"The True, The Good, and the Beautiful"

Father Van der Putten: The most exciting news is from our school. As you know, we started a school in September. We rented a building for the girls’ school because we don’t have anything built yet, and we engaged some Sisters from the Franciscans of the Immaculate to teach. For the boys, we added on a room to one of the big buildings here in the parish compound, and we have several men with degrees teaching.

We recently purchased about two and a half acres of land to expand our facilities. To purchase land here is quite an extraordinary feat because it’s owned by about 20 different people who don’t have any survey markers or anything. They’ll just look at a tree and say, “That was my tree, so the property line goes there.” And then they argue about it.

So it has taken us over six months to get this piece of land. But we bought it for the Sisters so that we can build them a convent, and then a girls’ school. That’s the project we’re working on now. We’ve just about finished putting an eight-foot cement wall all the way around it. It’s about 1,000 feet of walling, and we bought razor wire to go on the top of it because we want to protect the Sisters from any possible harm. We hope to have the convent itself built before October. That’s going to be our “summer project.”

Father VdP:  The economic crisis in this country is beyond imagination. The biggest problem is inflation. Six months ago a bag of cement cost 3,500 naira. Today it costs 11,500 naira. That’s triple the price. The price of food has also doubled recently. And yet a federal employee’s monthly salary is 50,000 naira. He can buy four bags of cement in a month, but that’s all he can buy. He can’t eat because a bag of rice costs 55,000 naira. It’s totally insane.

When I got here 10 years ago, the naira traded at 168 to the dollar. Today, it’s 1,550 to the dollar. For me, it’s not such a hardship because we survive off the dollars that Americans send us. But the local people barely survive. The price of food doubles, the price of cement triples. They’re not even living from hand to mouth anymore because their salaries simply don’t cover the basics. I don’t know how they live. It’s astounding to me how people are even surviving. I know that many people eat very plainly, with lots of cassava and such. But even that food has doubled in price.

The local currency is crashing. Something has to give, but nobody knows what can give because the government is so indescribably corrupt. They don’t care anything about the people. The corruption will not stop, the stealing will juist not stop.

Father VdP:  Well, I don’t think things have ever been normal in Nigeria. There have been seven or eight different coups since 1960. There’s been an indescribable amount of corruption, and the military has taken over several times. And now the country has supposedly had civilian rule since 2000.

We just had the elections last year, but they’re not really elections. Now the government is siphoning all the money, so there’s just nothing left. Everything has dried up, and the money from the two million barrels of oil that are exported from this country every day goes into private pockets. So no, there’s no hope economically. These leaders seem to have no care for their fellow man.

Father VdP:  Our bishop came out with a Lenten pastoral letter asking us to fast and pray even more this Lent, because of the IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) who are seeking their own country. The IPOB goes around murdering random people to terrify the locals. That’s happening about 10 miles from us. It doesn’t come to us so much. But we hear about it on a regular basis. The military and police have come in to try to sort it out, but they’re almost worse because they kill people randomly as well. It’s a complete mess. How do you sort out something like that, when the system is so corrupt and nobody’s working for the good of anyone except themselves?

Father VdP:  Right. People do respect us because we bring in American aid. And we’re known to be generous and kind. A lot of people come to us for help on a daily basis, not just for our well water, but also for food, schooling fees, and medical expenses. I mean, there are people having babies who can’t afford the hospital bill, and the hospital won’t release them until they pay the bill. And so they come to us, begging for money to pay the hospital.

There are so many other needs. We have people with heart problems who are dying, and they need to go to the hospital but don’t have the money. And so we help them out. Word gets around that we’ve done interventions with medical issues, and I think the locals have high regard for us based on that. So I don’t think they’re going to bother us.

But people are just starving, and because of that, thievery is rampant. I mean, if you’ve got anything that’s not bolted down or chained down or concreted in, they steal it, and in a way you can understand why. There’s nobody to stop it because the police are usually in on it as well. It’s a tragic situation.

