Thomas Merton wrote that on the spiritual journey, it is better, but not necessary to travel two of its aspects, the outer geographical journey and the inner heart journey. I have been blessed to be gifted with the opportunity to travel both geographically and interiorally in my eleven years in Tanzania.

The first stage of my journey came as a seminarian in training for being a missioner priest in 1985-87. During this time I had the opportunity of falling in love with Africa. It was a time without heavy pastoral responsibilities so that I could learn the language and way of life of the people of Tanzania. It was a time to test myself to see if I could live the geographically aspect of overseas mission as a way of serving others and continuing my own interior journey.

After ordination in 1988 at Maryknoll, NY I returned to Tanzania to live out the dream of being on the cutting edge of mission and the church, a vision that brought me to Maryknoll. I went to live and work among a semi-nomadic pastoral people called the Wataturu. My work/life among them was to make the first step in "first proclamation", in mission-speak it means to enter into the mystery of God's Presence already amongst an indigenous people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. In order to do this I choose to live as simply as I possibly could in order to learn their language and way of life.

I lived in a small tent and moved around a 100-mile area during my 3-5 day trips to visit them. I would eat their food and share their work of digging for water in dry riverbeds during the dry season. I would also herd cattle with the young boys. I did this work for two years.

During this time the geographical journey was very prominent. I was very far from the comforts of civil life in "the bush" of the semi-desert of the Rift valley in Tanzania. The simplicity of the geographical setting invited me to explore those desert places in my own heart where I feared not go. The physical and mental stresses of the life pointed out my many weaknesses. Each trip out was a spiritual experience of letting go all to God; the uncertainty was always so great.

I left the Wataturu to go to the Serengeti to live and work amongst the people of the great Serengeti Plains. In the Serengeti the geographical journey was again prominent. "Serengeti" is a Masai word for "wide open spaces". It was here that I felt God's call to continue to allow the inner journey to widen the spaces of my spirit.

In the Serengeti I was in a parish where we worked on the second step of "first proclamation", the explicit proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus. The very nature of this overt proclamation drove me to a deeper appreciation of how God works in culture to transform it and make it whole. It was here that I began in earnest to share my faith with the people in such a way I was asked to enter more deeply the spiritual journey with them. I was in the Serengeti for six wonderful years.

I now write these reflections from a large city on the shores of Lake Victoria, Mwanza. I am currently assisting in the Clinical Pastoral Program at Bugando Medical Center run by another Maryknoll priest, John Eybel. For the first time in my African spiritual journey the geographical journey does not take a prominent place. After ten years living in the wide-open spaces of east Africa I find myself in classrooms and hospital wards. Here the journey has taken a definite interior bent.

The course is designed to accompany African pastoral workers to know their own gifts and weaknesses in the hopes of being effective helpers to those in need. I have had the opportunity to explore aspects of myself and of Africans that I had not been able to do before. The fruits of this interior journey with Africans have been plentiful.

I have discovered that there are certain universals that transcend culture in the human's spiritual journey. That if we dare to enter the "mission territory" of our own hearts with a group of people not of our own culture, one will discover the taste of freedom and transformation.

Indeed, Merton was right, one can get by with only one part of the spiritual journey, but it is better to have both. It is the interior part of the journey that I want to devote the rest of my life to in Africa. Yes, I remain in a remote geographical area in the global village but now geography becomes a support, not a necessity. The necessity now is to accompany Africans in our journey together to freedom and transformation in Christ.

After two growth filled years in CPE I have made a commitment to return to mission work in a parish setting. The vision is still Transformation in Christ but instead to the hospital wards and classrooms of Bugando Hospital I am in the midst of the marketplace of everyday life with the poor. One challenge is the make available to the poor the insights and wisdom of the spiritual journey, for after all the Good News is for all people.

I am now in the most challenging of settings a very poor unplanned settlement of a large African city. The journey continues in a setting that is least conductive to the interior spiritual journey. The struggles of the poors' chaotic environment will surely test what I’ve learnt in the wide open spaces of African village life and the quiet spaces of the classroom. If the inner journey deepens here there will be no mistaking, its Christ not me.

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Maryknollers in Mwanza, Tanzania