Sister Marie-Celine, MICM
Saint Josephine Bakhita: A Flower of The African Desert
My entire life has been a gift of God. – This gratitude hardly seems believable coming from someone who had been sold into slavery and was abused for a number of years. Yet, it came from a soul who found God in spite of the worst circumstances. In a time when God was raising up great saints: Saints Bernadette and Therese in France, John Bosco and Pius X in Italy, Damien at Molokai, He was forming a beautiful soul in the arid sands of Africa. In an incredible journey from slave to child of God, to religious Sister, Josephine Bakhita became an example of humility and heroic spirituality. This tender flower of the African desert blossomed and was picked by God to share her wondrous story of grace and forgiveness with the world. She tells us, “I here dictate some of the events in my life… May these recollections of mine serve to make me always better appreciate the great gift God has given to me in choosing me to be His spouse.”
Africa
In the Darfur region of Africa in western Sudan, lay the little village of Olgossa. It was occupied by the once nomadic Daju tribe, who settled in this surprisingly beautiful, fertile, and lush area, to become crop farmers. They were a peaceful and hard-working people. Family values were cherished and polygamy was not practiced among them.
Bakhita was born into a loving and happy family in 1869. Her real name is not known. Her family was considered well-to-do, and her uncle was even chief of the village. They worked in the fields and were loved much by the villagers. Bakhita recounts, “I was raised by my father and my mother, with three brothers, three sisters and four others I never knew because they died before I was born.” Bakhita would always recall later how much she loved her family and how kind her parents were.
Though their village was far removed from the other cities and towns, the people of the Daju tribe were touched by the fear and harm of slave raiders. They were living in a time when kings, governments, money hungry and greedy people exploited native Africans to fulfill their quota of slaves to work in other countries. Aside from internal trafficking, America and Europe were the main culprits of slave trade in Africa. It unfortunately made its way to Bakhita’s village.
One day, Bakhita went to the fields with her mother, while her married older sister stayed home with her baby son and Bakhita’s twin. The workers in the fields suddenly noticed a great commotion in the village. People were running in panic, houses were on fire, people had been murdered, mutilated or kidnapped. “We quickly returned home, and to our dismay we were told by the little one, all frightened and trembling, how the marauders had carried the older sister away and how she herself had only just barely escaped by hiding.”
When Bakhita’s father returned in the evening, search parties were organized which looked for hours but never found anyone. It was a heart-wrenching scene. Parents bewailed the loss of their children, families were inconsolable, erupting in moaning and anger over the slaughter. People, despairing of finding their abducted loved ones, turned to the village witchdoctor. The trusting villagers, not knowing any better, always had recourse to his superstitious practices. In their present predicament, the witchdoctor called for horrific sacrifices and gory rituals. Eventually, however, the people realized that neither the witchdoctor nor his demonic incantations could bring their family members back.
Up to this point Bakhita recalls, “I had had a very happy life, never knowing what it meant to suffer…this was my first experience of suffering, and oh, how many more would soon follow.” Although time went on and emotions settled, memories of loved ones and the scars of pain always remained for Bakhita’s family. Just as one wound healed, another would soon be inflicted.
Kidnapped
Bakhita was about eight or nine years old.
“…One morning, after breakfast, I went with one of my friends…on a walk in our fields, away from the house. Having finished our games, we decided to go pick some herbs.” While they were busying themselves, two men walked out from the forest and approached the girls. One asked Bakhita if she could go and get his bundle for him, which he said was by the edge of the forest. Her friend was told to wait for her on the path. Bakhita recounted the event, “I did not suspect anything. I quickly went and obeyed, as I always did with my mother.”
“As soon as I entered the woods, looking for the bundle that I could not find, I realized that those two were right behind me. One grabbed me roughly with one hand while he pulled out a big knife from his belt with the other. He put the point of the knife against my side and with a demanding voice said, ‘If you scream, you’re dead. Now move it. Follow us.’ The other one pushed me, aiming the barrel of his gun at my back. I was petrified.”
“Don’t waste time…call her Bakhita,”
“Violently pushed through the thick woods, along the hidden pathways and over fields, I was made to walk at a fast pace until evening. I was dead tired. My feet and legs were bleeding from stepping on sharp rocks and from walking through thorny brambles. All I could do the whole time was sob, but those hard hearts felt no pity.”
In this part of her story, Bakhita receives her name. In her book Tale of Wonder, Ida Zanolini, who interviewed Bakhita later on in life, recounts how this came about. As the men dragged the poor child through the forest, one of them asked her what her name was. On account of the frightful ordeal and mental stress she was experiencing, she was unable to remember it. “Tell him what your name is!” She could not. “Don’t waste time…call her Bakhita,” which in Arabic means ‘fortunate’ or ‘lucky.’
The three stopped only for a short time to rest and to eat, but Bakhita was too frightened to eat. Then they continued through the night. “At dawn we arrived in their village. I could not have gone any farther. One of the men grasped me by the hand and dragged me to his home and put me in a storage room full of tools and scraps of wood. There was no bed or covering of any kind. The bare earth would have to serve as both. I was given a piece of dark bread and was told, ‘Stay here.’ Then the door was closed and locked with a key.
For over a month Bakhita was confined to that little room. Years later, recounting her sufferings there she stated, “I still remember those hours of anguish when, exhausted from crying, I would fall to the floor, limp, completely numb, while my imagination carried me to my loved ones far, far away.” These thoughts of her family, their deep love and the hope of seeing them again, would help her through many more trials. “But alas, when I returned to the hard reality of my horrible solitude, I was overcome by a feeling of discouragement that seemed to shatter my heart.”
Her captors were Arab slave-traders. One morning as Bakhita was finally let out from the hut, the pitiful sight of a group of slaves trudging along the road met her eyes. Within a short time, she was purchased by the trader in charge of the caravan, thereby joining the ranks of those destined for the slave market. “They were three men and three women; one was a girl a little older than I.”
“Soon we were on the road. Just seeing the countryside, the sky, the water, just being able to breathe fresh air gave me a bit of life again, even though I did not know where I would end up.”