Hello and greetings from Tizi. I hope you are doing well. Here we are all fine.
Just to give you some news:
Currently, there are three of us: Benoit, from the DRC, a former member of Notre Dame, Philippe Dakono, who recently arrived from Mali just after his ordination, and I, Vincent, from Uganda. And the good news is that, overall, everything is fine.
We have already started the academic year well on October 1st with registrations and re-registrations at the library and everything is going well. We already have a few members, although libraries in general have fewer and fewer members. So we consider ourselves lucky.
And to satisfy the requests of those who are not part of the library’s 5 branches – Medicine, Pharmacy, Biology, English and Tamazight (Dialect of the Berber) – we have now structured the support courses: we take primary school students from the third year, all years of high school and college, as well as university or other adults. We offer them support courses in English and French. For the past three years, every year, we have been overflowing with registrations: from the first day before 8 a.m., about a hundred candidates have been waiting because places are limited. We only take 10 students per class. In this way, we become victims of our success. For the past three years, the places have been full, as there have been so many registrations. Last year, just like this year, also when registrations were supposed to start at 8:30 a.m., there were already about a hundred of them, even before 8 a.m. So we don’t really stubble, quite the contrary.
As for the parish, we have just launched the pastoral project of our parish by putting on the table the proposals of the parishioners present on October 12. It went well and our project will be in line with the 5 pastoral orientations of the diocese of Algiers resulting from a broad consultation launched by the Archbishop last year: Fraternity, Youth, Algerian Catholics, Formation and Communication. We are very optimistic because the atmosphere is much more fraternal and promising this year.
As for our community life, we continue to welcome the former students of the White Fathers, and many others who come to us for all kinds of reasons. We do our best to ensure a fraternal welcome every day.
Here are some news from Tizi. We hope to read you, may God bless you abundantly. Thank you for your prayer and for the mutual support in our Mission.
Fraternally,
Vincent Kyererezi, M.Afr.
Community leader and Director of the Documentation and Meeting Centre, Le Figuier Library.