Margaret Riordan has had to live through the deaths of three of her five children. The most recent, in Malawi, changed the course of her life. Now she is setting up a clinic in the village where her son, Billy, died, writesTed Creedon from Malawi
It was a spring Saturday afternoon when Margaret Riordan went to collect her husband, Richie, from his fishing boat at Dingle pier. Their first child, five-month-old Niamh, was in her carrycot on the back seat of the car. "We had an old banger then. I was turning on the pier, put the car in reverse, put my foot on the brake, but nothing happened. We went over the edge and backwards into the water. I can still remember thinking: This is it, we're not going to survive this. But I was a strong swimmer and a trained lifeguard," she recalls of that day in 1973.
"The next thing I knew, I was on the surface. It's all a blur after that. I do remember being on the pier and Richie and others diving into the water. But it was too late for Niamh. I was told later that I was shot through the windscreen, but I had no marks or bruises. I was in complete shock for days. I don't remember the funeral at all - nothing." What Margaret did not know at the time was that she was two months pregnant with their first son, Billy, who was born in November that year.
Margaret, or Mags, as most people know her, had met Richie when an interest in Irish brought her to Dingle on residential language courses organised by University College Cork. From Dublin, he had left a stifling career in insurance to become a fisherman.
She had grown up in Cork city, the eldest of five children. Her father, Victor Dillon, was a consultant physician. After her Leaving Certificate she was expected to follow a medical career, but a further seven years of study held no appeal.
"I joined the queue for medicine at UCC but changed to arts. The idea was just to get a degree and have a good time in the process - fortunately, I managed to do both."
After college, and just 21, she and Richie were married and set up home in Dingle. After the birth of Billy, their second son, Luke, arrived in June, 1976.
In October of that year, when Luke was almost five months old, Mags and some friends drove to Ventry strand. She stayed in the car while the others walked along the beach. "I felt too cold to go out. Luke was asleep in his carrycot on the back seat. So I just sat there, reading The Irish Times and keeping quiet so as not to wake him. When the others came back we drove home, and as I lifted Luke from the carrycot I suddenly realised he was dead."
Luke was rushed to the local hospital. Too distraught to go inside, Mags waited in the car-park while the hospital staff tried desperately to revive her baby.
"They said it was a cot death. I joined the Cot Death Association after that and learned that Luke's case was a classic one, based on research at the time. I remember the funeral. Going to the graveyard. I never thought I'd be there again, not so soon.
"Richie and I were devastated and people wonder how we coped with another death. They still wonder if I grieved. People grieve in different ways. How do you define grief? Does it mean accepting it, fighting it, burying it? You can't control grief, because it's a necessary part of one's existence. I feel that I have grieved. I don't fear grief any more."
Mags and Richie had two more children. Emma was born in 1977 and Jennifer in 1982. Richie gave up fishing and they opened a restaurant in Dingle. The seasonal nature of the business allowed the family to travel widely, spending long periods in the US and Scotland. But the marriage failed. She and Richie separated in 1986 and were given joint custody of the children. During those extended visits to the US, Mags had trained as an aerobics teacher; she worked in the profession for the next 10 years.
In 1995, while watching a television report on the war in Bosnia, she was so moved that she decided to get involved in relief work. "I contacted some people in Cork who were organising aid for Bosnia and offered to help. They needed everything from food and clothing to medicines and tools. I asked a friend of mine in Dingle to help, and we decided to fill a 40ft container with donated supplies. The response in Kerry was overwhelming and we managed to fill three containers."
Mags and her friend flew to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, in March, 1996, then travelled by road to the town of Bosanka Krupa, in northern Bosnia, where they helped supervise the distribution of the supplies. "It was an unbelievable experience for me. I had never been in a war-torn country before - with hostilities going on. We drove for hundreds of miles past burnt-out homes. These people had nothing and the women and children were suffering terribly. Most of the men were gone, either dead or fighting. I'll never forget one incident. A woman came up to us. She begged us to take her only son to safety and give him an education. She was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice."
Three years later tragedy struck again and Mags had to come to terms with the loss of her only surviving son, Billy. "It was on a Monday morning in February 1999. I was back at UCC doing a postgraduate course in counselling but was home in Dingle for the weekend. A knock came to the door and one of Billy's friends was standing there. He had had a phone call from Malawi, saying Billy was missing. I immediately said: He's not missing, he's dead."
