Welcome To Chiga Parish in Kisumu Arch Diocese Kenya

PASTORAL CARE FOR THE PEOPLE OF CHIGA

LITURGICAL LIFE IN THE PARISH The parish has liturgical committee made up of leaders elected from the SCCs up to the parish level.

We have a team of Trained Lectors whose membership includes even children. It is expected that the archbishop to officially install them for this ministry.

The parish has a strong parish choir under the patronage of St Gregory. This choir takes charge of singing in these celebrations that bring the whole parish together. They do their practices regularly. This Parish choir is a joint venture bringing together other two strong choirs that exist in that parish, that is, St Cecilia choir and St Augustine Choir.

The Sacristy is managed by a sister (Member of the congregation of the sisters of the blessed Virgin). This includes the following;

Arranging the items for mass

Cleaning the Sacristy

Managing the daily sadaka during the daily morning mass

Washing the vestment and the linens

Drawing budget of items needed in the sacristy

Being sent by the priest to go buy the items in the budget

Their Novices (whenever they are assigned available) usually offer their services in the sacristy.

PASTORAL CARE FOR SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS

The Parish provides pastoral care to the pupils in schools and other learning institutions within our jurisdiction. Two of our schools receive masses on weekly basis:

i. St Mary Magdalene receives Mass on Wednesday at 7 am. This mass also provides for the spiritual needs of the sisters in the convent who manage the school.

ii. St Francis Primary school Nyamonge receives mass every Friday at 7 am. This mass also provides for the spiritual needs of the sisters in the convent who manage the school.

Dr Aloo Gumbi Mixed secondary school gets weekly Mass/service of the word on Saturdays as from 4 pm.

The other schools do not have a fixed rota for mass but is arranged by the parish in consultation with the Head teachers.

The Headteachers from our catholic sponsored schools have their masses at the parish on the first Friday of every term.

St Elizabeth Chiga Hospital as an institution gets masses once a month.

The Masses for the Consolata Technical Training Centre are not steady due to the unsteady number of students studying there.

PASTORAL CARE FOR DEVOTIONAL GROUPS

The Devotional Groups are offered pastoral care as follows:

i. The Legion of Mary(adults) meet regularly on Saturdays. Occasionally, when possible, the priest meets with them. We Celebrate our Marian Feasts with them. The Juniors Legionaries are active and meet regularly.

ii. St Monica Widows meet in their homes for their monthly masses celebrated by the parish priest.

iii. Joot Matakatifu is a bit weak but they often come to the parish the second Thursday evening for a vigil which ends with morning mass.

iv. Sacred Heart upholds their devotion to the Eucharist on the first Friday of every month. The way some of the members of sacred heart carry out their devotion to the Sacred Heart need to always be monitored.

v. St Elzabeth Ann Group, is a new group of Christians mostly women who are converts from other Denominations and are devoted to the spirituality of St Elizabeth Anne, an American converted to the Catholic faith. They Meet regularly to continue supporting each other to get deeper into the catholic faith.

PASTORAL CARE FOR ASSOCIATIONS

i. The CMA is coming up especially after a massive recruitment drive in the parish. The still have not yet set a regular program for spiritual activities.

ii. The CWA is vibrant. They are actively and visibly present in the parish activities. Occasionally they make booking for spiritual activities like Recollections, Adoration, Rosary prayers, etc.

iii. I order to offer pastoral care to the young people; we organize them into groups of Catholic Young Adults and the youth. These two groups of the young people are guided by patrons and matrons in every centre. The Patrons and Matrons have their committee at the parish level.

iv. Pastoral care for young children is offered through the activities of the PMC. Their animators were elected in every SCC and they have a committee at the parish level.

v. The Team of Altar Servers is active in the parish. However, there is nobody who consistently journeys with them. They come for practice every Saturday and for those serving the following day we usually make arrangement to have them spend in the parish and wake up in time for their duties.

PASTORAL CARE FOR SCCs

Although the number of SCCs is registered to be 65, there are some which are very weak, they have leadership problems, family feuds, misunderstandings, lost funds, and some do not meet regularly. There are some SCCs that are very big in terms of their number and there is need to subdivide them. Already one of such SCCs is St Leonard in Omungi Centre. They have been informed and they already have an idea of those who are to from a new SCC. In order to strengthen the SCCs, the parish arranges Door to door visitation. This has yielded a lot of fruits for a number 0f SCCs that were initially weak.

PASTORAL CARE FOR FAMILIES

When we started family life program in parish, many people misunderstood it with Family planning and so this program did not pickup. We therefore started a group of Marriage Encounter to strengthen family life of those who are married but he intention was that through this, all family issues were to be addressed.

