Sister Mary Consolata Nakawoojwa assists an aged nun as she takes tea on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda.
Stuart Tibaweswa for NPR
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Nkokonjeru, Central Uganda — Sister Jane Frances Nakafeero walks purposefully between rows of white crosses adorned with pink and yellow flowers in a cemetery on the Little Sisters of St. Francis convent in Nkokonjeru, Uganda.
She pauses, pointing at one of many easy graves. “This one was a nurse,” says Nakafeero. A number of steps later. “This one was a instructor. This one was a social employee. This one was a health care provider.”
A breeze blows softly between the headstones. Aspiring nuns start their coaching on this convent, and novices take their vows earlier than being despatched out to serve the neighborhood. Finally, the identical sisters are laid to relaxation right here. “The motherhouse,” Nakafeero says, referring to her order’s founding headquarters, “is the place we start and the place we finish.”
Sister Jane Francis Nakafeero, regional superior of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, walks with one other nun on the cemetery in Nkokonjeru, Uganda, the place members of the order are laid to relaxation.
Stuart Tibaweswa for NPR
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The convent additionally hosts retired nuns, and Nakafeero is more and more anxious about their destiny.
Palliative care, which gives medical and emotional assist to sufferers on the finish of their lives, is a comparatively new idea, arising solely within the Nineteen Sixties. There may be little funding for, or data about it, particularly within the Church, she explains. The issue of caring for aged nuns is especially dire in African orders, which already are underfunded compared to American and European ones.
On the convent in Nkoknojeru, younger nuns take care of retired ones, taking them to and from mattress and serving their meals, however the previous girls shouldn’t have the sources they want: grownup diapers, wheelchairs, listening to aids – even heat blankets. At a gathering of the African Palliative Care Affiliation in 2023, Nakafeero laid out these considerations one after the other. She caught the eye of Jean Callahan, former chair of the Irish Hospice Basis and an advisory board member of the affiliation.
Sister Jane Francis Nakafeero stands outdoors the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda. After greater than 25 years working in healthcare, Sister Jean Francis helped advocate for a partnership between the Little Sisters of St. Francis and the African Palliative Care Affiliation to enhance end-of-life care.
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Callahan was in Uganda to study extra about two initiatives funded by the Irish Hospice Basis. She listened carefully to Nakafeero, considering of her grandmother, Sybil, who misplaced her husband within the Fifties and departed Eire for Tanzania to work as a nun.
“These girls, who might have been my grandmother’s colleagues, are being left on the finish of their lives with out the fundamental human helps they need to have,” Callahan says.
So the 2 girls determined to begin a pilot program with the African Palliative Care Affiliation to offer hospice assist to getting old nuns. This system, which started in September 2025, endeavors to cater to the nuns’ medical care and materials wants. It’s going to additionally present psychological interventions for each emotional assist and psychological stimulation, together with actions for the retired nuns and coaching for the younger nuns tasked with caring for them.
This system has but to be absolutely realized. At current, researchers led by African Palliative Care Affiliation director Eve Namisango are assessing the wants of some 50 retired sisters with the Little Sisters of St. Francis. Many of the nuns are from Uganda, however the order contains Kenyan and Tanzanian nuns. After that, Namisango and her workforce will start coaching caregivers, with hopes of rolling out palliative care in Ugandan convents by 2027, after which throughout the continent.
“They’ve served humanity for all their helpful years,” Namisango says of the nuns. Now, “they deserve first rate, person-centered care.”
With some 82,000 nuns in Africa, in line with the Vatican, the African Palliative Care Affiliation believes that between 8,000 and 10,000 could possibly be in want of finish of life care.
Nuns attend morning mass within the chapel on the Little Sisters of St. Francis.
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Prayer … after which what?
Mornings for the 14 retired sisters within the Nkokonjeru convent start with prayer. “Take what we b
ring and provides what we want,” they warble. Since lots of the sisters can not stroll, they line up in wheelchairs, with graying hair peeking from beneath their habits. Father Joseph Balikuddembe, a younger priest, weaves down the aisle for communion, depositing wafers on the nuns’ lips.
He fears the sisters shouldn’t have sufficient to do. “They’ve retired however their brains must be saved energetic,” he says, earlier than departing to provide communion to the nuns too weak to rise from mattress.
After praying, the nuns eat a breakfast of hardboiled eggs together with mashed plantain and bread, sitting at assigned locations round scuffed wood tables. After consuming, a number of the nuns are wheeled out into the solar, however there usually are not sufficient wheelchairs. About ten of the nuns have mobility points, whereas there are solely seven wheel chairs on the convent. These chairs are in dangerous form, with sticky wheels and defective hand brakes. Some nuns return to their rooms.
Younger nuns put together to serve breakfast to aged sisters on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises.
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Aged nuns sit of their eating room on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises, the place they’re going to have tea. Retired and getting old members proceed to dwell inside the neighborhood compound.
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Stuart Tibaweswa
On the Could day of our go to, 81-year-old Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was being inaugurated for a seventh time period in workplace. A number of of the retired sisters watched on a wall-mounted tv within the eating room. People who might converse chatted quietly, and others stared into the space.
