When Sr Mary Dolores Sweeney, a member of the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny, was asked if she wanted to leave Sierra Leone as the Ebola outbreak gripped the country in 2014, she said no.
She and her three sisters working in the community of Makeni were determined to stay as they “felt we could do a lot without being in danger, if we were careful”.
Sr Mary arrived in Sierra Leone in 1972 as a primary teacher, eventually founding and running St Joseph’s School for the Hearing Impaired, which now supports more than 200 children.
The school was temporarily emptied in 2014 under a state of emergency but staff had time to teach students basic health practices which Sr Mary says saved families.
One of her pupils, whose father was a paramedic and whose mother was a nurse, worked with those who had contracted the virus.
“She went home to find her father was very ill. She was nine years old and hearing impaired, and she would not let anyone touch him, and saved really the whole little group of houses that were there, so she’s kind of seen as a little heroine,” Sister Mary said.
Dead family members
Throughout the outbreak, sisters saw toddlers left alive in houses surrounded by dead family members, and smaller villages almost wiped out. They now have two hearing impaired students who, along with their six young siblings, have been left in the care of their 18-year-old sister after their mothers, father, uncle and grandmother died from the disease.
The 72-year-old Donegal woman has spent a remarkable 44 years in the West African country. She drove a van from Makeni to Guinea, evacuating Sierra Leone during the blood diamond war 12 years ago, but trying to outrun Ebola was something entirely different, she said.
“I was there for the war and you would hear about the rebels attacking this place, or attacking that place, but we could run from them, and we did run from them,” Sr Mary said. “Somehow even then, I wasn’t as afraid. But with the Ebola, you didn’t know where it was going to hit next.”
The only private clinic in Makeni able to stay open during the crisis was Loreto Health Services Clinic. The Sisters of St Joseph’s were rigorous with safety precautions to ensure they remained open. With the help of Ireland’s former Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Sinead Walsh, they secured funding and safety equipment from non-profits such as the Friends of St Joseph and Irish Aid, Sr Mary said.
‘Like astronauts’
“They were like astronauts, wearing it all in the heat,” she remembers.
The sister returned to Ireland this week to receive a Presidential Distinguished Service Award from President Michael D Higgins for her work in Sierra Leone.
“She was always a leader,” her younger sister Charlotte Gallagher said. “We were brought up in a hotel, and she would be the one that’d be pushed out to meet everyone. She’s still the same.”
While Sr Mary says she is incredibly honoured to receive the award, she is quick to remark it is not just hers to treasure.
“We were a team,” she said. “We couldn’t have done it without our local people, our sisters, and our families and the people of Ireland.”