A Bird's Eye View

Essay by fr. Lucius Marquardt.

The history of Peramiho from the middle of this Century on, is in many ways marked off from the years and decades before, though it would be an over-simplification to draw too strict a demarcation line.

You have just to compare photos of Peramiho of 1950 and of 1998. How many new buildings have sprung up in the second part of this century which were not there before! The same applies to a lesser degree to many mission stations founded by Peramiho. Change is most visibly documented by the mission magazines of the Benedictine Missionary Congregation of St. Ottilien.

During the first part of this Century these magazines abound in accounts, often thrilling, and photos of wildlife and hunting, of week-long safaris of missionaries on foot or on mule's back trekking through hardly visible paths, stumbling over pitfalls and fallen trees, fording unbridged rivers or struggling in canoes against the stormy waters of Lake Nyasa. In fact, in those days the missionaries of Peramiho, whether in Peramiho or in outstations, had to live without many of the comforts and amenities that are now taken for granted; without electric light (only hurricane lamps), without refrigerators, without regular mail service and regular home-leave, without painkilling injections for tooth-extractions.

But if you would leaf through the same mission periodicals from say 1950 on, you would not fail to notice that the romantic and even adventurous side of missionary life and work in Peramiho recedes more and more into the background. Peramiho was clearly moving into the technical age, even without high technical gadgets. In 1952, electric light was installed in the Abbey, generators began to hum. There was a steady increase of motorbikes, cars and lorries during the following decades. Around the last quarter of this Century smaller electric power plants came to be built on a number of mission stations, to be followed by the construction of a larger hydro-electric power plant not far from Peramiho. New modern equipment and Instruments were installed in the hospital and dentistry. During the last twenty years or so there was also a marked improvement of the whole communication System: Radio Call, Telephone (first call to Europe in 1982 and from Europe to Peramiho in 1983), Computer and Fax.
But the romantic side has not disappeared altogether: In 1955 a lion created great havoc in the farmyard of the Teacher Training College, killing 63 sheep. Two years later two elephants appeared in the immediate neighbourhood of the Abbey at Parangu and as late as l995 and l996 three lions were shot not far from the doorsteps of the Abbey. But all these and other events were more or less isolated incidents and therefore no longer typical of this period.

All these changes are just an eye-opener for other changes during the second part of this Century. A landmark in the country's history was political independence in 1961 with new social and economic conditions which affected also missionary work very much. The new leader of the independent country, President Julius Nyerere, a stout Catholic and a man of high principles (he never would pursue economic prosperity to the detriment of national honour), did not govern the country "in a Catholic way", as someone put it. Challenges for many missionaries!

But there were changes of a more fundamental nature. The time of missionary expansion, which had characterised so much the early period, was over. For example, in 1960 the number of baptisms for grown-ups amounted only to one fourth of the total number of baptisms. Six years later in 1966, 13 times more children, born of Christian parents, were baptised than grown-ups who came from "paganism". With the transition of the missionary church to the establishment of the local church, missionary work was more and more passing into ordinary pastoral work. There were changes in line with the mission theology of the Second Vatican Council which concerned the very patterns of missionary work. The former mission territory of Peramiho was at various times divided up into three local dioceses.
Peramiho, reduced by this to the Status of an simple Abbey, was still alive, not only to continue its Services in the new African dioceses but also to send a number of missionaries to Kenya for making new foundations. At the same time, however, it was being increasingly felt that more consideration should be given to St. Benedicts cenobitical ideal. Thus a more monastery-centred way of thinking started, without excluding the pastoral-missionary charism of the congregation. In 1982, a new phase in Peramiho's history began with the admission of young African candidates into the monastic community. Peramiho has since become a multi-cultural community!

Changes and developments not dreamt of 50 vears ago! But there were no precipitate changes. In all these new developments there was continuity, assured by the two Abbots who were guiding the destinies of the Abbey during the second part of this Century: Abbot-Bishop Eberhard Spiess from 1953 to 1976 and Abbot Lambert Doerr from 1976 on. And all through this period the missionary monks of Peramiho slept securely not only under mosquito nets and Southern Cross, but also under the umbrella of the Superiors General of the Benedictine Missionary Congregation of St. Ottilien during this time, Archabbots Chrysostomus Schmid (till 1957), Suso Brechter (1957-1975), Victor Dammertz (1975-1977), Notker Wolf (1977-2000) and Jeremias Schroeder (since 2000). Under the protection of so many guardian angels, nobody should be surprised that during this long period no missionary of Peramiho was ever killed by a snake, a lion, an elephant or an crocodile, which by the way applies also the Years from 1898 to 1953. Neither were the foundations of the Abbey shaken, when the monks of the Abbey one night in 1963 awoke to the fact that their mission plot had been changed from freehold to leasehold (for 99 years) in accordance with a new Tanzania law promulgated on July 1, 1963.