What does it mean to be favored?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about belonging and what it truly means to have community and feel fully embraced in it. Today, I’m sharing a vignette from my PhD thesis. I think this vignette demonstrates one school’s understanding of belonging and how it comes from something beyond us. Have a read and let me know what you think…

After weeks of anticipation, the second retreat of the year began in the large meeting hall with girls of all faiths in attendance.[1] As the retreat began, there was a concert-like atmosphere with thunderous cheers and flashing lights. A charismatic man took the stage and began rapping original songs with African beats to an enthusiastic and cheering crowd of students. The music was followed by a long applause fit for a global pop star and took many minutes to calm. Standing before the girls was the singer, the artist, the Nigerian missionary priest, Father Femi. Dressed in a sleek, black form fitting shirt accentuating his fit physique and well-tailored dress pants, this collarless priest exuded a presence of style, cool, and above all, power and attention like no priest I have ever seen. The students were truly mesmerised by his presence. 

With the confidence of a charismatic evangelical preacher, Fr Femi began the retreat by announcing, ‘The favour of God is upon me!’ The students, by this point, were seated with notebooks, pens, and Bibles in hand, attentively listening and scurrying to write down his every last word. The retreat’s theme, ‘The favour of God’ would be contemplated and reinforced throughout the day. 

During the first session of the day which lasted about two hours, Fr Femi read scripture from both the Old and New Testaments as evidence that the girls are loved by God and reaffirms the message describing his own belief in the inherent good of each human being. Taking examples from their daily lives, he asked if girls who become pregnant are still loved by God - the answer was yes. Fr Femi asked if people’s failures in school or at home made them less loveable - obviously not. He told them, ‘You don’t have to behave a certain way to be favoured. Favour (by God) inspires you to embody the love of God.’

The girls of KGS are strivers with aspirations of acceptance in their local communities and in the world. They are affected by global discourses believing that if they finish school, they’d prove to Western aid workers that they are ‘educated’ and ‘civilised’. They are consciously aware that Ugandans outside their region describe them as ‘backwards’ and even non-humans with tails as one taxi driver in Kampala described them. These girls work hard to counter local suspicions that they are prostitutes, feel isolated from village girls who think they are arrogant, and feel deeply a responsibility to support their families and improve the lot of everyone in the region. Their biggest fears revolve around not being or achieving ‘enough’. To this group of students, hearing a well-respected and cool person of authority, a man at that, tell them that they were enough and were enough the day they were born was downright inspiring to them (and me). I witnessed girls breaking down in sobs, looks of relief and joy, speaking in tongues, and some even passed out over the emotions they experienced.

After a tea break, the second session began differently. The concert atmosphere had subsided and a seriousness of purpose permeated the air. Fr Femi focused this session on what to do as a favoured person. Throughout his relating of their lived experiences with the scripture passages, he returned time and again to the phrase, ‘realisation creates action.’

Fr Femi opened discussion and asked why Jesus would heal the sick. The girls had many responses. ‘It was the right thing to do.’ ‘Jesus had that ability, so he should use his power for good.’ Some stressed the importance of relieving suffering. With each response, Fr Femi interrogated the student to further develop her own reasoning and help others understand her viewpoint. By the third or fourth question, the girls became shy, and Fr Femi thanked them for their bravery in answering aloud in front of the entire student body and complimented their critical thinking skills.

Concluding the session, Fr Femi’s lesson was that Jesus healed the sick because others did not think they were favoured. Jesus wanted to make the point that even the sick are favoured. In that moment, I looked to Trina, the wheelchair bound student who survived a severe case of polio, who was being hugged and rooted on by her nearby classmates. Trina’s peers throughout the hall were shouting, ‘Trina, you are favoured!’, ‘God loves you!’, and ‘You are deserved!’ reinforcing her inherent value and place in the world and in their school community.

Bringing the girls back to attention, Fr Femi discussed what actions the girls should take since they are favoured by God. ‘Realisation creates action’ he would continue repeating. Knowing the school and many individual girls very well, Fr Femi affirmed his appreciation for the girls with a long list of service projects and good works they are doing. He commended individuals for their gracious hospitality upon arrival. He thanked student groups who ‘walked in the footsteps of Jesus’ by donating hygiene and food supplies to the ill and elderly in their communities and visiting inmates in the Moroto prison. And he reminded the students that KGS alumnae, too, are creating action through their service in the professional realms of teaching, nursing, and politics. Fr Femi challenged the girls to find new and creative ways to act as favoured. What else, what more could they do as students to show others that they, too, are favoured by God?

By late afternoon, students across grade levels, religions, and clubs brainstormed ideas and created concrete plans to engage further in community service. Seeing themselves as favoured, needed not needy, students focused on the marginalised and invisible in their communities. They determined that they needed to go into the villages more and visit elderly women. Some could ration more to provide soaps and sugar, but even if not, their singing would bring joy to these isolated women. They decided to visit the Moroto women’s prison more frequently because they decided that donating feminine hygiene products to inmates was not explicit enough in helping the prisoners understand their innate value, their being favoured.

The final session of the day was reserved for praise and worship. During the hours long session, girls sang with all their might and many were overtaken by emotion. Some sobbed uncontrollably relieving the deep tensions and stress of their lives. Others became so overjoyed that they could not stop smiling and laughing. And a considerable number of students began speaking in tongues and then passed out. Classmates carried them to the sick bay for care by the school nurse. The outpouring and spectrum of emotion was startling even to teachers and the HWE. Sr Natalie expressed her own surprise at the students’ full engagement in the retreat and concern that the sick bay would overflow but appreciated the retreat as an outlet for many pent-up emotions.

[1] At each retreat, I looked specifically for Protestant and Muslim students and found them all voluntarily in attendance. I would enquire and learn after the first retreat that the Muslims students, although not required to attend, chose to attend and reported retreats as personally fulfilling experiences.

You can read and download my full thesis for FREE at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/388543.