Having recently steered his “flock” through the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, Greek Orthodox priest Rev Themi Adamopoulo spoke to DAVID ADAMS while back in Melbourne recently about his mission there and his amazing journey from Sixties pop star to the slums of Freetown…
Rev Themi Adamopoulo had a decision to make. An Ebola virus outbreak in late 2014 had started killing people in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown and the Greek Orthodox priest, who had worked among the poor in the area since about 2008, was faced with the choice of whether to return home to Australia or not.
In the end, it was the words of Christ which swayed him to stay. “Jesus said that when the wolf comes, the shepherd doesn’t run away, and when the danger comes, the shepherd will stay,” he recalls. “I was watching all the NGOs…one by one, they were flying out. And I thought, I’m not going to be like them, if I’m really a shepherd I’m going to stay. If it’s to die, I’ll die, but it will be to die with the people that I’m supposed to be the shepherd of.”
Rev Themi Adamopoulo
“Jesus said that when the wolf comes, the shepherd doesn’t run away, and when the danger comes, the shepherd will stay,” he recalls. “I was watching all the NGOs…one by one, they were flying out. And I thought, I’m not going to be like them, if I’m really a shepherd I’m going to stay. If it’s to die, I’ll die, but it will be to die with the people that I’m supposed to be the shepherd of.”
– Rev Themi Adamopoulo
Speaking to Sight while in Melbourne recently on a trip home to raise awareness and support for the work of the Greek Orthodox mission he heads up in Sierra Leone, Rev Themi describes the situation the people of Freetown were faced with as “apocalyptic”.
“Everything was shut down…The whole place is under shutdown and curfews – you can’t go out, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. And there can’t be any mingling….” he says. “That was the kind of atmosphere we were living in – not knowing when it would go away. And the numbers, we were listening in to the BBC and they were saying, ‘Now you’re going to get millions in Africa and it’s going to spread all over Africa.’”
His role during the crisis in which more than 3,500 people died in Sierra Leone along with almost 8,000 in other neighbouring nations and which was only declared over earlier this year, included educating people about preventative measures.
“My concern was to keep them away from Ebola, so it was constant education…I would distribute gloves and chlorine and all kinds of things so that our people, our parishioners, would not be infected by Ebola. So a lot of it had to do with clear instruction – wash your hands, make sure you don’t shake hands with anybody, don’t touch anybody particularly if they’re sweating. Just constantly drumming that into them. And I must say, none of us, no-one of our mission, got Ebola.”
Not that there weren’t moments in which he had to confront what might happen. Rev Themi recalls waking up one morning with his body covered in red blotches.
“I thought that’s a symptom, there’s no doubting it, that’s a symptom…” he recalls. “[Y]ou’re thinking, how long will it take before you die and will it be very painful and what do you do now because…it’s very contagious…[Y]ou need to do something but if you call someone, they’ll come in a space outfit, they’ll out you in a tent somewhere and just wait for you to die and then throw you in a hole.”
It was even as he was contemplating that, Rev Themi says he recalled something he read about the sequence of events which typically followed when someone had contracted Ebola with high fevers, vomiting and diarrhea typically among the initial signs. He hadn’t had any of it and even as he wondered whether he could be a unique case, he recalled he’d been washing himself with water and chlorine to help prevent infection. To his relief, he realized that it was to the chlorine that his body was reacting.
Rev Themi’s road to Sierra Leone was a complicated one. Born in Egypt, he came to Australia with his family in 1957 and grew up as what he describes as a “normal Greek Aussie teenager” in Melbourne. While still a teenager, he embarked upon a career in the music industry, reaching the heights of pop stardom in the 1960s as a member of the Beatlesque group, The Flies – which included performing with the likes of the Rolling Stones and appearing on Bandstand – before he gave that all away to attend university in search of a “real job”.
