Western Sahara: The disabled Muslim who saved a church

Semlali Mohamed Fadel (Bouh)

Source: Oblates of Mary/ICN

Enrique Vaquerizo told for the Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial the incredible story of the man who saved the last Catholic Church in Dakhla, Western Sahara: Our Lady of Mount Carmel, from destruction. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate have been serving there since 1954.

The traces of the Spanish occupation in the Sahara have almost completely disappeared, but in the area of Western Sahara the signs of the Iberian presence can still be found in what was once called Villa Cisneros, now more commonly known as Dakhla.

While in the last century it was still a city that housed a flourishing Spanish citadel, today of the colonial past only retains the manholes and the church. The building can now be visited thanks to Semlali Mohamed Fadel. Although Muslim, you can meet him on Sundays while crossing the aisles of the church in his wheelchair. Sahrawi, Muslim, disabled, Semlali Mohamed Fadel, known as 'Bouh', knows and talks about the church as if it were a tourist guide. Born in 1965 and the son of a Saharawi soldier linked to the Spanish army, he was sent to Spain at the age of four after contracting polio. He spent six years in Las Palmas with the brothers of San Juan de Dios and decided to return to Sahara in 1982, but it took little to realize that Villa Cisneros as he knew it no longer existed.

After the withdrawal of the European colonial powers from North Africa, in fact, the territory of Western Sahara was occupied initially by Mauritania and then by Morocco - who invaded the territory in 1975 - driving thousands of people into the Sahara desert. Many who survived still live in refugee camps in Algeria. The establishment of a Saharawi state and the return of the refugees are among the main issues of the ongoing Western Sahara Peace Process at the United Nations.

Read on: www.omiworld.org/2019/04/10/the-disabled-muslim-who-saved-the-church/