Hard work and personal witness

 Call it coincidence or serendipity.  Before leaving for the MPE meet in Delhi, Dc Banka Sagar was sharing one of his experience while during practical training in Manoharabad.  Prior to joining the Salesians, he said he used to once in a way work at construction sites, especially while putting in the RCC slab.  When in the novitiate, they was some renovation work going on and the sand unloaded by the lorry needed to be taken up a floor or two. Sagar spoke to the Master and the Contractor and agreed to do the shifting for a price of Rs 5000.  He got the novices one evening and completed the work.  They used that money for a special meal for the community. 

While in Delhi, the Salesian Province of Dimapur shared a practice in vogue in one of its remote rural mission station school, where the school monthly fees is about Rs 700 or so. That's a day's wage for labour in that part of the country.  With most parents being poor labourers or farmers, rather than insisting with them to pay the fees on time, some Salesian at some time in the past proposed a day's labour in exchange for a month's school fee.  So those parents or sometime grown up students themselves who wish to pay their monthly fee through work, instead of cash, collectively work on the Salesian farm on a chosen day.  The farm work progresses, the parents are happy that they need not give their meagre income to the school, children continue their studies uninterrupted for want of school fee payment!  A win-win situation for all. 

Reflecting on these two narrations, I was wondering how many of us Salesians and boys will not mind some such undertaking.  In a month, take up some work in some ongoing work in the neighbourhood, just for a day or max two.  That too a holiday or free day.  Use that amount for something noble of the house: fees of someone unable to pay the fees, salary of one staff for a month, purchase of a small equipment or gadget for the smooth running of the institution, cover some sick students medical bill... any such NEED of the house.  Of course, the Salesian should be the heart and soul of this initiative and undertaking!  Not that he is the first one to resist hard work or shun manual labour!  

It is easy to misinterpret this initiative or thought as a fund-raising gimmick.  The earned amount is only an auxiliary outcome.  The bigger goal is respect for labour and collective effort at addressing communal needs. Most of us are used to getting our needs met by others labour.  My bigger issue is how we treat our boys who share our residence and food.  We get funds and donations in their name, but most of it is spent for our wants (not necessarily needs). If only boys and our students see us passionately striving for their well being, not as outsiders or as different from them, but as truly their 'brothers' and 'fathers', they will not mind cleaning the sewage of the town.  I've seen them fight to do that dirty job, just because I felt that it should be cleaned and I was ready to jump in to do it.