Feature
Pomp and colour as Aluor Parish marks 100 years of missionary work
her first local priest, Fr Clement Oluoch Goro. He traced his pagan background and subsequent build up to become a priest. He said that he had a very cordial and helpful relationship with the mill Hill missionaries that enabled him pursue his education. “My interest was to read either the first or second reading during the secondary school mass which was in English, when I asked Fr Pietspe to allow me to do so, he said it was pointless unless I became a mass server,”said Fr Goro. “I then told him I wanted to be a mass server but he conditioned me that it could only happen when I wanted to be a priest, then I said I wanted to be a
priest, he told me that it meant I must decide to go to the seminary and I said I wanted to go to the seminary and I had to get permission from my mother who said no!” asserted the priest who has worked in many parishes in the archdiocese of Kisumu. He said that Fr Pietspe advised him to go to ordinary secondary school instead of the junior seminary and then join the seminary later. Later Fr Pietspe was able to secure him a place at Nyabondo secondary school. After school, he says, he almost joined the Consolata missionaries but his mentor Fr Pietspe insisted he serve the diocese.
The day was equally memorable for the elderly most of which in their 60s and 70’s had come on foot in memory of the younger days when they walked many kilometers to the parish for the catechism classes. The story of Aluor parish is scripted in their hearts and burnt in their memories. Funny is how they corrupted the names of the missionaries , Fr Gradus Bouma simply became Opere Boma, Podril Leo became Apoda, Fr Raphael became Fr Akel or Ogungu Patricia Atieno one such woman has come all the way from Nyamonye Parish in Bondo deanery she did her catechism classes at the parish which lasted two years.
By Lourine Oluoch
treasure Aluor Parish over her precedents in preaching of the gospel. Shops and mobile kiosks operating along the area too had a big kill as hundreds of believers had to buy the basic food items from them. It