Sister Mary Hedwig Agoya got here to the convent in Nkokonjeru in 1951, when she was solely 14. When Agoya arrived on the order of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, she was met by its founder, Mom Kevin Kearney, one other Irish lady who traveled to Uganda in 1903. Over the course of fifty years, Kearney based quite a few hospitals. At the moment, she is a candidate for sainthood.
The aspirant nun gave up her garments and possessions, whereas Kearney helped her costume in khaki-colored robes and a veil. “She embraced me,” Agoya, now 89, says.
Sister Mary Hedwig Agoya, a retired nun of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, joined non secular life on the age of 14 and is now 89 years previous. She is among the many aged sisters dwelling inside the convent compound.
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After that, Agoya labored as a instructor for 40 years.
Since she retired, life has felt completely different. Earlier than, she spent her days managing a classroom, supervising college students and marking papers. Now, she says, “it turns into a bit boring.” Her voice is staccato and hoarsened by age. She prays within the morning and once more earlier than lunch and at bedtime. Many of the different nuns who entered the convent together with her have died.
Sister Rosemary Luyiga, who’s 95, spends most of her time in her room, which holds a single mattress and a chair. It is adorned with a black-and-white portrait of her mom as a younger lady, and a candle celebrating the centennial of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, adorned with Kearney’s face.Solar slants by means of the window.
Sister Rosemary Luyiga, who’s 95, holds a portrait of her late mom within the room the place she lives inside the residential compound.
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Luyiga was 12 years previous when she got here to the convent in 1944. She ran a college educating younger ladies to cook dinner and clear. She lived by means of the Second World Conflict and thru Uganda’s independence from Britain. However “I do not bear in mind a lot of these issues,” she says of world occasions that occurred past the convent partitions. “I do not assume we had been very a lot .” She finest remembers the ten completely different places wherein she served, written out neatly in blue ink on a sheet of paper.
Largely motionless, she is commonly by herself. “I do not know what can take away loneliness,” Luyiga displays. “You wish to sit and discuss, however you discover that you just can not do this.”
There usually are not sufficient caregivers on the convent to help her, she provides, even in instances of emergency. Sources are stretched skinny and certified nurses are few. If she wants medical help or just has to go to the toilet, “I do not even name for assist” she says.
Coaching the Caregivers
Taking care of aged nuns like Agoya and Luyiga is Sister Mary Consolata Nakawoojwa. A social employee, she studied geriatric care in america. She is now a part of a workforce with two different sisters and a handful of cooks and caregivers, accountable for a few dozen retired nuns. The calls for are fixed, and Nakawoojwa hardly has time to take a seat down.
“Thanks for consuming,” she tells one of many aged sisters gently at mealtime, earlier than consuming, herself. “You’ve eaten very nicely.”
Sister Mary Consolata Nakawoojwa wheels an aged nun to her room on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda on Could 12, 2026.
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The sisters in her cost typically undergo from melancholy and nervousness. “They don’t seem to be certain actually how life will probably be,” she says. “We outline ourselves by what we do. However now they have to be as an alternative of doing. They must be, after which they must redefine identification.”
In consequence, she desires nuns to obtain psychological assist. Palliative care isn’t just about ache aid however adjusting to new circumstances on the finish of life. “Whether or not you are a nun in Africa otherwise you’re a development employee within the Bronx, you face those self same sorts of considerations as you face the top of your life. And it means rather a lot to have folks to stroll with you in that place,” says Kristina Newport, chief medical officer on the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medication.
Who cares for the nuns?
Callahan has puzzled if nuns, like these on the Little Sisters of St. Francis, are ignored just because they’re girls. “I really feel very aggrieved that nuns are second-class residents,” she says.
Nakafeero has arrived at an identical conclusion. “We now have the bishops, who’re answerable for the dioceses and answerable for the monks. They’d do one thing for the monks, however they won’t do one thing for the nuns,” Nakafeero says. As in consequence, she concludes, nuns like her “must do it ourselves.”
The Vatican didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark, together with questions on who’s accountable for feminine non secular orders upon retirement.
For now, survey analysis with aged nuns, together with these in Nakawoojwa’s care, is ongoing, funded by an Irish donor who needs to stay nameless. Campaigners are presently attempting to boost about $135,000 wanted to hold out the remainder of this system, together with offering materials assist to nuns, and coaching to their caregivers. “I am an optimist and I am additionally bloody decided on this,” Callahan says.
For Nakafeero, this system is private. She cared for her personal father as he died, which later impressed her to determine a palliative care program at Naggalama Hospital, the place she is chief working officer.
In Nkokonjeru, she appears throughout the rows of graves resulting in the mausoleum the place Mom Kevin Kearney is buried. Nakafeero is 65 now and contemplates what’s going to occur to her as she grows older too. “In a couple of years time, I personally will probably be there,” she says, reflecting on her impending retirement. Having labored onerous all her life, “when that point comes, I might need somebody to softly, gently journey with me.”
Sophie Neiman is an award-winning journalist. She’s based mostly in Kenya and writes concerning the area.
