• THE NUN WHO CAME ALONG
Every now and then one hears a story too good to keep to themselves. You just want to ‘Go! Tell it on the mountain’. This is exactly how I left when I read the story I am sharing with you today. It is written by Sam Ajulo a retired ENT surgeon in the UK.
My mum said I was a toddler when I contracted Pertussis which, to the medically un-initiated, is Whooping cough. My brother, who was two and a half years older, had it at the same time. A double whammy for a young mother of 4 who had very little help. I was the youngest of four boys at the time.
Pertussis is known for uncontrollable, violent coughing which often makes it hard to breathe.
The hallmark of the disease is a frightening, highpitched whooping sound as people struggle for breath after extended coughing fits. It is sometimes lethal for babies, who can have seizures, stop breathing, develop pneumonia, or suffer brain damage.
Even today, Pertussis is most dangerous for babies who often need hospitalization when they’re infected. The mortality rate in those days was very high and still is even today. It took a heavy toll on young lives.
As it had gone on for several days, mum feared the worst as the coughing got worse and more raspy with longer periods of inspiratory stridor or breathlessness to the non-medical reader. She could feel us fading away and knew there was a high chance she could lose both children. All she could do was pray and so she did.
We lived with Mum in our village of Lampese in modern-day Edo State and it was in the early 1950s. I doubt if there were more than a thousand people in the entire village. There were no facilities for healthcare; not even nurse-led. The nearest hospital was 14 miles away in Okene, which was in another administrative region in today’s Kogi state. It was run by Catholic Nuns. There was only one main dusty road which bisected the village mainly used by huge articulated lorries to transport foodstuff and sometimes human cargo across the country that linked us to Okene. Even so, Mum had no means to take 2 sick children there. Dad lived 15 miles away near his job and mostly visited at weekends when most services were shut. The Nuns occasionally drove by and sometimes stopped to hand out sweets to little children in our village.
Mum most probably didn’t have much sleep the night before this encounter I’m about to describe. We had coughed so hard that we were almost coughing our lungs out. So, she prayed that a Nun from the hospital would pass by our village.
Lampese is between two hills and the echoes of vehicles approaching some miles away could be heard several minutes before they got to the village. Mum’s prayer was answered because early that day, in the morning, she heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and she quickly picked both of us up; one in each arm, and stood by the road about 20 yards from our front door hoping that it would be one of the Nuns from the Hospital called Kuroko. As the car was about 200 yards away, she stepped unto the middle of the road hoping that the driver of the vehicle would stop to take a look at her 2 sick children and offer some help. It was a Caucasian Nun, most likely Irish, as most were, that was in the car and she walked up to find out why mum stood in the middle of the road carrying 2 children.
She must have noticed both children coughing violently. Thankfully, the Nun spoke Igbira; the language spoken in Okene and the environs, which mum understood and spoke fluently. As soon as the Nun saw us coughing, she went back to the car and brought a bottle with some syrup and told Mama how to administer it to us and she left. Mama went back home, followed the instructions and in a few days we both fully recovered.
Mum welled up each time she told this story about how God orchestrated the rescue; that she heard the car approaching and was able to get to the road on time; that it was a Nun; a total stranger in the car; that the Nun had the right medicine to give, and also spoke a language Mama understood. And Mum never saw the Nun again.
I think you will agree all these couldn’t have been coincidences? In my simple mind, it is easier to say it was an angel sent by God to deliver healing to a praying mother for two helpless children who could have become mere statistics!!
I choose to believe that it was a miraculous intervention, to say the least...and if you do agree with me and believe that too, even though it is well over 60 years ago, please say a little prayer and thank the Lord on our behalf. He is truly awesome!
Sam Ajulo is an ENT doctor. Thirty-eight of his 42 practicing years have been spent in the UK. He examines doctors in the Specialist examinations both in the U.K. and abroad and is an adviser to the Department of Health. He is married to Adega, together they have 5 grown up children and 3 grandchildren. He is also an ordained pastor.
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