Priest heeds Pope’s call and embarks on 2,000-km walk

Father Maloba Wesonga’s plan for the next two months is everything but fun.

He plans to put aside his priestly robes, wear sports gear, go down valleys, climb hills, inhale dust and obnoxious motor exhaust fumes, bake in the scorching sun, soak in the rain … and in the end complete a 2,000-km walk from Mumias to Mombasa through Nairobi then back to Nairobi.

The length of the trek is akin to doing 5,000 laps on an athletics track.

If a person would do that with the average walking speed, they would take 16 days and nights.

For Fr Maloba, the target is to complete the task by walking along major highways in 60 days, trekking only during daytime with a team of 12 moving with him in three vehicles branded with messages of the walk theme: “Journey of Faith”.

The priest said the main motivation for the walk was a call from Pope Francis that the faithful need to take a spiritual pilgrimage this year “which he declared the year of divine mercy”.

“I’m trusting God that we can do it in a slightly shorter time,” he told the Sunday Nation, noting that he had never done such kind of a walk before.

The 44-year-old plans to walk every day except on some Sundays and, in between his journey, he will be speaking to Christians on various topics that he has prepared.

He will also be catching up with friends and raising money for the construction of a church in Karen, Nairobi.

The walk, which will cover 15 counties, was launched Sunday at the Regina Caeli Catholic Church in Karen, where Fr Wesonga is one of the three priests living at the parish headquarters.

He then took a vehicle to Khaimba village in Kakamega County, from where he is expected to start the walk on Monday after Mass.

INSPIRED

His father, Stephen Wesonga, and mother Bibiana will be accompanying him in the first few stages of the walk today “until the point where they cannot walk anymore, then they’ll get back into the car”.

Fr Maloba chose to start the walk from Khaimba because it is where his parents met and got married.

The symbolism of the walk doesn’t end there. In the end, he hopes to visit all the prisons in which his father worked — Naivasha Maximum Prison, Murang’a Prison, Shikusa Prison, Shimo la Tewa Prison and Athi River Prison.

His father worked with the prison’s department and retired in 1998 as a senior superintendent.

The story of Mr Wesonga’s transfers from one prison to another marks various phases of Fr Maloba’s life.

Mr Wesonga’s first posting was at the Naivasha jail and he worked in various posts before he finally returned to Naivasha ahead of retirement.

Fr Maloba, the second born of 12 children, hopes to celebrate Mass with prisoners as requested by Fr Peter Kimani, the national principal chaplain of prisons.

“In whichever of the facilities that circumstances will allow, we’ll definitely get to celebrate Mass as will be arranged by the catechists,” said Fr Maloba.

HIS INTENTION

He added that he was greatly inspired by the Pope’s message, one of the factors that drove him to take the epic walk.

“We’ve also reached a point where we’ve become what I refer to as professional Christians. We profess our faith as and when it suits us. The moment there is an aspect of sacrifice, more and more people are not very keen to embrace the sacrifice part of it,” he said.

Noting that he admires all those who have been declared martyrs, he said his journey is a way of sacrificing for a cause he believes in.

Some of the messages he plans to pass across are on challenges in marriage, the sanctity of life, youth unemployment, parents as role models for their children, the influence of new media on young people and servant leadership.

In the course of the walk, he will also be asking well-wishers to contribute for the construction of a new church at his current parish, with a target of Sh250 million.

“We have a secretariat that was assembled specifically to handle this,” he said. “For the rains, the cold, the heat, the human traffic and every other challenge that we’ll encounter along the way, we are putting all our faith, hope and trust in the Lord”.