by Sr. Sheila Devane, MMM Ireland 20.06.2026
I want to describe one of the efforts of the School of Nursing in Dareda Hospital, Tanzania, to address by far the biggest health issue in their area – malaria – and of how they zealously tried to bring understanding and prevention of this immense public health issue to the people in their immediate locality.
The student nurses were receiving training in delivering appropriate health education to the patients in the hospital, to the relatives caring and cooking for them, to their own peers and to the parishioners. A decision was made to move out a little further to a place quite near the hospital from where a high percentage of the sickest patients came – a small market village – Dareda Kati.
The nurse tutor, Sr. Nuala Horgan, and her colleagues in the School of Nursing accepted the challenge and eagerly set about creating very large diagrams of the various bugs and micro-organisms that caused the most serious illnesses to patients brought into the hospital.
The diagrams could be proudly, but honestly, described as “world class.” They were large, detailed, delicately coloured and on large white cardboard that was covered in plastic to keep them clean. Indeed, they were pretty scary too!
On their first outing, three second year students – Clotilda, Theresia and Martha – went along to the village with Sr. Nuala herself, Tom a driver and plenty of the local tea in flasks and, of course, some lovely mandazis, the local donuts. They were met by a large crowd of people, some selling their own wares as it was a market, others returning from mass and many there having heard the announcement of this special health education event.
Clotilda and a companion assisting her got up on the back of the land rover – this was their stage and a very good one it proved to be! She took the loudspeaker and called the people. The teaching began. As she talked of a particular bug a suitable diagram of it was shown all around from the stage, then some people moved close, asked to have the diagram right in front of them and were duly assisted. All was going well.
Then Martha took to the stage, she was a native of that locality, greeted the people in the tribal language, they clapped; then she spoke in Swahili with a member of the audience quickly volunteering himself as interpreter! Her topic was malaria and she gave an impassioned presentation to a village where one could hear a pin drop. The traders stopped their work, moved over to the stage, and were captivated by what she said and by the splendid diagrams. They were truly magnificent. Everyone wanted to see them, touch them and some would come near and then turn away quickly in fright!
It is customary in Tanzania to thank people for their efforts so when Martha finished and came off the Land Rover an elderly man was helped up, a seat was supplied, he slowly sat down and looked attentively at the audience. He started by saying he hadn’t much to say – again as is customary there – and proceeded to talk for about fifteen minutes, maybe longer. He spoke in both languages, was most articulate and clearly had listened to every word said. He commended Sr. Nuala for her great work as a teacher reminding her that this was the most prized profession in Tanzania, to be called Teacher. He spoke of the great effort of the Sisters and nurses in coming to Dareda Kati, how they were so well equipped with a platform, loud-speaker, and diagrams and how well each one delivered her material. He talked of how the people all appreciated them and even stopped their normal business to listen and take note.
Then he stopped; the people knew he wasn’t finished; there was a pause, even a long pause, he fixed his hat on his head, looked around, and with a deep voice continued:
“I am old, so old I don’t know my real age, but I know I am old. I have lived here all my life.
I have seen people get sick and die of malaria and of many other diseases. But one thing I have never seen, and I believe no one has ever seen in Dareda Kati or maybe in all of Tanzania is a mosquito as big as the one we have just seen on that board. I want to say to the people here if this is the creature that causes the malaria to the people in this locality, we will be alright; our own mosquito found here is very small, smaller than my thumbnail, ah much smaller so we are all safe. We don’t have any mosquitos like this great big one! Amen”
There is always more to learn; every day is truly a school day.
What we hope to impart and how it is understood can be so different!
Our work in Primary Health Care has taught us all that valuable lesson many times over.
We continue.
by Sr. Rita Kelly, MMM Ireland 17.06.2026
Recently, Sr. Sheila Campbell came up to me. She knows I had written a book about Mother Mary Martin, our Founder, told through the eyes of a child. I co-wrote this book a couple of years ago with Dr. Briege Rafferty, a dear friend. Sheila also knew I was beginning work about the small group of women who surrounded Mother Mary and who were key to the success of her vision. “Write me a blog about Magdalen”, she asked. So here goes…
Sr. Magdalen O’Rourke, known as Brigid (Bridie to her family) was one of the first pioneers to support Marie Martin in her vision for a new missionary congregation. She was born in 1909 From an early age Bridie was a prolific writer. Through her letters and memoirs, one gets a picture of her life story. While working in the Civil Service in Dublin for “eight years a happy and fulfilled life” a call to religious life to train as a nurse and go to Africa emerged. She was a woman of her era. There was a strong Missionary Movement both in Ireland and at Global level.
