Well, it's an email actually, but that doesn't sound nearly as nice! Fr Francis Preston SDB, who is now in Nairobi, dropped us a digital line this week with news from a recent trip to Embu, where he met Sr Geraldine Reakes, who will be well known many of the Salesian Sisters in the UK.

 

Over the Palm Sunday weekend I had the opportunity to pay my first visit Embu, a town about 80 miles north of Nairobi, on the outskirts of which are two Salesian communities. The Salesian Sisters have a secondary boarding school there, and on an adjacent site the SDBs run both a secondary and a technical school. They have also a large farm.

 

I travelled to Embu from Makuyu, another Salesian centre that is situated midway between Nairobi and Embu. I had spent a couple of days at Makuyu, at the invitation of the FMA Provincial, Sr Giselle, giving some input to a gathering of FMA animators [local community leaders] from different parts of Kenya. Among the animators attending the gathering and helping with the input was Sr Geraldine Reakes. Sr Geraldine grew up in Chertsey where she got to know the Salesian Sisters. She subsequently joined the Sisters and has spent nearly all her life as a Sister working in different parts of East Africa.

I got to know Sr Geraldine well when she spent a sabbatical year in Jerusalem during my time at Ratisbonne Theological Centre there. It was Sr Geraldine who had invited me to spend the weekend with her small FMA community at Embu. Finding the convent in the dark on Friday night proved to be quite a challenge! But once there, I was made very welcome and thoroughly enjoyed my short visit. Everything was very peaceful. All the girls who attend the school are boarders and they had left for home at the start of their Easter holiday break a couple of days earlier.

 

The attached photo of Sr Geraldine and myself was taken in the ground of the convent and boarding school. Embu lies at the foot of Mount Kenya. The soil is very fertile and the grounds of the convent and school host a large variety of beautiful trees and shrubs, many covered with brightly coloured flowers. The trees and shrubs provided a home for a wonderful assortment of birds of different sizes and colours.

 

Before I left Embu on my way back to Nairobi I was able to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass for Sr Geraldine, her community and a small group of boys of boys from the SDB secondary school who had delayed beginning their Easter break to do more study. The palm branches we carried in the procession at the start of the Mass came from trees in the grounds. I brought mine back with me to Nairobi - a reminder of my first, but hopefully not my last, visit to Embu.

 

Francis Preston SDB