Father VdP: Yes, our Mondays are still locked down. At least there aren’t as many killings happening because of the lockdown. It used to be that if you went out of your house or into the market on a lockdown day, the IPOB would just kill you. That’s not happening so much anymore. But the lockdown is still in place. And people still respect it simply because they don’t want to get shot.

Father VdP: Oh, it’s phenomenal. We had parents coming in at Christmas break, weeping and telling us how much change they’ve seen their children go through, not only with discipline but also with basic knowledge, just in the less than three months we’ve had the school open. We go up to sixth grade at the moment, and some children in sixth grade didn’t know how to read at the beginning of the school year. And within three months, we’re getting them to read at least stories and little books. The parents are deeply impressed by that. That’s the whole beauty of our school.

The motto of our school is, “The true, the good, and the beautiful.”

We try to implement that in every aspect of the school day.

The premises are cleaned all the time. They’re beautifully arranged. The Sisters plant flowers, and there are little altars in the classrooms with holy pictures and flowers and such. All of this creates a massive impression in the minds of the children. Many of them come from homes that don’t have a table or chairs. They eat on the floor, and they don’t eat at specific times. However, within the school, everything is ordered. So they come to Mass in the morning at 7:00, they have breakfast immediately afterwards, and school starts at 8:30. They have classes until noon. We pray the Angelus, we have lunch, and then school goes until 1:30. And then they have extracurricular activities, which last until 5:00. So there’s a discipline, and they’re surrounded by beauty. They have tables and desks, and everything is ordered.

If you compare our little school with any of the other schools in the area, we live in paradise. The other schools usually don’t have desks, so the children will sit on the floor or the windowsills. And the schools are always dirty with trash lying everywhere. The children aren’t disciplined, so it’s anarchy. Whereas in our school, of course, there’s the true, the good, and the beautiful. The environment is wonderful, and it makes a huge impression.

Father VdP:  This may seem inexplicable to the Western mind, but the children in Africa don’t have the same desire to play games. Exposing them to organized games is a huge milestone in their lives, because they mostly just want to kick a soccer ball all the time. They find board games very challenging, but we push them to focus and concentrate and finish the games. As a result, we’ve seen a huge improvement in their retention of concepts and pictures and numbers. That’s why we see extracurricular activities as vitally important. As Plato said, “He who is only an athlete is too crude, too vulgar, too much a savage. He who is a scholar only is too soft, too effeminate. The ideal citizen is the scholar athlete, the man of thought and the man of action.” We want to incorporate both the intellectual side and the physical side.

For the children, games are hugely important because they’re not used to that physical discipline. We incorporate that into the school and it makes a huge difference. The parents are trying to eke out a living, so they’re mostly not home in the afternoon. So they’re really grateful that we keep the children here and give them things to do. With the Sisters, especially, it’s very beautiful. The children learn how to draw, paint, cut papers, and all these things we take for granted in the West. When the children go home, they bring their artwork and their parents are just flabbergasted, like, “You didn’t do this!” And the children say, “Yes, yes, Sister taught us.” So the parents are deeply impressed. And the sports, especially for the boys, give them discipline because they have to follow laws and rules. It’s all wonderful, and it makes a huge impact on their lives.

Father VdP:  That’s a very good question, because you have to be careful about what  constitutes piety. The Igbos tend to be very pious, but it’s often a venal piety—it’s all about money. So when they pray, they’re asking to get money, or to chase the devil away because they’re very superstitious. Everything bad that happens to them, they think it’s caused by the devil. They tend to use a lot of vocal prayers. They’re quite Evangelical or Pentecostal. That’s why the school is so important. We teach the children that piety is the worship of God. True piety is the reverential fear of the Lord. And that has to be inculcated at the youngest age. We’re doing that in the school, and it makes a huge impact because it’s foreign to their psyche and their culture. That, too, is a very important element of education and of our apostolate here in Nigeria.

