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I want to go to Africa To see the face of AIDS I want to go to Africa To learn the ancient ways The quiet lonely voice in me Speaks in tongues of antiquity In Bantu, Iziche or Xhosa So soft with eloquence and with power. I wish to walk the tribal trails To sit with the sick and aged left behind We’d speak of customs old and new Divine all truths seeking wisdom’s cue A CALL TO AFRICA by Cyril Paul, July 2001 - partial text

Stories start somewhere and this one has origins on a Sunday morning in the middle aisle of St. Joan of Arc. Pam Paul stopped me to ask if she and Cyril might go to South Africa with the next group. “Cyril has always dreamed that one day he would visit Africa. He knows the records of slavery make it near impossible to find his roots, but being on African soil would mean a lot to him, and I want to go with him. We both know this might not be an easy trip, but it is something we want to do.” So messages between Cape Town and the Twin Cities went back and forth and it was agreed that mid September, or Springtime, in South Africa would be the best time to travel. On September 16, 2001 eight people will travel as part of the Minnesota Group Four to Cape Town, and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Cyril and Pam Paul sat down with me to talk about their individual and joint journeys and their choice to travel into the heart of the AIDS pandemic, Guguletu, South Africa.

At first Cyril Paul talked a bit about the Caribbean, about Trinidad and the complex history of the slave trade. We both knew that most of the ships departing Western Africa sailed out of Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, and that the tribes far to south had escaped that form of slavery. Their suffering came later at the hands of the invading Dutch and English. Cyril can trace his ancestors back about three of four generations. He knows his father came to Trinidad from Venezuela. Cyril was born the youngest of three children in Trinidad in 1930. In his late teens, he exaggerated his age and was recruited from Trinidad to become a policeman in the Bahamas and he did this for four years. During that time he met a monk from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville. St John’s had a monastery in the Bahamas. The monk, impressed with Cyril’s ambition and talent, got him a scholarship to Collegeville and that was his introduction to things Minnesota.

Pam Douglas was the oldest of twelve children, born in St. Paul; her family later lived in the smaller towns south of the cities. Pam, when she finished high school in Randolph, Minnesota and she enrolled at the College of St. Catherine. The story is complex in the telling but forty years ago Cyril Paul came to the cities to meet up with other students from the Caribbean and there was this college girl from Haiti whose roommate was Pam Douglas. Pam and Cyril were attracted to each other, saw each other for awhile but it was the late fifties in Minnesota and interracial couples faced an uphill struggle. They went their separate ways. Pam with a degree in education, taught school in Austin, Minnesota. Pam Douglas and Cyril Paul didn’t see each other for twenty-five years.

They both tell stories of those years. Pam married and raised four children. Cyril with a college degree from St. John’s found being black in Minnesota difficult. When he asked a nice Catholic girl to marry him, they faced a near impossible situation. Most clergy would not witness an interracial marriage. After six attempts they did find a priest who would witness the union. Cyril has two grown daughters from this first marriage. He found jobs were hard to come by and after a short stint at the Catholic Youth Center on very low wages, he got a job teaching, and the wages stayed low. But Cyril had a parallel life, he could sing and he drummed and he happened to be on the scene just as some of the formal liturgy of Catholicism was starting to experiment with new sounds. A couple of Catholic churches were using the Gelleneau Psalms and it allowed the use of a drumbeat. In time Cyril became associated around the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota with the new sound in church music. It helped pay the bills. As Pam Paul says, Cyril during those years did more than his share to break down prejudices and stereotypical roles in Minnesota about blacks. In time both Pam’s and Cyril’s first marriages ended.

In romance novels chance encounters are the plot line. Real life is usually different. Pam Douglas, separated and living in Mankato, from time to time came to the cities with women friends for lunch and shopping. For variety on one trip they decided to try out the new Town Centre in St. Paul. While wandering the court area Pam heard a familiar musical sound and singing. She looked over the balcony and there was Cyril and his small band entertaining the shopping crowd. Pam hung around and re-introduced herself , they sat down and had coffee, and the old attraction came back. They started to see each other again. Later they married and times had changed; nobody challenged the union.

I want to go to Africa To speak to the dust of my forefathers To heal my soul with their songs of life And free their spirits from miscreants and strife To paint the red clay on my soul Which transformed boys to manhood As the clean clay made them whole. I wish to kneel close to Mother Earth To hear her cries of grief and mirth. To follow the traces of ancient dances Sadly gone too soon due to slavery and Christian eloquence To listen to the beating drums in the distance Under the harvest moon with pomp and circumstance. But most of all I long to be connected to my ancient family My quest to answer all the answers And questions all the questions directed at me. A CALL TO AFRICA by Cyril Paul, July 2001 - partial text

For the last twelve years Pam and Cyril have traveled back to Trinidad. At times they have taken friends and always they brought with them things for others. Cyril talked about standing on the seawall in Trinidad, always with the knowledge that across the ocean are his ancestral roots. As we talked about other countries, we talked about going to where the congregations are mostly or all black. There is a different spirit, it has more spontaneity, it doesn‘t have the control that the mostly white liturgies have. Cyril does what he can to infuse spontaneity into the St. Joan liturgies, and many of us are grateful that he does. When Cyril first came to St. Joan’s, he was told he could join the choir but in time he was asked back as guest musician and finally as part of the staff musicians. He brought Pam to St. Joan’s shortly after they re-connected.

Finally we talked about the plight of South Africa. Pam and Cyril both know they are at a time in life when they can adjust things and take risks. Both believe that helping others isn’t just about giving money or supplies. When it is possible, it is spending time with those in trouble, listening to their stories, eating and praying with them. Like many others, Pam and Cyril are upset by what is happening in Africa. They know that much of this is caused by culture, poverty, and lack of opportunity. Cyril has been brooding about this for months. His poetry of late has made sharp references to the suffering of the African nations. Pam who now acts more and more as Cyril’s manager and scheduler for his musical appearances, had figured a way to handle the expenses of this of this journey to South Africa. They both know there is a twofold purpose to all of this, to reach out to others and to reach down and touch the African soil.

Cyril and Pam Paul
were interviewed
July 25, 2001

In addition to Cyril and Pam Paul there will be three other members of St. Joan of Arc Parish making this trip. Mary Lou Ott - Global Nonviolent Peace Force staff volunteer and her husband, Dr. Gene Ott - Medical Director of St. Mary’s Free clinics, and Chuck MacDonald - Open Arms Executive Board Member. They will be joined by: Marty Cushing - Health Care Consultant, Sandy Dennett - an Oneida Nation (Iroquois) Elder, and Rachel Wobschall - Citizen Outreach Director, Governor Ventura’s Office. This website provided coverage of the last trip to South Africa. Chuck and others will again be sending back reports again during this trip. View the last trip.

Chuck MacDonald and his wife Beth are parishioners of St. Joan of Arc. Chuck serves on the Board of Open Arms of MN, an AIDS food ministry. He is a new member of the St. Joan of Arc Parish Council. He is actively involved with efforts to help victims of AIDS in South Africa and will take a group to Cape Town and rural South Africa this September. Chuck can be reached at chuckmacdonald@mediaone.net.

Terry Kolb is a staff reporter for the Catholic Spirit and news editor of New Earth, the Fargo diocesan paper. She also has been published in several daily newspapers and a few magazines. Most of all, Terry is the mother of six and grandmother of eight. She has been a member of St. Joan of Arc since 1998.