MALAWI---Just when he was beginning to enjoy
the comforts of priesthood in Lagos, Kelvin Ugwu
was posted to Chamama, a village in rural Malawi
where no one spoke English and poverty was viral.
He could reject the posting and return to Nigeria,
instead he chose to stay, as officiating priest of
St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish, Kalembe.
Four years after, Kelvin is now a farmer, a social
worker and a spiritual beacon in the middle of
nowhere, for a community where, on many
occasions, families wait out their sick to die.
“In three months I learnt the language, Chichewa.
You can't operate without it...I have seen poverty
before but nothing like what I met here. A 2-year-
old child once died of malaria in my hands
because his family didn’t have the equivalence of
N2,500 for medication. There are people who
don’t have electric bulbs because they can’t pay
for power.”
In choosing to stay, Kelvin had to work with what
he had: a piggery without pigs, and farmlands
awaiting cultivation. Man can neither live by bread
alone nor without it. The farm would feed him and
occasionally feed parishioners in need of food. As
corn is the major staple in Lilongwe, Kelvin also
set up a corn mill for commercial use. The
proceeds may be insignificant given the
community’s economy, but they could save a life
in dire times.
“The farming isn’t easy though. Here we have
rainfall only four months in a year,” he told Nigeria
Abroad . “So the poverty is also from nature. Poor
harvest, poor storage and, no matter what you get
from the farm, it can’t last the rest of the year.”
“In the parish, sometimes we get help—charity,”
he says. “But that’s never enough, still we
survive.”
Though prayer can help the poor, actual work is
great too—the work to reshape the social
dynamics that sustain poverty and keep a people
trapped.
“I see girls get pregnant at 12, boys who sit at
home and do nothing. It might be easy to judge
them, until you understand the social conditions
responsible. There are no decent schools here, no
infrastructure, no jobs, only farming. I want to
change these in my own small way.”
The poverty recreates itself and Kelvin is trying to
find a way around it through reorientation and
education. Though planning to build a school
down the line, he is raising support to build a
hospital to keep the people safe.
These socioeconomic conditions may be harshest
in rural Malawi, home of over 80% of the
populace, but the entire country is equally
swamped albeit in differing degrees. A country
dependent largely on foreign aid, its 18 million
people are being pauperized by a political elite
defined by graft. Power supply is fairly stable
though, and Malawi’s democracy may have begun
to evolve from a shambolic past.
Peter Mutharika, current president who was
reelected for a second term in 2019 in sham
elections, had his victory upturned by the courts
February 2020. Fresh elections were mandated
within 5 months but are pending over the
coronavirus outbreak. With prospects for foreign
aid shrinking amid an emerging economic
downturn, Malawi’s stability may be under threat.
For its rural communities, conditions may worsen.
“I am planning to build a school here, but first a
clinic,” Kelvin enthuses. “The only functional clinic
around is four hours away. Even at that, the crowd
of patients there hardly inspires hope. We can
change that. The people need the Word of God
but they also need these interventions, especially
a clinic, more so in these trying times around the
world.”
Kelvin’s philanthropy may be rooted in priesthood
but, as a child, he had always wanted to help
those in need. Yet that childhood vision about
devotion and service may have influenced his
priestly vocation, for which he turned down the
prospect of studying medicine, and that of starting
off on an auspicious family business.
“I took the vow of poverty,” he declares, referring
to the three priestly vows of Chastity, Obedience,
and Poverty. “That vow means wherever I’m sent,
I’ll go no matter the condition.”
In an era where religious devotion is dwindling,
the Catholic Church, at least in Africa, appears to
still have a surge of yearly applicants seeking to
become priests.
“In my time, over 1,000 applied; 12 were chosen,
and only 7 were ordained,” Kelvin says. On the
sentiment that many seek priestly ordination for
economic reasons, others, for not wanting to
marry, Kelvin recalls his colleagues who
abandoned family wealth for the vocation.
“And for you to be a priest, you have to be whole,
including being sexually and emotionally whole.
You have to be giving up something, not join
because you are deficient in one way or the
other.”
An intellectual, his ministry seeks to balance
spirituality with intellect. With the rise of irreligion
on the wings of technology and knowledge, Kelvin
is eager to raise Christians who are
knowledgeable in science and basic philosophy,
enough to defend their faith with reason.
“God would not give you reason for you not to use
it. The West is stuck on reason as if faith doesn’t
matter; in Africa, we embrace faith to the
exclusion of reason. We need a balance.”
Using his #FacebookTelevision series, Kelvin has
been spreading intellectual Christianity online. One
of his most popular articles on the internet was a
rejoinder to a piece in which former presidential
aide, Reno Omokri, attacked the Catholic Church.
It is this sense of crusade that has turned a 34-
year-old Nigerian priest into an agent of change in
faraway Malawi, where he is sharing the Christian
message, rousing the intellect, and impacting a
village. As he mobilizes support to build a clinic
for strangers who have now become family, he is
full of hope.
“I like it here,” he cheers, in pure joy. It is the joy
of a young man who is making the act of faith,
giving, and devotion more fashionable in a time of
global vanity.
Help Fr. Kelvin build the clinic by
donating to his GoFundMe link below

https://www.gofundme.com/f/st-paul-clinic-kalembe-chamama-malawi?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1

Fund the hospital project using the link above. Thanks

Father Kelvin also got good clean water for the Malawian community where he is serving the people as a priest. The only clean source of water in the community... Can u Imagine. God bless him. Pls contribute whatever u can afford, as he is trying to build an hospital for the community, and then a school. All these for God.

He is building an hospital first, before a school

just too long.
Pls anyone with the summary version?

A priest at heart...my very good friend. Your mum is surely proud of you! St. Mary Karu still misses you

unbranded13:
A priest at heart...my very good friend. Your mum is surely proud of you! St. Mary Karu still misses you

hmm see my person for NL o. We miss him but I think he is now more of St Ignatius member