Sr. Mia with Srs. Marie-Ange, Elyse and Olive
From Sr Mia Dombrecht in Teichott, Mauritania
July 1 to 31, 2024
Dear sisters and dear readers,
It is with great joy that we share with you this experience of meeting our Muslim brothers and sisters.
“You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”
This sentence from the Acts of the Apostles has touched me since my childhood. It is undoubtedly at the origin of my missionary vocation.
In 2011, during my first stay in Mauritania, with my sisters, we had the joy of discovering one of these ends of the earth, in the villages of the Imraguen, along the Mauritanian coast between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou in the Banc d’Arguin National Park. With our sister Marie Cécile Baffier, we stayed there for two months. She was in Rgeiba, to teach sewing, myself in Teichott, to teach French to the women in order to help them better welcome passing tourists.
Great was my desire, when I returned to Mauritania in 2022, to return to the village of Teichott with its inhabitants, especially the family who had welcomed me with open arms.
They asked for news of me every time the opportunity arose. When the sisters of the community visited, the villagers had expressed their desire to continue the sewing and French classes. I arrived in Teichott on this first of July around 11 o’clock in the morning, completely unexpectedly because the telephone connection there is far from perfect. One by one, the women I had taught in the past came to greet me, joy on their faces. The joy was completely mutual. “Where are you going to sleep?” “At the campsite!” (room provided for passing tourists). The next morning, half of the villagers, women, men and children were present at the campsite to evacuate the sand with shovels to make it more or less habitable and also to clear a space to organize our class (a mat on the ground). The dunes served as my toilet; at night, I could hear the jackals howling around my hut, but I was happy to have found this spot at the foot of the dunes to settle down, a little out of the way to be able to pray and rest properly at night.
I was able to see with joy the progress that the village had made over the past 12 years. Many wooden houses had been added to house the newly founded families. Some fruits and vegetables, even yogurts were on sale, all the babies had a diaper!
On July 3, after consulting the village chief, I was able to start registering for French classes. I had planned to devote my time mainly to young girls and women, but the little children in the first grades of primary school and the boys did not agree and also wanted to study with “Mariam”. I did not regret it afterwards, because it was precisely the little ones and the boys, with the women, who were the most faithful to the lessons. Through small dialogues, dictations made on the slate, small songs and theaters, trust was established and we were able to move forward with a few groups in a relaxed atmosphere.
The following week, the Banc d’Arguin National Park had organized a large coastal cleaning campaign. Because a lot of waste, thrown up by boats at sea, is thrown up by the ocean and ends up on the beaches, not to mention the waste of the villagers. All the women, young people, children, men who had not gone to sea, were mobilized for four days. They even went seven kilometers outside the village to collect plastic bottles. I raised awareness among the children who were taking French classes and together, we courageously filled dozens of bags of rubbish.
How happy I was to hear the children sing the chorus I had learned a few days before:
“Together, we can make a more beautiful world!”
The youngest ones gave me a lot of joy. I used pictures to teach them a few words in French about familiar objects they could find in the village. One day, while walking with a few children, a little girl started shouting with joy while pointing at a goat (which she had seen in a picture): “It’s a goat!” My goal had been achieved. “It’s the sea, it’s a rope, it’s a boat” … she continued!
Among the women, after learning a few simple dialogues, one of them said to me: What you’re doing is very good. Finally, we’ll be able to communicate with the tourists passing through here! This gave me the idea of creating a small booklet with the basic phrases for welcoming tourists. This gave the women great pride and self-confidence, because from now on, they would be able to address foreigners in their own language through a few simple phrases.
This is how French classes for children, young people and adults became an opportunity to get closer to families and to build friendships with everyone. I felt like I was living the mystery of the Incarnation. I greatly admired the hard work of the men on the lanches (a sailing boat that moves forward thanks to the wind). to provide daily bread for their families, the mothers who tired themselves out for their families and children in precarious living circumstances: little fresh water, at the mercy of the climate by the sea, winds, tides… Despite this, joy radiated on all faces.
The villagers form like a big family. There were about fifty families in the village and 60 children who attend primary school where two teachers teach the children during the school year. Daily life is punctuated by Muslim prayers. My sisters were scheduled to join me at the end of the month to discover the villages of Banc d’Arguin in turn. Almost every day, the women and children asked me: “When are your sisters coming?”
Together with my sisters who arrived at the end of the month, we listened with interest to the scientific explanations given by the Head of the National Park post, as well as the IMROP Investigator (Mauritanian Institute of Oceanographic and Fisheries Research, see also their website).
Indeed, they do an admirable job in the field of ecosystem preservation, to train Imraguen fishermen on the nets to use at a given time for example, on the species of fish to catch. They monitor that motor boats do not enter the waters of the Park. The IMROP Investigator records daily the quantity and species of fish caught and all other scientific data related to the marine world to send them at the end of each month to the Headquarters in Nouadhibou. A mine of information for biologists, sociologists, economists… who come there to find data for their research. For an entire morning, we had the joy of listening to these two men who are passionate about their profession.
My presence was nourished daily by prayer with excerpts from the letters of St. Paul. I felt a little like him, sent to distant nations to see and experience with wonder that the Kingdom of God is very close.
Yes, where Love is, God is present.