Missionary nuns were made of stern stuff in the old days. They had to be.
When Teresa Kearney first set foot on the shores of Lake Victoria in 1903, Uganda was a disease-ridden colony. The journey was a dangerous adventure, so it was understood there would be no going home, ever.
The local bishop doubted if the frail Wicklow woman would survive the rigours of tropical Africa. But the steely Franciscan known as Sister Kevin was undeterred. Working at first under a mango tree, she began the work with the sick and destitute, and later founded her own congregation, the Little Sisters of St Francis of Assisi.
Sister Kevin became Mother Kevin and was soon referred to as the "flame in the bush" by the local Baganda tribespeople. These days, the Little Sisters are still tough but, with funds drying up, they have become wily, too.
President McAleese visited the sisters' centre in Nkokonjeru yesterday as part of her tour of east Africa to pay tribute to the work of Irish missionaries. As she toured the Providence Cheshire Home - a home and work centre for disabled young people which is in danger of going broke - the message was clear. "Money," Sister Margaret Awor said, "is such a problem."
Sister Awor brought the President through a leather workshop where young men and women, mainly crippled by polio, worked busily making shoes. The sizes were coming out all wrong because of old equipment, Sister Awor said. And as for the wooden shoe moulds: "I am afraid that the wood is wearing out," she said.
The home is in dire straits because its main earner, the chicken business, has declined. A contract to deliver 600 chickens a week to the Serena Hotel in Kampala had been cancelled, she said, when the hotel learned the nuns lacked even a refrigerated van. Over lunch in the dining hall, Mother Superior Sister Elizabeth Ochieng gave "a million thanks" to the Irish Government for a recent grant of £46,000. "We are hoping for more of where that came from," she said.
Mrs McAleese was welcomed like a hero by the Little Sisters. Their work with the poor and in education had "helped to build a nation" in Uganda, she said.
The President later visited Mother Kevin's grave, where she was greeted by a group of singing nuns. Some were in their 80s and most were Ugandans. There are just 23 foreign Little Sisters, mostly Irish, remaining in Uganda, and it has been over 10 years since the last one arrived.