Through her Spiritual Director she was introduced to Marie Martin. From the first meeting, in 1934, Bridie was inspired by Marie’s vision of a new missionary order to serve the needs of Mother and Child. But Marie, an astute woman, recognized Bridie’s leadership, business and organizational skills.
In 1935 Bridie accompanied Marie to the Benedictine Monastery in Glenstal, Co. Limerick, for Spiritual formation. In 1936 “as a half a midwife” she set sail for Nigeria. She spent only two years on “mission”. By 1938 she was back in Ireland. She was the trusted assistant to Mother Mary Martin promoting MMM, fund-raising, and the first Editor of the magazine. She was adaptable, courageous and responded to Mother Mary Martin’s wishes with the attitude of Fiat- “God’s will be done”
This good and faithful servant was called home in November 2008 a few days before her 99th Birthday.
by Sr. Sheila Campbell, MMM Ireland 13.06.2026
In 1940, Sr. M. Elizabeth wrote in her letter home –
“At 5am the alarm goes off and, thinking you are in Ireland, you wonder what the cage of netting is doing all around your bed. Then you realise that you are in Africa and locked in the folds of a mosquito net. Then you remember spending half the night chasing a mosquito which accidently got in somehow before the net was let down the previous evening. You could not imagine anything so tantalising. He comes along and sings a little buzz in your ear and then disappears. A sense of duty compels you to try and catch him in case you would get malaria and you would get no sympathy for your laziness. The next step is to get a match and light your bush lamp and then the chase begins which, I needn’t tell you, is often a lengthy one because he is the size of nothing.”
After reading this I had a memory of sitting in our little chapel in Salvador, Brazil, and casually asking the Sisters: “Does the sound of all these mosquitos not bother you?” They looked at me blankly and then at one another. “There are no mosquitos, Sheila”, Maria ventured.
Then it slowly dawned on me – what I was experiencing was tinnitus, due to hearing loss, and not mosquitos! They are annoying little inscets, but can’t be blamed for everything!!
Sometime after moving from Boyle to Dundalk in 1954 a few neighbours in our estate – Muirhevna – remarked to my mother that my face seemed to be growing very round. They said it in a way that meant I was sick or something. This needed a trip to our doctor who believed there was nothing wrong with me at all and that I was a lovely little girl and so good at answering his questions. Well, they weren’t hard questions for me! The good thing was that the talk of my round face got me a trip to Dublin by train with mammy and a neighbour on December 8th when all the “down country” women went to the city for their Christmas shopping. I was being specially treated and looked after by being brought along whilst my siblings spent the day off school at home in Dundalk with Daddy. They said it was not fair.by Jo Wardhaugh Doyle Ireland 06.06.2026
What saved me from my storm and fire 
Michael Angelo, Glenna Good acre, and August Rodin. These are three magnificent people and their statues, which held my soul long enough to heal. The first time I saw the Pieta was in 1990 in Rome. My eyes opened and I saw with the eye of my soul a stirring pain deep within, from where I did not know. It touched what I thought was grief, and I thought to myself how ridiculous that was, but I looked at the magnificent marble with living sinews in their hands. The large, sad, helplessness over awed me, but the aliveness within the statue filled that area of the Vatican. It would be many years later that I would be triggered into understanding the depth of that original feeling.
Over time I would think of that strength and dire disturbing compassion of holding the lifeless Christ over Mary’s lap. By that time, I was in Attleboro, MA USA doing my War therapy. One of the therapists was a Vietnam veteran, I was intrigued as I grew up watching on TV the nightly horror of that war. These vets had a look about them. Jim Stone was a Vietnam veteran and a therapist.
He made us do our own wall!! I had not realised there was a Vietnam Wall in Washington, but there was. With thousands of names on it RIP. If you stand in front of it, you are in the wall, your reflection and the wall are one. That sums up a lot.
We were to make our own personal wall. We were asked to come to the front of the group and write two people’s names whom we had loved and lost, and we were to verbalise their names.
I feared.
