Belfast nun spreads love and hope in Kenya

Sr Patricia Speight shares her faith journey with Mags Gargan

One of the iconic images from Pope Francis’ trip to Kenya in 2015 was of an overjoyed Irish Franciscan Missionary Sister for Africa taking his picture from the crowd. Belfast-born Sr Patricia Speight found herself appearing in newspapers across the globe, but it was not her first brush with fame.

Earlier in the year a documentary, Nurtured by Love, following her work supporting people with HIV/AIDS, was nominated for the Kenyan version of the Oscars, and in 2008 she was the face of the Mission Sunday promotional material in Ireland. However, Sr Patricia’s average day in Nakuru is far from glamorous, but a life of prayer and service among the poorest and most vulnerable.

“I have spent seven years in Zimbabwe and 19 years now in Kenya, and after spending all these years in Africa I can still say there is not one day passes that I don’t get a shock,” she says. “I am always shocked by the extreme poverty, the one-tiny-roomed houses that the people live in, at times no furniture – only stones to sit on, no beds but a very unclean sponge type mattress on the floor, for many to share while sleeping at night.

“People that we care for don’t have cookers, they use charcoal fires in the house, they don’t have what Ireland has like fridges, microwaves etc. Approximately four latrines in an area, two male and two female, to serve so many people. Many don’t use these at night, they use a plastic bag instead. During the days when we are walking in the slum area where we serve, we have to ‘duck’ the ‘flying toilet’. Jumping over open running sewers.”

Sr Patricia is the director of the Love and Hope Centre, an integrated HIV/Aids programme which she began together with a volunteer called Genevieve Oloo in 1998. “Since then the programme has really grown according to the present day needs in Nakuru,” she says. “My day is spent with so many people in the heart of the deep rooted poor in the slum setting. We also have many programmes going on within the centre which includes giving holistic development programmes, group therapies, counselling to young women from the ages of 15-24 years. These young women have either been raped or they are using commercial sex working for a business so that at the end of the day or night they can earn 200 Kenyan Shillings, the equivalent of €2, to help them feed their children and themselves.”

Sr Patricia first heard her calling to religious life at the age of 16. “I heard a quiet whisper deep within my heart, ‘Patricia come and follow me’. This is very hard to describe but it was very real for me and I carried this within my heart deeply,” she says.

She was heavily involved with the Legion of Mary which took her to the Mater Hospital every Sunday to visit sick patients. “It was here that I met Sr Margaret Josephine Boyle, a Franciscan Missionary Sister for Africa. She was doing her training at the time and she asked me if I ever thought of becoming a sister. She offered to take me to visit Mount Oliver, our Mother House in Dundalk, Co. Louth,” Sr Patricia recounts.

“I felt so much at home, at peace, a feeling of joy and simplicity radiated in the faces of the sisters and they were so welcoming and happy to have me spend the weekend with them.”

At 16 years she was too young to join the congregation and so went to train in nursing and was accepted at Westminster Hospital in London at 21 where, “to my surprise”, she was declared ‘Nurse of the Year’.

She returned to Ireland and continued nursing at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast before joining the order and travelling to Kenya as a young professed sister in 1984.

Radiant colours

“When I first arrived I was struck to see such beautiful and radiant colours that the women wore together with the blooming and coulourful trees and flowers,” Sr Patricia says. But at the same time she was shocked to see the sheer poverty – “small round huts used for houses, no running water, no toilets but latrines”.

Today she says she loves to be out at the heart of the community, in the homes of the sick and suffering. “God has called me to care for the sick and dying. To give life, love, joy and bring compassion to the sick who are lying just waiting for someone to listen to their painful stories of suffering and despair. I do my best to comfort them and whisper a little prayer into their ear,” she says.

Sr Patricia says Pope Francis’ visit strengthened her calling as a missionary “amongst his lovely people in Nakuru”. “I have asked the Kenyan people how significant was his visit and the responses are; I loved his humility and his love for unity in the Church of Christ. During that time the country experienced a relatively peaceful period. Everyone experienced this sense of peace, even the politicians. People talked and shared with each other like sisters and brothers.”