sábado, maio 06, 2006

Kenya, Sister Mae Kierans

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Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarUp on Signal Hill reading my weekend Globe as usual, and I glanced at a full page ad for one of the industrialized aid agencies with a photograph of next-to-death children starving in Sudan. I am no longer much moved by stuff like this; there you go, another burnt out case.

What does move me is individuals who simply decide what they are going to do - and then go do it!

I used to sell windmills. Most of my trade was with old order Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, looking for parts for some old rig purchased 50 years before: Aermotor, Beatty, Dempster, Faisa (from Brazil), Samson; and I had some of them. I liked dealing with those people; sharp mind you - a Mennonite is someone who can buy from a Jew and sell to a Scot and still make a profit. Once in a while I would get a call from someone setting off on a personal aid mission. Someone who had decided to go to a village somewhere in Africa or Macedonia, or Haiti, what ever, have a well drilled, and set up a windmill to pump the water out. These were people who would call in the evening to save on long-distance charges, from some party-line telephone at a neighbours house. Retired guys mostly, figguring out what to do with their days.

Click to Enlarge / Click para AumentarSometimes these missions were undertaken in the name of a church congregation, sometimes under the wing of the MCC - Mennonite Central Committee; but there was no expense account involved - they were personal commitments not official projects.

I read about Sister Mae Kierans in the article below from The Independent, a weekly paper in Newfoundland. She comes from here it turns out, local interest story. She helps women and children in a place called Karen, not far from the Kibera slum you may have seen in the recent movie 'The Constant Gardener', not far from Nairobi, though she tells me that men and boys are also helped if they show up.

Independent: Sister Mae Kierans in Kenya.

Even Google has nothing to say about her beyond this piece in the Independent, no pictures; nothing much about the Saint Joseph House either.

Donations:
    Sr. Mae Kierans African Fund
    c/o Sr. Shirley Anderson
    St. Joseph Mother House
    2025 Main Street West
    North Bay, Ontario, Canada, P1B 2X6


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