THE DIARY
CHINYINGI seems to be quite a place.
Situated in the North-Western Province of Zambia, on the west bank of the Zambezi River, it is an outpost, even those living in the immediate area will say it’s isolated.
And that’s today. Imagine what it was like 20, 30, 40 years ago.
But one local woman played her part in bringing life to this area - Sr Moira Devitt.
A member of the Sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM), she arrived in Africa around 1959 and saw it all.
Her story is an amazing and inspirational one.
Sr. Moira, formerly from Thomas Street, joined the Congregation of the Franciscan Missionary of the Divine Motherhood in 1946 after leaving St. Philomena’s School in Duke Street.
She was accepted into the Order in Ballinasloe and spent most of her early religious life in the Franciscans HQ in Surrey.
She qualified as a state registered nurse and midwife and worked in the Order’s hospitals in Surrey before undertaking missionary work in 1952.
She went on to spend 40 years in Africa, working in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Back in the 1980s, with a handful of Sisters and some native help, they ran a 72 bed hospital on the edge of the Sahara and lived day to day, maintaining the health of a people weakened by malnutrition and ravaged by AIDS.
A lot of young mothers, some of them just 30 or 35 were dying. Infants were basically adopted by the nuns.
Sister Moira worked as a nurse and obstretician and saw life on the edge.
Even the price of seeds were beyond the grasp of the poor. And apart from the land along the Zambezi River, the ground was mainly sandy and infertile.
The people, said Sister Moira at the time, are desperately poor and short of even the very basic essentials, cooking oil, beans, nuts, rice, salt and soap. “They come to us for everything, we do our best to help them.”
Sr Moira’s work back then did hit home in Drogheda. The wonderful Drogheda Cares at Christmas campaign raised funds for her hospital, helping to start up a primary health care programme and a young nun over from America established a vegetable growing programme and got a turbine to begin a hydro electric dam so they could get free electricity, courtesy of the free flowing Zambezi.
In 1992, she returned to Surrey and then to Portiuncla but a new phase of the Franciscan Order’s association with Drogheda began in 2000 with the coming of three Franciscan sisters to the town.
Their arrival came in the wake of the departure from Drogheda of the Franciscan friars who had been based in the area for almost 750 years.
The ‘new team’ was made up of Sr. Eileen Murphy, Sr. Moira and Sr. Marie Coyle, a trained radiographer and originally from Plymouth, England.