Klara Kollar

This is my last letter. I have been home for more than 2 weeks now. I get up every morning, take a hot shower, open the fridge and choose what to eat from 5 possibilities. If I don’t find anything I like, I buy something in the city. I wash my
clothes with a washing machine, and I turn on the lights whenever I want to. Life has a very different flavor here. It’s like I’m in a different dimension. It is much more difficult to notice the miracles of life here than in Africa. People often wear masks, and I miss the honest simplicity and the human experience that I lived in Africa.
Africa is far away, very far. I can not imagine anymore that this is reality for them, that in another country on another continent people live in such misery. It seems completely impossible. Then I look at the photos and remember of the girls
I worked with: how they suffered every day on the streets and all the violence they went through.

It all seems unrealistic now. I wonder how they are and what they are doing. Are they already with their families? Do they go to school? Does their suffering
continue? Are they ever going to be happy? Or maybe they are happier than I’ll ever
be because they look at life in a different way.

Then I realized that people here have their own problems, maybe different, but
just as important as the Africans. This might be loneliness, depression or a lack of
meaning in their lives. When I got home the next day I met with one of my friends
who told me that she found an unconscious man lying in the streets. His legs were
being eaten by worms. People were passing by, maybe even taking pictures, doing
nothing to help him. She had to fight with the hospital for 15 minutes until they came to take him. This is supposed to be the developped world?

Of course I don’t mind having electricity and that the stains finally came out of my clothes. I am still happy when I see a joghurt or juice.J Sometimes I feel that my experiences in Africa are incompatible with my life here. Maybe with time it will get easier.

Now I am leaving for France where I’ll participate in the festival of Chemin
Neuf for young people, and than do an ignatian silent retreat. In which I feel I am in
great need of.

Kinshasa, Budapest 6

I have lived a lot of things in these past months. I discovered a lot about myself,
my limits and my relationship with God. I have been taught a lot, and I need some
time to process all this.

Next year I am moving into the dorm of the community in Budapest and
I continue my path with the community. I was really afraid of coming home and
returning to the dullness of my life before. I knew that I needed a lifestyle that allows me to go to mass frequently and pray every day. So I took this opportunity for a grace from the Lord, and it makes me very happy to be able to live with the sisters of the community who can show me the way and all the young people who are on the same path as I am.

This year was a gift. A gift that I will never be able to repay. I can’t say it was
easy. But I don’t regret a single minute of it. I saw so many beauty and miracles than never before in my life. I have learned to accept things as they are, to discover the beauty in life, and trust in God, even if it is difficult. It’s me but I will never be the
same. Of course I am in the beginning of my road but I feel I am on the right one.
Anyway I received much more than I could give.

Thank you so much for everything: encouragement, prayer and all kinds of
help. It would have been hard without you. There are still fifteen-thousand kids waiting for our help in the streets of Kinshasa. So if you know any companies or organisations that would like to support the mission of the community you can turn to me and I can help you get the donations to them.Kl