Two by two our classes wall grew. The names of our loved ones that we had lost. From the abyss of my soul, I heard a groaning, a banshee wail, that I was scared to hear. My breath was gone and I stuttered out.
“A man whose name I never knew.”
It was such a shock to me that that grief, loss, breathlessness was there, so deeply embedded within me. The boy really, was killed in Gulu, Uganda in 1981 and I witnessed it. A growing pain erupted. A man whose name I did not know, but I loved him with an intense love and always will. I realised that I have been his witness, his Centinel, for 45 years and I will continue to be.
Worn out completely after that session, I was handed a magazine which contained a wonderful article with photos about The Washington Wall and the surrounding war sculptures.
The first sculpture put up was simply called War Nurses. I saw it and absorbed it. That was me. It was also a modern-day Pieta. There were three nurses. One held the dying body of the nameless soldier over her lap, later I found the sculptor’s name was Glenna Goodacre. She had named that first nurse Hope. The second nurse was an African American woman. She stands looking up towards the medivac helicopter searching the sky for Divine help. She has been called Faith. The last exhausted nurse sitting on the ground was called Charity. She stares at an empty helmet. Reflecting on the psychological tolls of war.
How this statue helped me and accompanied me on my journey. This was my Emmaus walk and they were attending to me all the way. So often people get fed up that you are not fixed. But these war nurses strengthened me through the bewildering journey of war, hatred, vengeance, and grief. A mindless Pandora’s box. Hope, Faith and Charity both counteracted and dragged me at times into new life.
In the same magazine was an article about August Rodin. This felt like a gift from Hope as I was feeling hollow with loss. But this Rodin sculpture gave hope. This gift was that hope, and love could be a future. The sculpture was called The Eternal Spring, although wrongly named in the article. It was vulnerable, voluptuous love. With two bodies arching passionately with pleasure over each other. Their bodies nearly entwined with erotic Joy, and I thought of the Eroticism of the Song of Songs.
Their bodies in similar positions as the injured Vet and the Pieta. Now there was the eternal spring. The woman lay over the man happily erotic in her love making. Like the song of songs, it was crying out,
” Let me kiss you with the kisses of my lips.”
From the death arching of the Pieta to the erotic arch of the life in the eternal spring, yes, hope filled me that new life was possible. I suppose this is what resurrection is about?
Hope from the war nurses. Their experiences handed over to other generations, other nurses, And Rodin over the decades showing that passion never dies. The three statues, made for different purposes over different centuries, had a connection. It was love, beautiful, connected love. And there is a journey to be made. The Journey from the lifelessness of grief to the fullness of love.
For many years I wondered, how do you move from grief to grace? Grace. Grace will bring me home, so the song says and what I wrote in my book in 1987 in Addis Ababa. Grace. I am not even sure what it is, but it is from grief to grace and many on my Emmaus walk are grace for me. Remember, every time you stop and see or stop and listen or stop and carry or stop and laugh or play or give your time, that’s grace. But I know I have been given grace in abundance, and I am able to hold all three sculptures with gratitude for the Graces. Grace is from people who saw me. People who saw my needs and gave grace graciously. Healing me. Slowly healing me. Walking with the gifts given by these three statues, these three nurses Hope, Faith, and Charity.
For all that, I am grateful.
by Sr. Margaret Anne Meyer, MMM USA 02.06.2026
Another visitor to Ngarantoni was Sr. Ursula Sharpe, MMM. We were invited to hear her explanation of how HIV/AIDS developed in Uganda. It was heart breaking to know that so many people were suffering there. They had been through the ravages of war. The border town was practically wiped out. One woman lost all her twenty-one children to AIDS and had thirty-five grandchildren to care for. Sr. Ursula started an outreach team to care for the people who were discharged home to die. She taught us the symptoms and signs, and we began looking for it in Makiungu.
Professional people like teachers were returning to their villages in a much-weakened condition. Some had thrush, Kaposi sarcoma, fungal infections, and/or tuberculosis. There were many articles in the medical journals which we received from time to time. Initially the only way of testing was to take blood samples and send the specimens to Nairobi with the Flying Doctor Service. This could take some months to get the results which were sent by radio tel. Confidentiality? No one around had these radio tels so we felt all right using this method until we obtained our own HIV testing kits. We would the send the positive results for confirmation. This took several months. In the meantime, we had to make decisions as to who would be suitable blood donors. We also realized that there was a 3-month window period that a negative result could contain the virus.
