La Salle has several service trips throughout the year, mostly to Mexico, where ordinarily students would spend time doing things like digging latrines and building houses. When I approached them about coming to East Africa, they were excited by the idea and asked what they could do there. I told them that Tanzanians can dig their own latrines and build their own houses. If they wished to come to Tanzania, the main purpose would be to share their lives with the Tanzanians and allow them to share their own lives with the La Salle students.
They began coming to Dar each summer for 3-week visits. And, fortunately it turned out just as I had expected. The Tanzanian children knew a few English words and I taught some Swahili to the La Salle students. While the conversations were simple, they had no trouble communicating. The Tanzanians looked forward to the La Salle students’ arrival. While the students offered some useful service to the street children, the real beneficiaries were the La Salle students whose lives were transformed by the encounter with the street children, giving them memories to last a lifetime.
In their evaluations, the La Salle students shared their highs and lows from the experience:
During these trips, the La Salle students also got to meet the medical university students where I served as chaplain. Typically, they would first meet on a Sunday at morning Mass and afterwards the medical students would take the La Salle students around the university campus and national hospital. We would end by sharing a meal together. The medical students were fluent in English and just a few years older than the La Salle students, so they were able to easily share their life stories with each other. Often they’d meet again a second time near the end of the La Salle trip when I sponsored a barbecue on the roof of my apartment. They would dance as we played music, enjoy the meal, and genuinely have a good time amazed by how much both groups had in common regarding music, dance, and aspirations in life.
As one of the students noted,
One of my favorite days was when we went to mass at the University, and then took a tour of the Hospital with the University students. Not only did I learn so much from the students, it was my first true experience of the welcoming nature of the Tanzanian people. [I]t was nice to have a little interaction with people our own age studying like ourselves.
Pope Francis reminds us that the heart of missionary discipleship is the encounter at our peripheries. It is there that we meet God in new and exciting ways. Being able to bring the La Salle student together with the Tanzanian street children and medical students was a true blessing that I’ll never forget.