Giving Life Back to the Earth: OLA in Togo

by | November 3, 2026 | Africa, Care for Creation

An undated postcard, captioned in French as Togo, shows the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles caring for the sick in their homes. The OLA presence in Togo dates to 1918, when Mère Matthias, Sr Macaire and Sr Salva arrived in Lomé from Keta on 4 March and began classes the following day.

Today the Sisters live and work in five communities in Togo, at Lomé, Agou Gare, Sokodé, Kolowaré and Siou, where caring for the sick remains part of life at Kolowaré and Siou, alongside schools, catechism and work with people with disabilities.

In Lomé, a secondary school in the district of Bé carries the name of the congregation’s founder, Fr Augustine Planque, and a second school has been opened in the suburb of Kpogan. The Sisters there also teach catechism and reach out to people living in poverty.

Agou Gare is the OLA postulancy for francophone West Africa, where young women begin their formation with the congregation. The house keeps a small dispensary, and the Sisters and postulants teach catechism in the local parish. In 2026, Agou also hosted a two-month programme of preparation for perpetual vows for eleven temporarily professed Sisters. Sisters and postulants work the fields together, so that caring for the land belongs to the daily life of the house as much as the rest of formation does.

Further north, in Sokodé, the Sisters run a kindergarten and primary and secondary schools, teach catechism and coordinate activities for people with disabilities, including a rehabilitation centre. They also grow vegetables there and raise seedlings in nurseries, preparing the beds and caring for the young plants until they are established.

At Kolowaré, the Sisters run a clinic with a maternity unit and laboratory. OLA Sisters began visiting the leprosy settlement there in 1944 to care for patients. Around 1950, the government entrusted its direction to them, and in 1952 the Sisters established a community at Kolowaré. The centre also cares for people living with HIV/AIDS. At Siou, the Sisters manage a government dispensary and run a kindergarten and a centre for people with disabilities.

Across these places, in schools, dispensaries and reception centres and in the communities themselves, trees are being planted, gardens kept and poultry raised on a small scale. The Sisters describe this as “giving life back to the earth”, in places where people are living with rising temperatures, flooding and worn-out soil.

In Togo, OLA’s commitment to Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation can be seen in nurseries, vegetable beds and planted trees alongside classrooms, clinics and formation houses. Many hands beyond the Sisters’ own are involved, among them parents, students, employees, other Christians and further collaborators, and the harvest reaches all of them, the Sisters included, together with families living nearby.

The gardens bear on how the soil is used and on food security, and because the food is grown locally and organically, less of it may have to be bought. For the Sisters, the pleasure is close to hand, in crops coming up in the beds and in food on the table that was grown nearby.

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