Billy's seasonal travels as a child and regular disruption to school life had not interfered with his education. He achieved a BA from University College Galway. But he had caught the travel bug and from the age of 17 had been backpacking around the world. Billy, now 25, had arrived in Cape Maclear, in Malawi, the previous Saturday. It was his third visit to the African village, which is on the southern shore of Lake Nyasa, also known as Lake Malawi.
Returning along the sandy beach from a local bar with some friends that night, he decided to go for a swim. The friends sat on the beach and waited. When he failed to return they became anxious. Hearing no response to their shouts they launched a dugout canoe, but they could not find him. They were concerned but not alarmed. Billy was a powerful swimmer and a trained diver, so they decided he had come ashore at some other point along the beach. They returned to their cabins. When Billy failed to appear the next morning they raised the alarm and a search began. His body was recovered from the bottom of the lake, just 25 metres from the shore, on Monday evening. Later that night the news was relayed to his family in Dingle.
"The waiting was horrendous. I didn't know anything about Cape Maclear at that time. I didn't realise how remote it was or that the nearest phone was almost an hour away," says Margaret. "It took two weeks to bring his body home. Some of the family wanted to go out there, but our Department of Foreign Affairs advised against it. I must say they were wonderful and organised everything."
There was no post-mortem in Malawi. The family was given the option, but advised that the results could be inconclusive and would delay the funeral for a further five days. The cause of Billy's death remains a mystery. "I'll never know what happened on the beach that night. Nobody heard a cry for help. He may have suffered a brain haemorrhage. Anyway, the end result is the same. It doesn't really matter. He's gone now and I'll go to my grave not knowing what really happened."
Billy's death was to change the course of her life. Exactly a year later she travelled to Cape Maclear to place a memorial stone near the shore where he had drowned. The inscription on it, "This is Paradise," was taken from Billy's description of Malawi in his last e-mail to his family.
Mags has just returned from her seventh visit to Cape Maclear. Now she divides her life between helping the villagers, teaching English in the local school and working part-time as a teacher and counsellor in Kerry.
On each visit she brings school books, medicine, money and food. She is respected by the villagers and loved by the children, who surround her, crying, "Mags here! Mags here!" whenever she walks through the village. She is learning Chichewa, or Nyanja, the national language of Malawi.
Donations from friends and family allow Mags to send several local teenagers to secondary boarding schools far from their native village. They know their only chance of a better life is through education.
Malawi is promoted as the "warm heart of Africa" in tourist brochures. Cape Maclear is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but the poverty, food shortages and failing fishing and tourism industries mean it is no paradise for most locals. There is no electricity, no phones, no local authority or medical services. Homes are washed away by seasonal floods and poor roads add to the isolation.
AIDS-related diseases are endemic. Malaria is common and cholera is not unknown. Lake Nyasa, like all African lakes, is a breeding ground for the blood flukes that cause bilharzia, a chronic disease. These tiny parasitic flatworms infest snails in the lake as young, then live in birds and mammals, including humans, as adults. The eggs they lay in the blood vessels usually end up in urine, reinfecting water sources, but they can pass throughout the body. Repeated infestion can damage the liver, intestines, lungs and bladder.
Anyone swimming in the lake must assume they have been infected. Local children spend hours playing in the water. Bilharzia can be treated with a day or two of drugs, but the medicine is beyond the means of most villagers.
Mags has decided to set up a medical centre in the village. She has established the Billy Riordan Memorial Trust here and is in the process of setting up a non-governmental organisation in Malawi. She has secured a building with no doors or windows and with a badly damaged roof. Working with a village committee, Mags intends to refurbish and equip the building. She has commitments from doctors and nurses in Ireland and the Netherlands to work as volunteers.
The cost of setting up the centre will be more than €100,000. She has raised some money and will soon begin a more serious campaign to finance the project and meet annual running costs. The task is hugely ambitious, considering the remoteness of the village and her limited resources, but she hopes to begin work on the centre later this year.
Mags Riordan is a remarkable woman. To some she is a mother of sorrows. She smiles at that denomination but does not see herself as a tragic figure. She is courageous, tenacious and energetic, with a determination to succeed where others would falter or concede defeat.
Her unyielding inner strength has allowed her to redirect her heartbreak towards helping those less equipped to survive the trials of daily existence. Her philosophical attitude to life's challenges is simple: "I never consider failure. Something always turns up."
You can make a donation to the Billy Riordan Memorial Trust (charity no. 15091) through Bank of Ireland, Dingle, Co Kerry. Account no 85770070, sort code 90-57-07.
See also www.billysmalawiproject.com