CATECHESIS IN THE PARISH

The parish has 20 catechists among whom female catechists are 10 as male are also 10. Out of these 20 catechists,
Yao centre has 4
Rweya has 3
Chiga, Nyamonge, Ayaro, Masawa, Omungi and Obino Centres has 2 each while Obumba has 1.
Out of the 20 catechists, only one who is Mr Carilus Ochola is trained. He is the Head of catechetical department assisting the priest. Ordinarily due to the effect of tuition in schools, our catechists teach catechism on Sundays. In those centres where Mass is celebrated at 7 am and 9 am the catechism classes are handled immediately after mass. In centres that have their Masses at 11 am, they arrange to teach catechism before the priest arrives.
Currently there are some children of schools age who are undergoing their elementary catechesis in each of the centres.

SOCIAL CONCERN FOR CHIGA PARISH(CJPD/CARITAS)

Our social concern as a parish is spearheaded by CJPD/Caritas. The only source of income they have is the collection made during the Lenten campaign. They organize briefing before Lenten Campaign. They make the list of those to visit the SCCs to lead them in Campaigns.

THE PARISH LEADERSHIP

Parish Pastoral Council
The Parish pastoral council of Chiga is composed of the following.

i. The Parish Priest

ii. A Representative from the Religious

iii. Five Executive from each Centre/sub-parish

iv. The Parish Catechist and the Chairperson of Catechists Welfare

v. One Representative at the parish level of the CMA, CWA, PMC Animators, Legion of Mary, Jo Adundo, Joot Mt, Jokamoica, CJPD, Caritas and Parish choir

vi. Two Representatives of CYA

THE EXECUTIVE

The Executive of Chiga Parish Pastoral Council is composed of the usual five and we co-opted the chairpersons of the remaining four centres, thus making the Executive to be 9.

PARISH COUNCIL MEETINGS

The PPC meets monthly, usually on the last Sunday of every month and it is rotational, moving from one centre to the next. These PPC meetings are always preceded by the meetings of the executive to prepare the agenda.
If there is need the PPC or the Executive can meet extraordinarily depending on that need.

PPC COMMITTEE

EDUCATION COMMITTEE

We have already formed a parish Education Committee to help the parish in handling the issues that affect our catholic sponsored schools. The membership is 9, from each of the centre

DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE The parish has a Development Committee composed majorly by leaders of CJPD and Caritas. They help the PPC to oversee the ongoing renovation of the parish church.

LANDS COMMITTEE

In order to help the parish handle land issues, we formed a Lands Committee, with members representing each centre. They have bee quite active in their role and have been updating the PPC.

PARISH FINANCE COMMITTEE

This canonical requirement from the parish is yet to be fulfilled. The major stumbling has been on the question of TRUST. Some of the people with financial background who can add value to the parish in this area are either not trusted by the parishioners or they themselves feel ALOOF to this task

THE PARISH COMPOUND

The following are the facilities that exist within the parish compound.

PARISH CHURCH
We started a huge task of renovating the main parish church. The renovation involved redoing the floor, the walls and the windows. We consulted a registered company to help us do the renovation. The main source of the money we have been using has been the monthly collection of tithes. A number of times we have also hosted dinner fundraising too.

PARISH HALL
This is the old church of Chiga parish. Currently it is used as a hall where many activities like group meetings, seminar and workshops take place. Many external groups and individuals sometimes come to rent it at a small fee which can be increased once some renovations are done to make it better.

PAROCHIAL GUEST HOUSE
There is a parochial guest house with 10 cubicles that can be share by occupants. Two of these cubicles have been turned temporarily to act as a store for some parish items.

ADORATION CHAPEL
The parish has a prayer room which has been turned into an Adoration Chapel. The Exposition of the blessed sacrament is done daily after mass except on Sundays. Inside the Adoration Chapel we have a tabernacle which is used currently to keep safe the consecrated host that remains after masses. Due to the renovation works going on in the main church the Adoration chapel also serves as the place where vestments and other liturgical items are kept.

PASTORAL OFFICE
The pastoral office of Chiga has an office space for the parish priest, an office space for the assistant parish priest, a meeting room, and an office space for the catechist. Often the office space of the assistant parish priest is used by the office administrative secretary.

POWER GENERATOR HOUSE
The power Generator house has a manual generator which uses diesel. It serves the church, the Adoration chapel, the Priests house, convent of the brothers, the pastoral office and the security lights around the houses. It does not however supply power to the parish hall, the guest house and the security light near the guesthouse. The Grounds-man is in charge of this power generator. He organizes for its servicing And repairs.

PRESBYTERY
The condition of the presbytery is fair enough to house the priests but the parish may need to start thinking of doing a new one since the current one has started developing some serious cracks

BROTHERS CONVENT
The Brothers of Our Lady of Perpetual Help were given the storied building behind the presbytery to use as their community house. This used to be a guest wing for the presbytery. The Brothers work in Chiga Technical Training Centre.

