After 39 years, 1969 Bishop Feehan High School graduate Dennis Gaboury, originally from N. Attleboro, returned to the Feehan campus from his home in the village of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to speak with students. Gaboury describes his first impressions of the village where he spends 7 months a year working with and for the orphans in the community, “I discovered a world of kindness, warmth and smiles. A world that moved from electricity to candles, tap water to buckets, abundant food to starvation. I met orphans names

Talent, Accurate, Liberty, Progress and Graduate, who struggle each day yet thrill at the smallest favor and yearn to go to school. I met Patricia, Mpumelelo, and Sipho who have nothing, yet work tirelessly to help the children in their neighborhoods. And Zibusio who worked with youth to encourage them to learn and grow, whose faith was inspirational and who died at 24 of an asthma attack because his mother did not have the money for the gasoline for the ambulance. These are the real humanitarians.”

Gaboury spoke on his own efforts there and the inspiration he finds from its people. He is a Special Advisor and co-founder of Zara’s Center, which serves the needs of the orphan community in Bulawayo and offers programs in sewing and beading, a lending library, computer training, drama, poetry, creative writing and songwriting, HIV/AIDS awareness programs, an after-school feeding program and monthly medical clinic. However, the most rewarding part of his work is running a citywide doll and toy competition for the children. Children make their dolls or wire toys out of found cloth or objects and local artists judge the submissions. This year there were about 700 submissions. Sixty of the top prizewinners are taken on a three-day adventure in Victoria Falls, and the top four winners are awarded a plane ride over Bulawayo courtesy of a local bush pilot. All the dolls and toys are then shipped to the United States and sold by Gaboury at speaking engagements. The dolls, which mean much more than the bits of wire and cloth they are made from, have been sold for $25 to $500 each. One hundred percent of the contributions are designated to the child

whose toy they bought and are received as food, shoes, tuition, clothes, books, toys or whatever the child needs most at the time. Gaboury funds the costs of the project himself and personally buys and delivers all prizes.

Dennis calls the real heroes the 70-year-old grandmothers he works with who, “having lost all their children to HIV/AIDS now find themselves caring for their grandchildren in a country with no social services. Mrs. Dlamini at 68 is in frail health and lives in a tiny (the size of a one and half car garage) two-bedroom house with seven young grandchildren. Water trickles from the tap once a week, if she’s lucky, so she has to carry buckets from a well a kilometer away. When her two-burner hotplate failed, she had to go to the bush and get firewood that she carries on her head. A few scrawny chickens peck at the ground in her tiny back yard. She keeps pigeons in a cage. She has no refrigerator and has never enjoyed a hot shower. The children are thin but healthy. They always wear a smile. In spite of her situation, she laughs and loves as if she has not a care in the world.”

And with that, Gaboury left the students with a bit of wisdom and advise in a material world, “Try to distinguish yourself with good works, rather than with good things”.