Some thought I was daft to head off to Lusaka, Zambia, in January 1988. They may have been right, of course. When I arrived nothing had been arranged for me: no teaching, no parish ministry, nothing, and that despite assurances from the Jesuit authorities there that considerable work awaited me.

No doubt it did, though it did not appear so during the first few weeks. After a while I too began to wonder whether daftness didn’t aptly fit me. Welcome to another world!

That all changed, happily, in short order. When I left for Canada some seven months later, I was going full tilt, lecturing to Jesuit and other Religious novices, to Religious Sisters, and to seminarians, as well as assisting regularly in the beautiful but somewhat out-of-place northern Italian Romanesque-style Jesuit church in Lusaka. In the end there was lots to do but not enough time to do it.

Our slightly fortress-like residence along the Great North Road was large but modest. As in all the other bedrooms, mine housed small spiders, very small geckos, and very large spiders that made meals of any smaller spider or mosquito passing by. While I slept, a gecko or two would sit on my face to catch a meal.

The smaller spiders were not friendly, indeed could be mildly venomous. I once woke with a grossly swollen eye-lid, victimized by a hungry spider. Evidently the geckos were not hungry.

Meantime the large spiders clung permanently to the ceiling. When I first saw them, I panicked. But I was assured by my fellow Jesuits they were “friends”, and not poisonous. Good thing. They seemed the size of my palms!

Heavily secured behind immense walls, we were protected from thieves during the night by guards and large, unfriendly dogs. Their presence never mattered, however. On the look for electrical equipment, money or whatever they could peddle in the market the next day, thieves would crash their Land Rovers at top-speed through the tightly secured gates of the targeted compound. They were dangerous and put up with no nonsense.

Whenever they crashed into a compound, the guards fled. Smart guards! They knew they were the first targets. Meanwhile, their dogs would have already gulped down the poisoned meat hurled over the walls, and now writhed in agony. The guards took off into the underbrush.

Break-ins occurred nightly everywhere around us, usually at around 5.00 in the morning. Often I heard gunfire in the distance or in a nearby home as home-owners defended their property. Most times that was futile.

Such an invasion had occurred at our residence somewhat before my arrival. I can’t recall now the consequences, except permission was granted then by the authorities that one member of the household could be licensed to have a gun. A priest was given the assignment, the “gun-shooter”, we called him. Thus we were armed.

That was just as well. A second invasion happened shortly before I arrived. The “gun-shooter” deftly fired away from his bedroom, well-protected by the heavy concrete sun-shields jutting out on each side of the up-stairs windows. A prefect shield! He drove the thieves off, and everyone went back to bed.

Yet the thieves never gave up. About three months after I arrived, we were awakened around about 4.30 by a great ruckus of shouting and shooting and general carrying on. I was terrified, no question, and did not feel any heroic impulse to investigate.

In fact, I huddled in bed, frantically wondering where to hide. In a room with a low bed, a small table and a wobbly chair, no place came to mind. Under the bed? Not likely. It was home for the smaller venomous spiders which had escaped the jaws of the giant spiders on my ceiling, and for my “friends”, the tiny geckos.

Eventually, as I lay there, I realized that the noise was mostly not from thieves but from my fellow Jesuits, scurrying about trying to awaken the “gun-shooter”. He awoke, finally. Soon I ventured to peep out through my door to glance down the corridor towards the noise.

What I saw in the darkened corridor, silhouetted by the faint light from the window at the end, was the large figure of a man in pyjamas. Weaving from side to side like a figure in a Western film, with gun in his right hand facing downwards, the “gun-shooter” was moving towards the commotion which came from that end of the building. I silently closed the door, fearful that any sound might make him turn and fire at me.

Thankfully it was a false alarm. The thieves had chosen the compound next door which abutted us closely. We returned to bed.

Still, not even all that danger could ever surpass that of the snakes. They seemed to be a permanent conversation piece. That scared me silly, just listening to the stories, of escape and non-escape.

The African cobra, some argued, was highly dangerous yet slow and not a big risk. Something called a “tree snake” was cranky with the habit of falling on passing objects below. Small wonder I never walked under a tree while there. 

It was, however, the black mamba that gave me nightmares. Long and sleek, and very fast, the mamba is among the most venomous snakes anywhere. One Irish Jesuit there assured me that they could move at nearly fifteen kilometres an hour. True or not, that was faster than I ever could run. I prayed never to meet one.

I nearly did. One day while reading in the common room, I overheard an Irish Jesuit Brother in charge of the immense vegetable garden and orchards in our compound, casually remark to another Jesuit that he had just seen a mamba in the garden.

My blood went cold. The beautiful garden was my favourite place for my afternoon walk, something I never missed. Do I need to say I never entered the garden again?

Well, despite all that, perhaps I wasn’t so daft after all. My months there were all too short, and I left reluctantly and with sadness of heart. Memories remain rich and lasting of the lovely people I came to know, of the Jesuits especially, so deeply committed to their ministries, and yes too, of the “dangers” which seemed to lurk everywhere.

Of course now, in the telling even those “dangers” have taken on a life of their own! Sometimes I wonder why I left.