We decided to have a questionnaire form. This was obtained from gathering our findings from the history and clinical examination as to who would be highly suspicious of having the HIV virus. Some of the questions were:-
What is your name, age, sex, and occupation?
Are you married, divorced, single, or widowed?
How many sex partners have you?
Do you have a skin rash, unexplained fever, weight loss, cough, weakness?
We found that women over twenty-five who were not married or who were widowed were at an extremely elevated risk. Men, who were twenty-eight and not married, were truck or taxi drivers, lived near borders or traveled frequently were also at considerable risk. Professional people were also at risk because they could travel and had money for prostitution.
At first, we had five positive cases and as the years followed increasing numbers were discovered. In the beginning we did not know how to counsel them. Fr. Joinet, a Missionary of Africa, told us not to be afraid of talking to them. If we were frightened, how do you think the patient felt? This gave us some encouragement. I remember not being able to tell a man he was HIV positive. He was also suffering from tuberculosis. During his return visit, I asked him if he had heard of AIDS. He told me he had read all the posters in the hospital, and he thought his sickness fitted the description of AIDS. I felt relieved and I think he did, too. Another woman screamed and shouted that she was going to kill herself. I was very worried about her. She returned in a few days. Her husband had left her, and she was returning home to her mother. We had obtained a donation which I asked if it could be used to help people with HIV/AIDS. She was given money and medicines and asked to return. I was soon going on leave and never saw her again. She was at peace with herself. I later learned that women who were faithful to their husbands became extremely upset if they learned they had the virus because in their understanding, only prostitutes got AIDS.
Sr. Noeleen Mooney was a tremendous help in getting the laboratory testing of HIV/AIDS established. There is much more to say but that will be found in another story.
by Jo Wardhaugh Doyle Ireland 30.05.2026
What saved me from my storm and fire was poetry and art. Both modalities which bypass reason and control.
The two great female poets that I love are Mary Oliver and Emily Dickenson.
There insights on life are powerful. Full of power, full of light hope and direction; Yet poets who write as they do I believe have done their journey, struggled with it, and pushed beyond.
It is impossible to write as they do without the searing wound and depth of insight and wisdom.
Mary Oliver shares her wisdom through her own journey of serene darkness. Looking at the amazement of the leaves and clouds in many ways saved Mary Oliver.
A quiet mystic who wanted to be left alone with her words of freedom. Her words liberated her and she passed the torched poems into my soul.
The Journey: I read it and read it and read it till it somehow started to liberate me from my own shackles to begin my own Journey.
Her poetry stops you.
You must stop and hear about the amazing Sun, or the snow geese where you will hold your breath to try and stop time.
Awe and amazement, simplicity counteracting convoluting lives. Yes, poetry was better for me than any doctor at one point.
Poetry has a way of understanding you clearly and in that liberation of understanding you know you are not alone.
That was strength, which was grounding to keep moving forward knowing that someone at some point felt the same.
Surely that is the point.
Emily Dickonson who does not name her poems, had a poem which accompanied me for thirty years. Thirty years to begin to grasp its profundity. Revelation after revelation at a depth of pain so much deeper than most understanding of a fixable ailment. It walks with you and you walk with it. A gift in time but these words along with the journey, carried me, strengthened me balanced me.
Emily Dickenson says.
There is a pain so utter.
It swallows substance up.
Then covers the Abyss with trance.
So memory can step
Around across upon it
As with a swoon
Goes safely where an open eye
Would drop him bone by bone.
That poem has been my journey.
The two poems befitting a complex life yet healthily accompanying growth and freedom, insight, and laughter.
Poetry if we let it sink into our souls are our seeds of life’s transformation.
by Sr. Sheila Campbell, MMM Ireland 27.05.2026
This year’s tensions in the Middle East have us all worried. As well as the fuel crisis, there is also the rising cost of fertilizer – will this affect our food supply in the year to come?
Luckily, MMM has the answer! Rather MMM had the answer back in 1940 in one of our early MMM Magazines, written during the Second World War. Let’s see how relevant it still is today…
“With present food restrictions and rising cast of so many articles, the housewife needs to manage the household expenditure with great care.
Great for this will be the avoidance of all waste, right balance of different classes of food, and the obtaining of the maximum food value from what is used. We now give some general hints.
