Sr Mary Sweeney’s mission in postwar Sierra Leone: enough to restore faith of greatest cynic

There was no mistaking the presence of the Catholics in Makeni, a large town three hours inland from Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

Past the dilapidated shops, the shacks passing for homes and streets in such bad disrepair that even the potholes have potholes, stood the best building in the town – St Joseph’s.

This pristine concrete complex of schools is home for Sr Mary Sweeney, a nun from Donegal who has spent the past 40 years in Sierra Leone.

She is a modest woman, who over the course of the day underplays her extraordinary life in one of the poorest countries in the world, where she is devoted to giving deaf children a chance in life.

Her selfless work through the "blood diamond" war and with these doubly disadvantaged children would restore the most jaded cynic's faith in the missionaries, whose only association for many Irish adults of a certain vintage is the unPC "pennies for the black babies" collection box.

Surviving the war
Over her time here, Sr Mary has been evacuated three times. During the war, the rebels made the compound their headquarters. Initially it was just used as a makeshift hospital, with the nuns still in situ. But, as the war intensified, the rebels installed ground-to-air missiles – one pointed over the town from the verandah outside the dining room and eventually the nuns were forced to leave.

One of the school buildings was used a brothel, which Sr Mary says matter-of-factly the soldiers were reluctant to relinquish when peace broke out.

Sitting in the upstairs kitchen, Sr Mary speaks proudly of the school, its achievements and its facilities, which include running water, something of a rarity in Sierra Leone, and of her order, St Joseph’s of Cluny.

She recalls with photographic detail the horrors of the war and in particular the evacuation on December 22nd, 1998.

“We had the amputees and their families here. The bishop called us all over to see if we should go and we said ‘no, let’s wait another while’.

“Then the older sister called us to say ‘we don’t want to stay here and get killed’. The next morning the bishop came up and we went out on the road – everyone was leaving the town. We were given an hour to leave, but we didn’t leave till 1pm, because we had all the amputees.

“It was Christmas. They were so upset. Most of them were Muslims. We had holy water and we blessed them.”

To be born in Sierra Leone is a handicap in itself – eight out of 10 people here are classified as poor by the UN. Malnutrition and stunted growth is common, hurting the nation’s capacity for development.

The work Sr Mary and her team of teachers, almost all of whom are local, do is heroic on many levels. Some of them haven’t been paid for years and get by through doing other jobs outside the school.

“Two of them haven’t been paid for five years, two for four years, then there are others who haven’t been paid for two years,” says Sr Mary. The government has suspended certification of teachers while it gets rid of fraudulent “ghost” public sector workers.

It is clear from my tour of the classrooms that Sr Mary is devoted to her work – she knows each of the children and their stories, each one more horrendous than the next. One boy, lost hearing in both ears at the age of eight from an overdose of quinine by his aunt (a common mistake in anti-malarial treatment).

Another 12-year-old, writing into a blue Unicef copybook, saw his father killed during the war and was slashed at the waist before being rescued. But they are doing better than a lot of kids, with three meals a day guaranteed and a full time education.

Born in Dungloe and educated in Mount Sackville in Dublin, Sr Mary is a bit of a legend in Sierra Leone, not that she would know it. The Irish embassy in Freetown threw a party earlier this year to mark her 40 years in the country.

She is also a bit of a legend at home – Daniel O'Donnell gives her €1,000 every Christmas – enough to feed all 97 boarders three meals a day and staff for a month. TD Joe Costello donated €5,000 of Irish Aid when he visited recently, which funded a new classroom block. So little goes so far. A little more would go further.

Life as a nun wasn’t always something she aspired to. She remembers how she equivocated after doing her Leaving Cert.

“I went home for the summer and for six months I had a great time, and then I entered the nuns in Ferbane. I cried every day for two years and wanted to come home,” she says.

After studying in UCD, she went on to Scotland where she trained as a primary teacher. On on September 5th, 1972, at the age of 28, she arrived in Sierra Leone to run the school. "I hadn't a clue what to do with the deaf," she admits.

Four decades on and she is writing papers to help the government develop policy for special needs education and worrying about how to raise money in August when funds run out.

“One of the things that’s special about Sr Mary is what she does for the kids,” says Sinéad Walsh, charge d’affaires at the Irish embassy in Freetown.

"She knows the families and their backgrounds, but she is also focused on the strategic things, trying to work with the government for special needs programmes for the whole country and at the same time killing herself looking after the children. She is just a force of nature and very humble."

Disappearing donors
Despite the concerted effort made by various charities including Irish Aid to keep the school alive, St Joseph's has to battle for every cent: on current projections the school will run out of money in August, with some of their major donors finishing their programmes.

The school costs just €100,000 a year to run and shrewdly Sr Mary has opened new revenue streams – including a guest house, a farm and carpentry and tailor business where some of the school graduates work. But it’s not enough and certainly not enough to fuel Sr Mary’s ambitions for the school.

To donate to St Joseph’s or find out more about Sr Mary’s work can contact the school at stjosephshischool@gmail.com; Twitter: @lisaocarroll