do.
The preparation was on that morning of 24th, on 25th it was ready. If you ask our people who are working they say, “me I don’t have this, I didn’t budget” but imagine that evening the women budgeted, they contributed money, went for shopping and on Christmas; it was ready. They bought two goats and one pig then each one was bringing potatoes, chicken, rice and others. You would see that, the most important thing was not the preparation but something that was happening; that something that was connected with their lives. Maybe with friends we bargain, we buy this, we don’t buy this, and you would really understand that it’s something beyond friendship. People who tell their children and husbands that “you remain home, I am going to celebrate with my friends” this is a wife telling a husband.
You can see that when one discovers a value; everything rotates there, everything serves what the person is, the value the person is, the problem is when we start the other way round, we start with money and forget ourselves. We think that the most important thing is money more than our lives and then we hang up there and we are not moved at all. Christmas is just a day like any other day, but for them what I saw that day was something beyond life. We stayed there up to 7 pm in the evening, and we ate while dancing because it became like Christmas is celebrating ourselves and what came is for me, is me. It’s not to have a new dress but to have myself. It’s to celebrate life that is what I witnessed.
I kept gazing at her while she was telling me all this, I felt as if nothing mattered any more than the desire to stay and look where those women were looking and to have what they found.
Written by
Lumanyika Jude Bright
2/02/2016