There, influenced by opposition to the Vietnam War, he became an ardent Marxist and later, influenced by The Beatles search for truth in eastern religions, embarked upon a quest for spiritual truth.
It was the latter which eventually, after he’d received a series of what he describes as ‘visions’ pointing to Christ, led Rev Themi to “give in” to Jesus. He eventually ended up attending a Catholic seminary in Melbourne and then going on to further his theological training in the US – initially at an Orthodox seminary in Boston and later at such august institutions as Brown, Harvard, and Princeton. He rose to become one of the world’s foremost Biblical scholars, mastering numerous languages before eventually returning to Australia to continue his work at an Orthodox seminary in Sydney.
It was then that, upon finding out about the work of Mother Teresa (now a Roman Catholic saint) in the slums of Calcutta (now Kolkata), he had an epiphany about helping the poor. While he was devoting himself to addressing technical theological issues “that probably three people in the world are going to get something out of”, he says he saw a woman who was making a real difference in the world.
“Look at this woman – hardly educated, no Harvard, no Princeton – but she’s doing great work, incredible work for God. What are [I] doing – arguing about one word here and one word there? Boom…So the coin dropped.”
Having expressed a desire to go to Africa to work, he soon found himself relocated, via stint in Alexandria, to work among the poor in Nairobi, Kenya. There, in what Rev Themi describes as his “PhD in missionary activity”, he oversaw the development of educational facilities that provided free education, food and clothing to children.
After some eight years, in 2007, he decided to make a change and seeing the devastation years of civil war had wrought in Sierra Leone – then the world’s poorest country, he asked and was granted leave to go and begin working in the capital Freetown.
Initially working out of hotel rooms, Rev Themi established the Holy Orthodox Mission and, aided by support from Paradise 4 Kids – an organisation established in Australia and the US to support the work – built the Waterloo Disabled Village for people who had limbs hacked off during the war. Located on a site about 20 kilometres out of Freetown, in not only includes residential facilities but a medical clinic, a dining hall/canteen, a chapel and a school for more than 800 children
The mission, which is headquartered in Freetown, also runs a teachers college and a school and church in Freetown which caters for more than 1,500 children.
The next big task is to build three orphanages for some of the thousands of children who have been orphaned by the Ebola crisis. While the mission is already looking after some 50 orphans who live with their grandparents, the orphanages, designed like small villages, will enable them to expand their work.
“What we will do is provide first-world standards with school, with medical facilities…with clothing, with housing that would be acceptable in Australia,” Rev Themi says.
It’s no surprise given his heart for the poor, that one of his favorite Bible passages can be found in Matthew 25: 35-40, a series of verses which Rev Themi says speak of Jesus’ “solidarity’ with the poor. He says he’s constantly shocked by the contrast between Australia and Freetown when he returns home.
“We’re living in a very comfortable world here; where we come from, it’s another planet. I call it a scandal of poverty – that we’re really not aware of it or if we are aware of it, we just, sort of, don’t care very much. “
– Rev Themi Adamopoulo
“We’re living in a very comfortable world here; where we come from, it’s another planet,” he says. “I call it a scandal of poverty – that we’re really not aware of it or if we are aware of it, we just, sort of, don’t care very much. “
Rev Themi says that while he can understand people have their own challenges even in a country like Australia, when two or three billion people on the planet face daily choices about whether the kids eat or go to school or beg, “it’s a scandal’.”
“Now Jesus did say ‘the poor will be with you always’…but He didn’t say that half the planet would be poor and that we’re just supposed to turn out backs to it. He was very, very concerned that we take care of the poor.
When asked about what it is that keeps him going, Rev Themi says the answer is obvious.
“It is faith, it is faith in the Lord. We know that no matter what happens, God will take care of us. If it is death, it is death. But if it is life, then as long as we breathe we have an obligation to help those who can’t help themselves. And that is what keeps you going. That satisfaction that you are making (a difference). OK, it’s a drop in the water – but it’s a drop in the water.”
