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Our Daughter Foundation in Nigeria |
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Great Bend Dominican Sisters’ Mission in Nigeria, Africa ¨ Gusau, Nigeria 2007: Congregation Receives Diocesan Status Sr Rita Schwarzenberger’s Current Ministry in Nigeria, Africa with Hope for the Village Child ¨ Ministry in Nigeria, 1997 to 2001 |
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Great Bend Dominican Sisters’ Journey to Africa: The Era 1952 to 1973 ~ by Sr Frances Biernacki
The beginning of the story of the Great Bend Kansas Dominican Sisters coming to Nigeria as missionaries, and founding a Congregation of Nigerian Dominican Sisters, is actually situated in the founding of their own Congregation.
Prelude to the story: A small band of women came to the plains of Kansas in 1902 as missionaries to help the people of Great Bend with health care and education. This was the beginning of the Dominican Sisters of Great Bend, Kansas. As the golden jubilee of this foundation approached, the Community of Sisters which had grown in members and ministry over the course of fifty years discussed how to demonstrate thanks to God for the blessings of the years. In 1952 during the Jubilee year, a decision was made by the community to take on a foreign mission in Africa in thanksgiving. The General Council at that time, led by Mother Aloysia Rachbauer, researched where and how this could be accomplished. When the Dominican Fathers of the Central Province learned of the sisters’ wish to sponsor a mission, they invited the sisters to come to Nigeria where they had begun missionary work in 1951.
The first three sisters of many volunteers who would follow came to Gusau, Nigeria in September of 1956. The convent being built for them under the supervision of Brother Thomas OP was not yet ready, so they lived in the Fathers’ house for the first few months, with the Fathers and Brother living in a small house across the road.
These first missionaries found the people very welcoming and friendly, and in great need of schools and medical care, so they began their work at once. These first three sisters were teachers; a few months later in 1956 a sister-nurse midwife joined them, and by 1957, this team of sisters was able to provide both education and medical care to the people of Gusau. Some of the classes were taught in the shade of trees where there were no classrooms. Medical clinics in the rural areas were also held in shady areas, because there were no dispensaries built yet. The needs of the people were what spurred on the ministry of the sisters, and soon this spread beyond the town of Gusau. Funtua was a three hour drive from Gusau over dirt roads. The sisters went there once a week to teach catechism and to have a medical clinic. It was on one of these trips to Funtua in 1959 that the tragic car accident occurred in which Sr Bernadette was killed and another sister and a Nigerian dispensary attendant were badly injured.
In 1960 the sisters extended their ministry to Yelwa, with the opening of a hospital there. Catechetical work was seen to be a great need in the establishment of the Church in Northern Nigeria, so the Catechetical Center in Malumfashi was opened by the Dominican Fathers in 1964 The sisters also came to help in the center and to open a dispensary there.
The sisters were eager to open a secondary school for girls, in the hopes of attracting vocations to the religious life. They wanted to begin a congregation of Nigerian Dominican Sisters. Several young Nigerian women had expressed interest, so two of the sisters started a Prep School, preparatory to secondary school, in 1965. But the sisters could not get permission to start a Girls Secondary School in Gusau. The Moslem Government at that time did not recognize the need to educate girls. Bishop Whelan of the Owerri Diocese invited the sisters to come to Amokohia to start the school. They did so in 1966, taking with them the “Preps” who had come to be with them in Gusau.
The Civil War in Nigeria which lasted from 1967 to 1970 interrupted this initiative in the foundation of girls interested in becoming Dominican Sisters. The school in Amokohia had to close, and the two Dominican Sisters there had to leave Nigeria. After the Civil War ended, the sisters who still ministered in Sokoto Diocese met to discuss if they would try once again to start a congregation of Nigerian Dominican Sisters. They were strongly supported in this by the Dominican Bishop of Sokoto, as well as the Dominican Fathers. The members of the Dominican Family worked closely together in the Northwestern part of Nigeria. This was the area mandated to the Dominicans for evangelization by Rome: the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. The Sisters decided to once again accept Nigerian women who felt called by God to be Dominicans, and who were willing to serve in this area of Nigeria. The first postulant was Eugenia Chinyere Obilor who was accepted as a postulant on February 11, 1973.
The hopes and expectations of the forty volunteer American Dominican Sisters who have served in Nigeria have remained very constant: to minister to the needs of the people, and to be a presence of the Church, the Body of Christ, in Northern Nigeria. In all their individual ministry over the years:
¨ In clinics and schools, both in towns and in the bush ¨ In hospitals and maternity homes, both mission-owned and government-owned ¨ In the school of nursing and midwifery, and in the pharmacy ¨ In the catechetical center, and in the development of women catechists ¨ In teacher training colleges, and in secondary schools ¨ In peace and justice programs, and as secretary to the Bishop ¨ In the training of indigenous Church leaders ¨ In the establishment of Nigerian Dominican Sisters
In all, the sisters tried to minister as Jesus would have them, so that the people receiving their ministry could also receive the Good News of salvation. |
