Father Daniel Villaverde Marcos, a Spanish Comboni missionary, talks to us about his experience in the parish of Christ the King, in the city of Lokichar, among the Turkana people.
Turkana District, in northwest Kenya, where I live, is a semi-desert area where, long ago, the semi-nomadic pastoral people known as the Turkana or Ngiturkana settled. Having been here some years previously, I returned to this land in 2022.
I am assigned to the parish of Christ the King, located in Lokichar. The city, which is growing rapidly, is crossed by the main road connecting Nairobi to Lodwar, the capital of the district and the name of our diocese. We form a community of three Comboni missionaries from three continents. The parish priest is a Mexican, Fr. Pablo Simón Rodríguez, who has been in Turkana for many years; Fr. Daniel Babley, a Togolese who arrived two years ago; and myself.
Our parish occupies a rather large plot of land that is becoming too small due to the numerous facilities and activities we run for the benefit of our people and anyone who approaches us. We have a beautiful hexagonal church and a grotto of the Blessed Virgin, a popular place where people gather to pray to Mary.
We also have a kindergarten, an elementary school, and the St. John Paul II Centre, dedicated to boys, girls, and adolescents with disabilities. These less fortunate children study at the elementary school just a few meters from the centre. But our facilities don’t end there. We also have a youth centre with a library, several playrooms, and meeting rooms, as well as a soccer field and a basketball court, and a handball court. All this, of course, without taking into account our community and that of the nuns of the Evangelising Sisters of Mary, who, among many other things, manage the St. John Paul II Centre.
There are currently four of them, with whom we share much of the parish’s work, its activities, projects, and training and pastoral activities. I should also mention a project we started a couple of years ago, focused on the care and rehabilitation of street children. With the help of several different people, we were able to identify and support these children with the aim of integrating them into schools.
As Comboni Missionaries, we arrived in Turkana in 1976, and Katilo was our first presence. Now we have two communities: mine, in Lokichar, opened as a parish in 1991, and Nakwamekwi, founded in 2003. From that seemingly distant 1976 to 2026, many things have changed in the Turkana district, mostly for the better. We should not be ashamed to proclaim to the four winds that the Diocese of Lodwar is one of the institutions that has contributed most to overcoming the great problems, challenges, and lack of resources of our people.
Not only have schools, dispensaries, and rehabilitation centres for the blind, deaf, and disabled been built, but we also help widows, orphans, and street children. When we have suffered famine and epidemics, when vaccination campaigns are organised, or when we fight malaria, pneumonia, or typhoid, the open hands and generous hearts of our missionaries, our local priests and faithful, and the men and women religious of many congregations have always been felt, leaving and continuing to leave an indelible mark.
The parish of Lokichar, which has numerous chapels within a 50-kilometre radius, has also grown in recent years. In 2024, the parish of Lochwa was created from it and entrusted to the care of two fidei donum priests. Furthermore, this year we are transferring the new parish of Kakalel to the Missionaries of Yarumal. The harvest is plentiful, and the workers who dedicate themselves daily are few, but despite this, the Word of God continues to be celebrated and shared in the silence of dawn and dusk. Our passion for the Mission and for the poorest and most abandoned gives us the wings to look closely and gaze into the distance.