LTSP News -- Angolian seminarian 9/01

New Students, Fall 2001

A talented 'castaway' seeks
to make a difference in a new place

Diedone Diela

Angolan Diedone "Didi" Diela has been a "wanderer" for most of his 42 years. No sooner would he begin to put down roots than upheaval and uncertainty would tear him from the African ground beneath his feet. A new student at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, he's hoping things may change at last.

When Didi was just two years old, civil strife in Angola forced his family to flee to the neighboring Congo. In those days, Angolans were beginning to agitate for independence from Portugal. From 1961 to 1973 his family lived in a Congolese refugee camp.

"Life in a refugee camp seemed normal to me because I never knew anything else," Didi says. "But I know it seemed very hard for my parents." Resources were meager. Some Congolese children befriended him, but others chose to offend refugees like Didi with name-calling. "The names hurt. They made me angry," he recalls.

Through it all, the family's anchor was the church, which Didi says in the camp was profoundly ecumenical. Didi's family had been influenced by Christian Missionary Alliance missionaries to become Christians in 1884. His great-grandparents supported the missionary cause. In the Congo, his father was a lay leader for the refugee camp congregation and earned a living as a fishing boat navigator. The church was an influential part of life in the refugee camp, Didi recalls, and worship was conducted in the refugees' native Portuguese language.

In 1973, Angola appealed to the Congo and to the refugees to come back home. Didi was then 14. "My Dad decided to go, and we returned to Cabinda Province, our original home in the northern part of Angola. We had gained our independence from Portugal, and we were becoming one country again." But civil strife persisted even after independence. Four Angolan factions were divided along geographic lines in the young country, and Didi's resource-rich home province was a target for much of the strife as the MPLA, the faction which came to power, took control.

"In 1976 my family fled to the jungle again, back to the Congo," he says. "I was a student in high school then." This time around Didi discovered the gut-wrenching side of refugee life. "I saw many people with injuries from land mines or afflicted with disease," he says. "Escaping was very hard on many people. Sometimes it took them weeks to reach the camp, and they would arrive exhausted, with gaping wounds on their swollen feet. I saw many people cry."

In such turmoil, many escaping families became separated. In one instance, he recalls that his cousin, the mother of infant twins, ran with an aunt from a military conflict. His cousin picked up one of the twins in the dead of night and the aunt in her haste thought she had grabbed the other, bundled in a blanket. As the pair ran under cover, the aunt realized the second twin wasn't in the bundle she carried. "My cousin made the dangerous journey back to the village and ended up in jail," Didi says. "But because we had a relative who was a military officer, she was actually able to be reunited with her missing child and was assisted to escape." It was a close call but both twins are young adults today.

After Didi finished his high school education, he received training as a nurse at the Congo's Biblical Institute in Kinshasa, feeling that he wanted to make a difference in people's hurting lives by becoming a health care worker. In 1991, the civil war almost over, his family decided once more to return to Angola. "Each time we moved like this we lost our house," he said. "We were starting all over again." Back home in Cabinda Province he worked as a nurse. He soon became a teacher in a public school, instructing others to become public health aides.

In 1993, he received a letter from an official in Angola's Reformed Church asking him to serve as a national Medical Director for the Christian Council of Churches, a 22-denomination body based in Angola's capital city of Luanda. He pulled up stakes again and moved with his family to a mission house in Luanda. "I had no administrative training for such a position," he recalls. He had a variety of medical personnel reporting to him, among them a pharmacist and physician as well as other nurses.

At this time, the number of HIV cases was beginning to mount in Angola. "Churches didn't see the growing epidemic as their problem," he says. "They saw it as a problem of people outside church circles." That attitude made the education and care processes surrounding HIV difficult. "I had to make the point that it is the responsibility of the Church to care for people outside its ranks too. HIV people were being rejected by society. The Church can't reject people like them. If the Church doesn't care about them who will?"

At one point Didi traveled to Santa Cruz, CA, to receive training in caring for people with HIV. He returned home energized to train Angola's nurses for care in the changing health context, pushing church leaders and pastors to be more aware of their responsibilities for sex education teaching. He also networked with international agencies in Switzerland, Holland, England and Norway, seeking funding for Angola's health concerns. He raised $580,000 for medicine and equipment. A later push netted close to $1 million to rebuild and improve the condition of 42 health centers in the country.

Despite his success, Didi says he ran into trouble in his health care work. Some of his staff, including a doctor and a pharmacist "felt I wasn't qualified to lead them because I am a nurse," he said. And he became mired in misunderstandings involving the Council of Churches. "I felt like my life and the lives of my family were in danger," he said. Didi has subsequently been granted political asylum to be in the U.S. with his family.

In July 1997 he fled to North Carolina, seeking asylum in the United States. Language was a barrier to connecting in America. He worked first as a dishwasher, then found a job pumping fuel at a gas station. There, he had a chance meeting with the Rev. Royall A. Yount, Jr., that led to a membership affiliation at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Raleigh, which has since become a host church for a number of Angolan refugees. His family since has been able to join him. Didi, fluent in several languages including Spanish, French, Portuguese and now English, found a succession of better jobs, delivering automobile parts to service stations and stores, then becoming a refugees case manager for Lutheran Family Services of the Carolinas.

Now, he has moved to Philadelphia with his family (wife, Serafina and children Celestina, Nicole, Enoque, Artur and Monica). At this point he believes he wants to become a pastor in the U.S., perhaps working with other refugees like himself. He's since learned that the Council of Churches in Angola would like him to return to his duties. The health care program he administered has fallen on hard times, he says, and international funding has been interrupted.

"But I've told them I'm not going back," he says. For one thing, Didi says a funder in Holland that sponsored the health program when Didi was in charge has told him it would not be safe for him and his family to return. "I am hoping that my experience in the church, health care, fund-raising and my knowledge of languages may qualify me to make a difference where I will be appreciated. I have to believe God will make that possible." If so, Didi may at last finally be able to put down some roots after all.