L-r Srs Felicitas Ogbodo, Bridget Lacey, Franca Onyibor (Congregational Leader), Ann Kelly, Loretha Michael when their congregational leader visited Voinjama, Lofa County, Guinea in October 2019. Personal profile
“You have grenades going over, not knowing where they’re going to land and you have bullets flying – like our house had a number of bullet holes,” says Sr Bridget Lacey, speaking of her personal experience of an attack on a refugee camp where she was working at the time.
It was late in 2000 when the camp in Gueckedou, Guinea was attacked by various Liberian militant groups. It was, at the time, home to refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia where civil wars were raging.
“At that stage in Guinea, there would have been up to a million refugees between the two countries and then there were various different camps,” says Sr Lacey.
She had come with three others from her congregation, the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (MSHR) alongside the Sierra Leonians who fled. She had been the administrator in a hospital there for just six months.
The sisters taught literacy and other practical skills in the packed camps that lined the boarders of Guinea from 1995. Sr Lacey says there it was actually a great chance for people to access education they would not have received in their own rural homes. The camps were then attacked.
“We had decided we weren’t moving, we went there to be there so we’re not moving and the other side of it was, we were being watched very closely by people. The feeling was that if the sisters go, then it’s over, were all finished,” says Sr Lacey.
“As it turned out nothing happened to us, but a lot of people got killed in the town that night, refugees and locals. The town was blockaded for a number of months.”
She says the sisters could hear people looking for them: “We were in the bathroom, on the floor, with everything going on and we had the dog and the cat as well and it was scary.
“But thank God for us it was okay, we stayed another night because we didn’t know which way to go. When we did try to go, one road was blocked so we knew there was no hope there. Eventually we got going on another road and we had quite a long trip.”
They travelled to Conakry, about 700km away and those that could returned to Sierra Leone as it was then considered safer there for them than Guinea. “There were lots of people with disabilities in the camps as well, and a lot of people actually walked to get out of the camps.
“We thought; how are all the people with disabilities going to be able to move quick enough? So, we decided we were going to try and hire buses to Conakry and get the people with disabilities on those buses.” At the time, the Sierra Leonian embassy in Conakry was operating a ship carrying Sierra Leonians back to Freetown.
“We found people very willing to help and put themselves in a risky position to help their own people.”
The sisters themselves couldn’t travel on the bus as it would put the journey at risk as they went through checkpoints. They stayed with the Liberian refugees who were moved by the UNCHR further inside the country. “People didn’t feel very safe to be so far inside the country because they felt they were too far away from home if anything happened.
“The Liberians remained in Guinea so we, the sisters decided we would remain in Guinea with them. So then when peace came to Liberia and the first election was held at the end of 2005 at that stage we decided we would head to Liberia.”
The congregation had never been there but decided to go home with those they had been working with for so many years, to Lofa County in the north of the country.
“Overnight you’re gone out of the country and what you were doing and who you were with, you’ve left them all behind and you’re just gone, a lot of the support that you were supplying is gone too,” said Sr Lacey of leaving Sierra Leone.
“When we got to Liberia then, we decided that we would prefer to set up something that would be there when we were not there.
“We didn’t know what might happen next, we thought maybe this war could escalate again and we will be gone again.”
They set up an NGO called Social Empowerment Through Learning that would be mainly run by locals so that it could continue on without the congregation if they had to leave. It has been running now for 14 years.
They teach literacy, mostly to women who never had a chance at an education, “within that we do lots of other things, it’s not just ABC”. They use situations that arise in people’s hometowns and new legislation brought out to teach people literacy and also inform them of their rights. They are currently working on having a law changed so that women in long term relationships can inherit land – not just married women as most couples are not wed.
Sr Lacey who was born in Tipperary and started off as a lab technician in the Regional Hospital in Limerick and was a late vocation at the age of 30, is currently in Ireland due to Covid-19. She is still working remotely from her sister’s home in Dublin where she was only meant to be holidaying but would prefer to be on the ground.
She says she has trust in the sisters that are there to implement the same kind of plans they put to action during the Ebola crisis, and it was them who got her through all the dangerous moments in her time.