“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praised be you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful hymn, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our Earth is like a sister with whom we share our life, and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.
“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.”
Caring for our Mother Earth should be our priority every day, because all our actions, good or bad, have an impact on Her. We are called to be responsible for what we do and to take care of our Mother Earth. I am happy to share with you the way we helped to clean the Indian Ocean because it was really a beautiful experience to do such a gesture.
We in the Dar es Salaam community had been thinking about what we could do to help preserve our common home. We had many different suggestions, and after much deliberation we decided to go and clean up the Indian Ocean. We know that it is not a great action, but we wanted to contribute to reducing pollution and to sensitize others about the importance of taking care of the environment. That is why we decided to act as a community. We involved many people in organising the clean-up, including the government, who gave us permission to carry out the work – they even gave us a car to take the rubbish to. We also asked for some volunteers to help us buy food for the cleaners and they agreed.
We thank God for their generosity and decided that the action would take place on 10 August 2024. We wanted to do this work in collaboration with others, so we invited the Charles Borromeo Sisters, students from the Salome Learning Centre (they are our students in Tandale) and the ATD (All Together for Dignity) association. We started cleaning at 7am and continued until 3pm. We were about 85 people and we cleaned a large part of the ocean. We removed plastics, bottles, old things and other rubbish that was in the sea.
It was so nice to see us working together. It was also a good opportunity for us to get to know each other.
At the end we did an evaluation of the project with the people we worked with. Many students expressed their joy at having learned how good it is to take care of our Mother Earth and they promised to be responsible wherever they are and to make others aware of the importance of taking care of the environment. We were all happy with this action plan and we have the desire to continue to take care of our Mother Earth.
Sr. Sylviane Rouamba, Dar es Salaam community, Tanzania
