MollyKieransoffto workwithMother Theresa

IN JUST one week’s time a middle-aged Drogheda housewife will embark on a journey which few people half her age would consider making. Mrs. Mollie Kierans of Grove Road, is 56 years and when she retired, at the end of the summer term, after 17 years on the catering staff of St. Ita’s Special School, she would have been excused if she had chosen to relax and take it easy.

But Mollie has, for years, been nursing an ambition to go to India to help in the wonderful work of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

On Thursday next she sets off, alone, on the long trek. Her destintion is Mother Teresa’s house for the dying in Kalighat outside Calcutta.

It is almost a journey into the unknown. For Mollie, at this stage, has little more than her fare to New Delhi. On Thursday, October 23, she takes a Crossan Coach to London and waits around that city until she gets a flight out to New Delhi. After that she takes the road to Calcutta and Kaloghat.

If Mollie were a qualified, professional person, her journey to India would be relatively easy. If she were a nurse, a teacher or a social worker, she would probably come under the umbrella of some of the various charitable agencies.

But Mollie, a widow for many years, has had to single-handedly bring up a family while at the same time earning her living. Although she would have dearly loved to have been a qualified nurse, social worker or a policewoman she had neither the time, nor the money, in her youth, to achieve such ambitions.

All she has is the consuming desire to help for a short time in the work of Mother Teresa among the dying. She will wash or scrub for them; or just sit with them, holding their hand, consoling them. She will wash, feed, or de-lice these unfortunates but is worried that anyone will look upon her actions as mere “dogooding.”

All-her life Mollie. has been helping at some charitable work or the other in town. She has helped with Vincent de Paul, Meals on Wheels, the Senior Citizens, with Gorta, in the Widows’ Association. In her spare time she sings with St. Peter’s Choir or with the Holy Family Choir.

But charity for her does not begin and end at home. If it means going half way around the world to Calcutta to help then she is prepared to make the effort.

Mollie’s three sons, Cormac, Rory and Fintan, have helped her out with the fare.

She will be packing with her a scrubbing brush, soap and four heavy duty plastic aprons—the buckets and the basins she hopes to buy at journey’s end.

She knows that such things as soaps, syringes, bandages and other medical aids are sorely needed at Kalighat. If she had the money whe would buy these much needed items and carry them with her.

“I hate to go to Mother Teresa with so little. It would be lovely if I could take some stores to her and tell her that they had been sent to” her by the people of Drogheda.”

Mollie hopes to be able to work until Christmas.