Maryknoll priest, a former Navy chaplain, helps Namibia's vulnerable children.
 

When Maryknoll Father Wayne Weinlader indicates that all is ready, the children are called to the table by rows. They tear across the sandy earth as if chased-all except Basane and his little sister. With the patience of a father, Basane matches his step to the little girl's and keeps his hand on her back to guide and defend her. He glances over his shoulder to see row after row of boys and girls overtake them. Finally they reach the table, take up their colorful bowls and find a place to sit and eat.

"It is their only meal of the day," says Weinlader about many of the children who have come to lunch. Weinlader, 71, and a retired Catholic Navy chaplain, founded the soup kitchen and built a patio for it to one side of Pentecost Catholic Church. He has maintained it for three years with his own funds and help from his family in the United States.

Seven days a week, the soup kitchen feeds more than 300 children a nutritious lunch. Most of the children have lost at least one parent to AIDS and are being raised by poor relatives. Many of the children themselves are infected with HIV or sick with AIDS or other illnesses.

"We serve them cornmeal or rice and stew, which includes cabbage, potatoes, onions, peas, beans and cooking oil," explains Weinlader, originally from Joliet, Illinois. "We also give them bread with peanut butter and an apple and, on Sundays, a lollipop. This is better than what they would get at home. Some kids bring the bread home to eat at night."

The homes in the Kehemu neighborhood in front of the church are made of mud, sticks and cardboard, common building materials in northern Namibia above the Red Line. The Red Line, an apartheid-era demarcation in this country in southern Africa, separated the rural black and poor communities from the more prosperous white communities south of this imaginary boundary.

Poverty in Rundu, the lack of access to nutritious food and weak health infrastructure are all part of apartheid's aftermath and still have not been addressed by the governments that followed liberation in 1990. Today, in the era of AIDS, there is little access here to antiretroviral medicines, especially for children.

The missioner says he feels a personal connection with these children. "I was in the first Gulf War," he explains. "I came out of it very sick, with Gulf War Syndrome and radiation sickness. I have a damaged immune system. I had great sympathy for these kids because they manifest the same symptoms. They get tired easily. It's heartbreaking because they keep getting worse and worse, whereas I just stay the same."

When the priest spies a little girl with arms like twigs coming to the table, he takes off in search of a bowl that is a little more full.

Ordained to the priesthood in 1968, Weinlader served in Peru first as a missioner from the Jefferson City Diocese before joining Maryknoll in 1973. A skilled technician, he helped build a television station at the Catholic University in Lima and developed other communication projects for the Church in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and Panama. He joined the chaplain corps in 1980 and served with the Navy and Marines for 15 years. After recovering from illness incurred in military service, he returned to the missions in Namibia in 2004.

Weinlader recalls a friend who asked him why he bothers to provide food for children who will most likely die. The priest responded, "I just want to make their existence a little better- until then."

Linda Unger is editor of our bilingual Revista Maryknoll.
 

Learn more about Wayne's work with Orphans

Find out more about Maryknoll's AIDS ministries in Africa

Wayne's Biography           Wayne's Reflections

Visit the Maryknollers Currently in Namibia