Bold as Love

I really don’t even know how to start talking about Sister Mary Brenda, OP. She is honestly one of the most amazing women I have ever met in my life, and is an amazing role model for me. She is a Dominican sister from a congregation in Houston, a PSU alum, former nurse, and a dynamo. She came to Kisumu to help the administration of Our Lady of Grace, but has been in Kenya for almost five years now, working primarily out of Nairobi. She has worked in schools, opened clinics, and I’m pretty sure she knows everyone in Kenya.

Not only is she great with the kids at the school, she is a businessperson. She is trying to save money at every chance she can while simultaneously getting a new water tank and building a new primary school. The financial state of the school is pretty dismal, but with her at the helm, I have every confidence that soon, it will be back on its feet.

What’s really cool is that she’s passing on all her wisdom to Patricia and me- and trust me, we’re trying as hard as we can to soak as much of it in as we can. She lets us sit in on important meetings about the school, and seeing how she handles them is such a great learning experience. I feel like in the past four days at Our Lady of Grace I have learned more about business and school/non-profit administration than any internship could have taught me. We helped to create a new budget for the school and did research into how much it actually costs to sponsor each child for a year.
Hey RAs- if a floor in McVinney sponsored a child, each resident would only have to pay $5 a month for the whole school year. That supplies the tuition, food, boarding, medical care, and activities fees for one child for a whole 12 months. Think about it- this is an amazing cause, it’s connected to our Dominican tradition, and you’re saving a child’s life for a year. (This is the first of many times that Patricia and I will be harassing you to help our kids- get used to it :D).

One of the girls at the school, Mary, is 7 months pregnant, and she thought she was going into labor this afternoon. We didn’t find out until she was already on her way to the hospital, and we were concerned that no one would be able to stay with her, during the time she needed someone the most. She’s only 16, and Patricia and I volunteered to go. We later found out that she was having false labor, but we were still concerned. While we didn’t end up going to the hospital with Mary, we talked with Sister Mary about what Mary the student was going through. Sister Mary was a labor and delivery nurse, and she knew how important it would be for Mary to have someone there with her to fight for her in the delivery room. Sister Mary’s sense of justice is inspiring, and the life experiences I’ve had with her so far have taught me so much.

Today we also reorganized the kitchen, which was no small task. We say we reorganized it, but honestly, it really wasn’t very organized to begin with. It’s a very small space that has to feed a lot of people, and it’s even more chaotic than Ray (the PC dining hall) at 12:30. We added a barrier outside made of a piece of 1x4 and 2 chairs to help create some type of lunch line, and inside, we rearranged a lot of prep tables to make more floor space. Each child is issued his or her own plate and cup at the beginning of each school year, but they are frequently broken or stolen, and they never really get very clean. We devised a new system for meal times- the plates are now all stored in the kitchen, and the food is served plated, not like it was before when the children handed the cooks their own plate. This way everyone has a clean plate, and it’s easier to keep track of who has eaten and who still needs food. We also have created dishwashing crews for the children- they all earn a small amount of money by doing chores around the school, but they don’t really do those chores as frequently as they are supposed to. Patricia and I made random groupings of the older students who will wash, dry, and put dishes away on a rotating schedule. This will hopefully make mealtime more organized and less chaotic- less like 6 o’clock dinner and more like 2 o’clock lunch at Ray. Everyone will do the work at some point, and it will hopefully help to eliminate the feelings of superiority that some of the students have over the staff- and it will help the cooking staff out! This was all Sister Mary’s idea- she has a million ideas in her head, but has so much to do that it’s hard to get everything done that she wants to do. That’s where Patricia and I come in.
Just following Sister Mary around for an hour helps you to understand how remarkable she is. I got to do this yesterday while Patricia was helping out with a business studies class, and in that hour we went down to the farm attached to the school to make plans for a Saturday project, met with a member of the Dominican Laity to discuss plans for an addition to the confessional in the school chapel (a grass roof), and met with the contractors who are building the new primary school. Sister Mary really took charge in all these meetings, and in a society where women, especially Sisters, are often seen as demure and are expected to be passive, she taught the businessmen a thing or two about how to run their businesses. She is so direct and honest but tells it like it is with a joke and a smile that gets her very far. She has a very good sense of what’s fair and what’s not, and isn’t afraid to say it.

I’m always talking about how I want to be more assertive, but I’m always concerned with being too aggressive. Sister Mary exemplifies the balance between the two, and I have a feeling that by the time I leave here I’ll have a better understanding of this balance as well.

Sister Mary does all this crazy stuff during the day, and at night goes back to the house with three other Dominican Sisters from the Philippines. They’re wonderful women who are so kind, but they are very different from Sister Mary, and I can imagine that she has a difficult time living with the cultural differences. Still, she comes to Our Lady of Grace each day with a smile, and she keeps me laughing all day long while doing some really great work.