Use brown bread rather than white, especially for children.
Avoid using too much meat. Cheaper cuts such as brisket and shin of beef, breast of mutton or sheep’s head are as nourishing as the best joints,
Meat can be made to go further by serving other nourishing and cheaper foods with it, such as lentils, dried peas, haricot beans, barley, etc.
Get the maximum of food value from fresh vegetables by steaming or stewing them with meat rather than by boiling them. If boiling them, keep the water for soup.
Waste no bread. Use scraps for puddings and dumplings.”
Well, what do you think? Could we use this advice, or would you like to add more?
by Nadia Ramoutar MMM Communications Coordinator Ireland 23.05.2026
Looking at what is in the news and what is happening with world politics, it can have the effect of becoming almost “normal”. Oh, there were bombs, deaths, threats…and on and on. It is like a soundtrack playing constantly behind the activities of our everyday life. But if we don’t in some way mute the noise of tragedy, we cannot function with the tasks and responsibilities required of us. But, we also don’t want to become robots or machines who don’t care about peace or seeking it, and have resolved ourselves to tragedy.
What are we to do?
Many of us find that prayer, reflection, walks in nature and talking to a trusted person can all be helpful. But even still it is easy to feel helpless. We are faced with challenges that seem greater than any effort we can possibly give.
For me, part of my coping is to look at what I can actually do in the world and how I can make a difference. This has brought me fully committed to issues for global health for girls and women. In particular, I am working hard to promote and educate about the MMM Sisters work in maternal health and pushing an agenda that all women deserve to survive a healthy childbirth experience.
Sadly, in parts of the world, this is not the case. For those who do survive in Sub-Saharan Africa, too many are left with a severe wound in the vaginal area known as an obstetric fistula. We have created a coalition of other people and agencies who also care about this issue called Safe Birth 4 All. Since this is a wound experienced during prolonged labour it can be prevented and also treated. It used to be a major issue in our western world here but for the past 100 years or so it has not been here due to improvements in health care and other quality of life markers for women.
So this May we are hosting a half-day Safe Birth 4 All Conference in Dublin. People can attend online or can join us in person for no cost. Lunch is provided for those who attend in person. I invite you to get educated about this issue which not enough people know about or understand is a social justice and humanitarian issue along with a medical one. It is brutal to the girl and women’s mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health as they are subjected to neglect and abuse as they leak urine and faeces uncontrollably. What a horrible experience!
Our website www.safebirth4all.com has more information and if you email us at safebirth4all@gmail.com we will gladly you sign you up. If you can’t attend continue to please support us in prayer or with donations. This is a war we can win.
by Sr. Sheila Campbell, MMM Ireland 20.05.2026
The extracts below I found in early MMM Magazines. Yes, some of the language is a little dated, but the concept of dealing with shortages and “make do” is all too real as we face the consequences of modern warfare.
“Today I got a parcel I sent to myself from London – I’d forgotten what was in it” writes Sr. Margaret Garnett from Tanzania. “It was a nice surprise to get two writing pads. Paper is in very short supply out here. I have started to tidy up the old files”. Old reports etc. are being retrieved “so that where the back of the page is blank we can use for letters etc.” At a very practical level this is one of the daily dilemmas of a Medical Missionary of Mary.
From a neighbouring mission, also in Northern Tanzania, Sr. Nuala, while on home leave recently, described how the paper shortage affected her by asking us to use our imagination. “Can you imagine yourself before a class of intelligent, highly motivated students who do not even have copybooks in which to write their notes? This is the situation I face daily in the classroom of the School of Nursing in Dareda.”
“With enthusiasm and a sense of mission, Sisters of the international congregation of the Medical Missionaries of Mary set out to bring Christian hope and service filled with empathy. However limitations, shortages and cultural differences have to be faced. The English born, Doctor, Sister Margaret put it this way; “sometimes I really wonder if God called me to be an MMM in order to search for spare parts for land rovers and motor-bicycles in order that our village health work can continue. But I stay put because basically I am at peace, and I believe that God uses these situations of shortages and other difficulties to teach us that the work is His and not ours. The needs are enormous, and we only touch the surface, so despair could set in, and an attitude of ‘what’s the use’? Well, maybe materially it isn’t much use, but it is all in God’s plan and maybe our small contribution can be like the leaven which leavens the whole loaf eventually.”
