André Frossard wrote, "God exists : I've met him." Frossard is right-I meet God every day. He comes just like that! With his stick, He shows me he's there. In His rags, He tells me of his pain, hunger, loneliness--without saying a word.  In his first letter to the Thessalonians 5, 1-11, Saint Paul invites us to wake up, so we can recognize God's coming in our ordinary lives--in the faces of the poor, the little ones, the one who is different. Mama Josephine helped me understand this when she said to me one day (without saying a word): "You're lucky: I give you the privilege of meeting God every day." What a grace! For me, God is AKAP BE ZAMBE. In a sense, she doesn't want me to call her Josephine any more. AKAP BE ZAMBE means «on God's side» or, if you like, the «gift of God.» But how this gift is wrapped! My God, is it really you?

"Be vigilant, for you know neither the day nor the hour!" Mama Josephine always arrives unannounced: she bangs her stick on the cement, sometimes impatiently. "Mbo'lo, connais pas", she says. (You have to say good morning to her in French.) She comes to get her daily ration, her "bidi." In the Cameroon, to care for someone is to become her mama. Am I mama to God? Isn't that too great a privilege? It's certainly challenging! 

I'd like to chat with her, to reach her heart, to make the stars in her beautiful eyes begin to shine-and sometimes I do. She loves bread loaded with chocolate, which she eats immediately, after making a large sign of the cross. We sing, I dance, she claps her hands. And then she goes off to fetch water, happy as she continues her daily routine. Sometimes I bring her back to her hut, made by our catechist Onona Emmanuel with students from Bonneau College, directed by Sr. Ange-Aimee. Somehow it's still standing, in spite of the rains and the violent winds, but it needs repair. She lives there alone, locks herself away with her potions and her cats.

To know you, God of the ordinary, isn't it a matter of recognizing the other where she is, lighting stars in her eyes, helping her to forget her pain for a moment, stirring her to life by a gentle, patient presence?

God comes in the ordinary, though all too often it's hard to recognize him. God is there! He is waiting. Thank you, mama Josephine, for helping me to understand
AKAP BE ZAMBE.

Louise Bouffard, C.N.D.
Ebolowa, Cameroon