In those early days one notes a missionary urgency that allowed only the briefest of preparations before sending new members West Africa.

West Africa in the 1870’s

• Climatic Conditions:

“The White Man’s Grave”
“In Lagos you die” so reads the invitation written by an S.M.A priest of the time. The writer was not exaggerating. The tropical climate was severe. Tropical diseases were not well understood, the food was poor and scarce, new-comers did not know how to look after themselves. Though quinine could be effective against malaria, there was also sleeping-sickness, yellow fever, and black-water fever, each spelling death or permanent ill-health. In the cemetery of Ardfoyle Convent, Cork, a memorial plaque tells the stark story. For the O.L.A. Sisters, the average life-span on the West African Coast up to 1900 was less than five years. Amazingly, faced with such conditions, young women from mainland Europe and Ireland continued to join. •

Travel and Communication: In our day of air travel and instantaneous e-mail, it is hard to imagine how our world functioned before modern transport and communications. For the early Sisters - and indeed up to the 1960’s - the sea-journey to the West Coast took several weeks. This was generally a novel and enjoyable experience: on the out-journey it allowed for a gradual acclimatising to the tropical heat; on the return journey it was a well-earned rest and something of a luxury holiday for anyone in a fit condition to enjoy that.There were no roads in those early days, and travel inland was by river boat, canoe and bush path. This was slow, it was strenuous, it was dangerous; the swampy river-sides and paths through steamy forest were fertile breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. As regards communication, the telephone was still a thing of the future, and letters from home took months to arrive. Even for people dedicated to their work, the pain of isolation and loneliness could be hard to bear.

The Sisters make their home in West Africa. The natural hospitality of most of the West Coast peoples ensured that the Sisters were welcomed. They, in their turn, brought practical expressions of the love and service which are at the heart of Gospel teaching. They did not spare themselves in doing what they could to improve the lot of those who received them. Every Sister, as well as every missionary priest, worked for the victims of contagious diseases, they visited and tended the sick and old. All the early convents had dispensaries where the sick were treated daily. Though they lacked medical training, they did much to bring healing and comfort.

The First Schools Given their belief in the primacy of education, schools were always a priority, beginning at the kindergarten and primary school level. As they became familiar figures on the local scene, people began gradually to trust the Sisters. But it was an uphill struggle to sell education to those unfamiliar with its value. No tangible benefits could be seen, as yet there were no jobs to be had, and in West Africa as in most other places at the time, the woman’s role was that of wife, mother, and home-maker. It took time to convince parents that by going to school their daughters would be enabled to better fulfill those roles. This was no empty promise: along with the three R’s and religion, the curriculum strongly emphasised the practical and the skills required for the roles of women in the home and in their society.

So the schools began, at first very slowly. Until the 1920’s the emphasis was on Infant and Primary Schools, with boarding facilities where necessary. With these in mind, the O.L.A.’s in Nigeria moved inland from the Coast, travelling by river and bush path, encountering strange conditions and resistances in each new area. Generally they won acceptance by the local people.

By the end of the century, in Nigeria there were two O.L.A schools in Lagos, one in Abeokuta, one in Oyo, one in Asaba, and a boarding school on Topo Island. In the Gold Coast (Ghana) a school started in 1883 by Ella Howard and her companion at Elmina was followed by another at Cape Coast, which had had to be expanded to meet the rising numbers.

By the end of the 1920’s, the struggle to persuade parents to send their girls to school had eased. Other Christian denominations too had been engaged in a similar drive to bring education to the colonised peoples of Africa. The British Administration was in general supportive. In 1877, the authorities in Nigeria had given the first government grants for schools - £200 to be shared by three missionary denominations in Lagos. In 1899 the first Government Primary school had opened in Lagos. By 1918 the total enrolment in all Primary schools in Nigeria was 74,000, and many parents were agitating for more schools. By 1930, the Sisters had eleven Primary Schools in Nigeria and the Gold Coast (Ghana). The big challenge now was to find the funds and staff needed to meet the demands for expansion and upgrading. The decades to follow would see Post-Primary institutions develop from each of these schools.

Community, Medical and Health Care Though education was a primary goal from the beginning, the Sisters always tried to respond to the local needs they encountered. Though aware of their own lack of professional training nin the area of healthcare, the Sisters, seeing the great needs, did not stand by. At a time when 85% of Europeans on the Coast died of tropical diseases or returned home with health permanently damaged, the Sisters did health visiting, relieving the misery of the sick in any way they could, and in the process contracting diseases which proved fatal for many of them. .. Disease and illness apart, ante-natal and midwifery care were badly needed. Mortality rates for mothers and infants were distressingly high.
,?br> Until the 1930’s, Rome would not allow Sisters to train in midwifery - a prohibition which was then changed only in response to pressure from missionaries. So, for the first decades, medical work was an enormous challenge. With what little they had, the Sisters did what they could. In practically every convent they set up a dispensary - generally a little room attached to the convent. Later, when funds and staff were available, these first attempts at dispensaries were to develop into clinics and hospitals - the most notable being that in Abeokuta, which later developed into Sacred Heart Hospital. This was Nigeria’s first hospital, officially opened in 1910; today it is recognised as a General Nursing Training School and includes a Research Laboratory in Tropical Diseases affiliated to Tubingen University, Germany.

Earlier, the cost to life on the West Coast had been so great that, as far back as 1881, Rome was alarmed, and assigned to the O.L.A. Congregation an apostolate in the Nile Delta in Egypt, where the climate was considered more benign. From 1900, Irish Sisters served in schools and clinics there. However, the majority continued to take the route to West Africa.

For more on the Irish OLA history follow the links below
1. The early decades: 1876 to the 1920’s
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2. From the 1920’s to the 1970’s
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3. From the 1970’s to the present: Transitions and New Beginnings
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