SISTERS CONVENT
As aforementioned, Chiga has three Convents. The one situated within the compound is the convent of the sisters of the Blessed Virgin.

NURSERY SCHOOL
The Allamano Nursery school next to the church is run by Sr Monica, a sister of the Blessed Virgin. The number has been going down because of challenges of Management. They haven"t yet included the Parish priest in the in the management.

MISSION HOSPITAL
The St Elizabeth Chiga Hospital is administered by Sr Josephine Ndalwala, a sister of the Blessed virgin.

The Hospital is one of the best in the locality and is recognized by the Sub County as a Referral Health facility.

It is owned by the Archdiocese of Kisumu and it has a Board of Management. The Parish priest is a member of that Board.

The power of the Board still needs to be strengthened by the Archdiocese to put its feet deeper in the management of the facility.

The Hospital offers a huge support to the parish namely.
It pays for the Electricity bill of the parish since we use electricity to pump water to the hospital. The only electricity bill that it does not pay for is the electricity that is used in the parish guest house near the gate. It helps in managing the NSSF and NHIF of the staff of the parish.

TECHNICHAL TRAINING CENTRE
This is run by the Brothers of our Lady of Perpetual Help. It was taken from being directly owned by the Parish and was put directly under the Archdiocese, managed by the Brothers.

It offers a number of courses and has a number of students. However, the intake is often very low.

The facility doesn"t have a functional Board of Management and membership of the Parish priest in this Board is not yet clear. The facility administrator had forwarded names of possible Board Members to the Archbishops office.

The archdiocese needs to strengthen its ownership as well as the strength of the Board for better performance.

The facility also takes purchase orders from various clients and delivers to them.

ST MONICA CANTEEN
This is situated next to the Technical Training Centre. It is reported to have been started as an income generating project for St Monica Widows. The state of this canteen is bad and has been abused by outsiders due to neglect. The parish council had promised to help the St Monica Widows to fence the facility but it is not yet done. Currently there is a young man sleeping in the facility to offer it temporary security.

SMALL HOME
This facility was once a small home for children with disability, however, it is currently used as a police post. The police officers are not paying rent to the parish currently. One of the immediate things that need to be done for them is to give them an electricity meter so that they pay for the electricity they use. They have been trapping power from the primary school but this has been causing the school a huge electricity bill.

PARISH FARM
The has a farm on which we are keeping some animals, and growing some food we use in the house.

There is a young man managing the vegetable section and the grounds-man is in charge of the animals.

The Catholic Young Adults have two fish ponds. In one of the fish ponds there is fish that is already being sold to the market. The leadership of the CYA help them to manage the sales.

The presbytery put in 1000 fingerlings while the CYA put 500 fingerlings, bringing total of 1500 fish. The agreement was that the expenses, the profit and the losses are share on a ratio of 1.2

In the second pond, there is a demonstration on how to do breeding. This is being done as a result of written agreement between the parish council and County department of fisheries as well as an NGO known as Aqua Bann, the agreement states that once the year engagement ends, the parish remains with all they put in demonstration plot.

PARISH PRAYER GARDEN
Within the compound the way to convent, there is a section that has been fenced off. The intention is to create a prayer Garden named St Mary Prayer Garden. So far, a few metallic seats have been erected but the planks of wood have not yet been fixed onto them. It is not yet ready for use as a prayer Gadern. Much of the funds for developing this garden came from the Mission Account.

PARISH WATER SOURCE
The parish has a bore-hole which supplies all water used in the parish. It has an electric pump and it supplies the presbyter, the brother’s convent, the Hospital, the sacristy, and the Technical Training Centre. The cost of electricity it uses is paid by the Hospital since the Hospital does not pay for the water. The Grounds-man manages the water pump.

RECTANGULAR METALLIC CONTAINER
Close to the second gate we have a metallic container which was initially used to ship items for the hospital and Technical Training Centre. Having removed the items that, it bought; the container is used as a store for planks of woods used as seats during Masses outside. There is need for urgent action on it since it has some leakage on the top part and the door is also rusting away. There has been a plan by the parish pastoral council to make good use of it as an income generating project.

THE GATES AND THE PIT LATRINES
The parish compound has two gates, the main gate leads to the main road to Kibos and another smaller one on the way to the Technical Training Centre. This Main gate was built on the road reserve and should be moved inwards. It is not I good condition currently and needs urgent repair. The smaller one too needs some little repair as well as painting.

There are three main pit latrines in the compound, one is near the parish hall and another one is near the smaller gate which is of latest and was built by Chiga Centre. The other one is reserved for private use by the employees of the parish.

A STAFF HOUSE
In some part of the parish compound , towards the extreme backyard , there is a mud-walled house which was intended to be used either as residence of the cook or the grounds-man or the Catechist.

However, it used to house an orphaned member of the parish. He stays there with his family