The first time Sr Patricia Speight used the phrase “my feet are my vehicle” she was just a teenager lying on the floor of an estate agency in Belfast surrounded by masked gunmen.
“They were in army uniforms, with hooded heads and faces, had guns and jumped the counter. We were all told to lie on the ground while they held the guns over our heads.”
The men pulled open drawers and emptied the three women’s handbags looking for cash. “I had not got one cent in my bag. They could not believe it and wondered how I travelled by bus without money. I said straight to their faces, ‘My feet are my vehicle’ and even today, my feet are my vehicle.”
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The women were locked in a cupboard. “The place was in darkness and I was petrified. The two women started praying and all I could do was cry. Going through my head was, ‘These men are going to throw a bomb in the office and that is us all finished.”
Begging sister
They survived but 40 years later Sr Patricia still has no money in her purse. She is known fondly as “the begging sister” in Kenya where she works.
She founded the Love and Hope Centre in Nakuru in 1998 with the help of Genevieve Oloo. It helps out families, primarily those affected by HIV/Aids, offering everything from medical support, to nutritional support and counselling.
“The biggest need then was HIV/Aids. This is still with us, but not to the extent it was then. Today there is a lot of stigma and people throw their treatment away. As a result some people have died while others have become paralysed from the waist down.”
Christmas party
She raises money for the centre by asking for it. Last November, for example, she went around banks, supermarkets and a few churches in the area. “I was asking for help so we could give 1,000 of our clients a Christmas party,” she said. “I walked the legs and feet off myself. I would be asked to come back tomorrow. I would return only to be told to return again the next day. In the end the people were so good and gave me parcels of food.”
Last Christmas she persuaded the owner of a restaurant in one of the national parks to help out. Joseph Muya sent his chefs, kitchen staff and waiters to the Love and Hope Centre to put on the party. “All I had to do was to hire tents and buy the cold drinks.”
She also persuaded bishop Maurice of Nakuru to let her talk in all the churches within the deanery to create awareness of the importance of helping each other. It took her six months to get around them all. “My dream came true. The response from the people was excellent even though they were poor themselves. One lady recently ran after me in the street shouting, ‘Sr Patricia, I want to give you this 50 Kenyan shillings -- which is equal to about 5 cent -- so you can help the poor.’”
The seed of an idea to become a nun had been planted when she was just five. After her sister’s First Holy Communion, their father took them to visit the Dominican Sisters in Belfast, one of whom gave her a little African doll. The nun told her, “Patricia I am giving this doll to you, because I know one day you are going to be a missionary sister in Africa.” She still has the doll, which she named Sunshine. “Sunshine was to bring love, joy, hope, peace and Sunshine wherever she went. This is what I also try to do.”
Leadership potential
Even as a child, Sr Patricia Speight was starting to show leadership potential. The second-eldest of 13 children, 11 of whom survived, Patricia and her siblings did all they could to help out at home in north Belfast.
After finishing their lessons at primary school each day, she would sit on the pavement at Sunning Dale Drive with her younger brother Kieran making mischief. “We would go over to the little girls and get great delight from pulling the ribbons from their hair. We were very bad.”
They progressed to throwing stones at cars - until one day they went too far. “This big stone shattered the windscreen of a man’s car while he was driving. Well we took to our heels and ran down our road.”
They were hiding behind a chair in the sitting room when the driver turned up. “My poor parents who could not even afford it had to hand over £20, a lot of money at the time. This was a lesson learnt.”
The children were taught to take care of each other at an early age. “Each child took responsibility for the other. Mary and I looked after all the children when our mother was in and out of hospital and that time there were about nine of us. We would help to wash and get the younger children to school, while my father would light the fire and have the house nice and warm.
“Every weekend we took it in turns to bake and then store in the fridge and take out as necessary. We were taught how to bake bread, cakes, apple tarts, which really came in handy.
“We had loving parents who loved us so much and, in turn, we as children were able to pass on that love to each other.”
Help out financially
When she was six her father had to close his bookshop on Donegall Street. “He worked extremely hard, but the business was not good.” Patricia joined the Legion of Mary when she was 10 and helped to look after orphaned babies. At 16 she was asked to leave school to help out financially. “I wanted to complete my studies. Since I was a little child, my dream was to be a nurse one day.”
Her first job was as receptionist at the Mater hospital. She handed over her pay packet each week and in return got pocket money, which she spent on night classes. By the time she got her next job at the estate agency it was the late 1960s, the start of the Troubles.
“The many times I escaped the bullet when walking down the Antrim Road was a miracle. Shooting would break out. One day I remember hiding behind the door of a lady’s house until it stopped. At home we would hear bombs go off at all times and would be so frightened we would jump all the time. Imagine, today I still jump at the least little bit of unexpected bang.”
By the time she was 18, she was taking care of girls put out of their homes because they had had babies out of wedlock. On Sundays she visited the sick in hospital. There she met Sr Margaret Josephine Boyle, a Franciscan Missionary Sister for Africa, who asked her if she had a vocation. She did.
Nurse of the year
Patricia was accepted to do her training at Westminster Hospital in London at 21 and then the Royal City of Dublin hospital on Baggot Street in Dublin, where she was named ‘nurse of the year’. She then went to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
At 24, she joined the convent at the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa in Mount Oliver, Dundalk. Midwifery was very much needed in Africa so she was sent to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital for midwifery training by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa.
She spent seven years in Zimbabwe before being sent to Kenya in 1997. “Never once did I find it difficult to fit in Africa. I have always felt so much at home from the first day I arrived in both Zimbabwe and Kenya.”
She was taken aback at the poverty, however. “When I first arrived in Kenya, I was shocked to see the sheer poverty: small round huts used for houses, no running water, no toilets but latrines, just holes in the ground.”
Wheelbarrows were used to take sick people to hospital. “The patient could be in it for several hours while they were pushed along by their family members along mud roads. There were long queues at the government hospitals. One could wait a day to get to the top of the line even thought they were very sick and then be told to come back the next day.”
Much has not changed. “After spending all these years in Africa I can still say there is not one day passes that I don’t get a shock. I am shocked by the extreme poverty, the tiny one-roomed houses people live in at times with 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, no toilets just shared latrines.
“Many use a plastic bag at night instead. When we are walking in the slum areas we have to “duck” the “flying toilet” and jumping over open running sewers.”
The begging nun could just as easily be called the walking nun. Sr Patricia comes home every two years for two months, but the 65-year-old has no plans to retire yet. “To be honest that is far from my mind at the moment. I am an extremely active and outgoing person. My feet are my vehicle.”
Nurtured by Love, a short documentary about the Love and Hope Centre can be seen at youtu.be/OSgdRRX2U0s