Father VdP:  Well, we’re not letting just anyone come to the school. We insist that the parents be very much involved in the daily life of the children and make sure they’re on board with our mission and vision. So we’re very particular about who we allow into the school. When parents ask us if they can send their children to school, we first make it very clear what we want from them as parents, and then we give them classes and retreats to get them in line with what we expect of them.

If we allowed everyone to come to the school, we would have 500 children next year. Of course we don’t want that! We want the school to be much smaller, so that we can concentrate more on the individual child. Here in Nigeria, you’ll often have 30 or 40 children to each teacher. In our school, we have two students per teacher, which is a fantastic ratio. We’ll get more children next year, so that ratio will go up a little bit. But we want to keep that ratio as low as we can because we’ve realized that the more personal attention we give, the more the children respond.

Father VdP:  We have five Sisters now, and we’re going to build a convent with 20 rooms. So we expect several more vocations. We also have seven lay teachers.

Father VdP: Yes, and then once we’re finished, we’ll build a school for the girls. The boys will continue to have classes on the church grounds.

Father VdP:  We’ve been very blessed because a very generous benefactor in the United States provided the means to purchase the property and to begin the construction of the convent. We hope to have half of the convent built with that financial aid. But as I was saying, cement has tripled in price in the last six months. Everything is so incredibly variable and unstable that we can’t really predict how much it’s going to cost to complete construction. But if we could get $200,000, that would cover the building of the convent and probably the girls’ school as well. That would probably include a hostel for the girls.

Father VdP: Yes, that’s what we’re looking forward to. There are a lot of families who don’t live nearby but they really want their children to have this type of education. They would be able to board their daughters, and then the Sisters would have a greater influence on their lives. So our hope is to have a boarding school.

Father VdP:  We’ll see how the construction of the convent goes, but we’re hoping to put a ceiling and a floor in the church. The current floor is a very rough concrete poured base. And we have a roof, but there’s no ceiling. Three years ago I priced them, and to put a ceiling and a floor in the church was going to be $100,000. Now, again, inflation has gone out the window and cement has tripled in price. But I would say with just over $100,000, we could finish the ceiling and floor, and that would make a huge difference.

Father VdP:  Yes. And it’s wonderful. The people are actually getting engaged in the Catechism! They’re asking wonderful questions. They go home and talk about it in their families, and then they come back throughout the week to ask me more questions. We’re really pleased with that. Thank God for the grace that enables them to be so docile and receptive.

Father VdP:  Yes, of course! The school is making a tremendous impact on the lives of the children, and then they bring that home with them. For example, one of the conditions we make now for the children to be in our school is that their families have to have a wooden table with wooden chairs where they eat every day. So all the families now are running out to have one of our guys build them a table and chairs. That alone is a huge improvement.

Father VdP:  Just our daily living expenses. With the price of everything doubling, I have to request a higher subsidy from the FSSP. It’s becoming more and more expensive just to live in this country. We pray that something happens—that maybe a new leader who has a little bit of humanity can take over and do something good. But yes, the daily living is becoming more difficult and we have more and more people all the time coming to us and begging for food.

Father VdP: As we all know, Lent is a time of prayer, penance, and almsgiving. And the most important and essential element of these three remedies is the charity with which we do them. Without charity, as St. Paul says, it profits me nothing, even if I give all my goods to the poor and offer my body to be burned. The essence of almsgiving is the supernatural. We do it for the love of God.

Our American supporters are very generous. Without them, our apostolate here would simply not be.

We’re deeply grateful for that. But it’s essential to remember that charity is not just philanthropy.

It’s not kindness.

It’s a supernatural virtue. We do what we do for the love of God, not for humanitarian reasons.

Father VdP:  Charity has to be the most important element in our donations. These offerings should come from our heart for the love of God.

We are most grateful for these donations because if we were depending on the people here, we certainly wouldn’t survive. We get about $20 total for a Sunday collection at both Masses and we spend $800 to $1,000 per month just on food. Thank you for your generosity, which makes our work possible in Nigeria!