I sat with Ismay on the porch at Ana Street, Woodbrook that day in 1998 while Mary and Elsa took Rosario to the airport. Rosario was leaving for Perth, a sort of sabbatical after those years in Matelot, but really preparation for another round of hard work. I conjured up extreme images of her drawing water from a well and hewing wood.
“I won’t see my daughter again,” Ismay said as her three girls drove towards Wrightson Road. What does one say to that?
There was a phone in Perth. We didn’t have whats app and Skype in those days and TSTT’s overseas rates were damaging, six dollars a minute plus VAT. When I called that first time, I waited 10 or more minutes for her to come to the phone. I called once more. Mary had already called. Rosario was coming home. Ismay hadn’t seen her daughter again.
From Australia, her next stops were Bangladesh and Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat. She had talked Grameen banking, micro finance and empowering women through entrepreneurship for years with Fr. Michel de Verteuil. Chittagong was the place to learn the methods through which the most vulnerable were dragged from poverty. Although I knew of Muhammad Yunus and his work among Bangladesh’s poorest, Rosario’s enthusiasm gave it new meaning.
I don’t remember calling Ahmedabad, but there was better email. From there, Rosario was going to Shimla in the Himalayas. When I needed to contact her I got her number from Hina Shah.
 |
| Hina Shah with widows at a meeting in Gujarat. ICECD photo |
I called the convent in the Himalayas and heard my voice echo four times when I asked for her. I had to tell her that Archbishop Anthony Pantin had died. They had grown up in Woodbrook, he a little older. Their families were friends. His brother Clive had been a great help to Matelot when he was Minister of Education. Rosario was already sitting on the bus to New Delhi and came back to take the call. “Yes, yes, this call is from China, you have to talk,” I could hear the voice coaxing her.
Back home she launched into HOPE, Helping Ourselves Prosper Economically. She trained her crew for the field and toured the coast from Mayaro to Matelot, going inland to Plum Mitan, Sangre Grande, Valencia, La Horquetta, Couva and other villages. HOPE created a new class of small entrepreneur, changing many lives and bringing dignity to many women.
South Sudan must have been difficult. I went to Valencia to help her prepare for that trip. How best to communicate, that was the big question. She and two other Holy Faith sisters from Ireland would be teaching the children of the Toposa in Riwoto, a project arranged through the Kiltegan Fathers. If she got an internet connection, we could use email. That worked a few times. She wrote when she picked up wifi from an NGO. No call ever went to the phone number we were given. I called USAID once and they knew the sisters, they promised to deliver a message.
 |
| Holy Faith Sisters arrive in Riwoto, January 2013. St. Patrick's Missionary photo |
Rosario is back home again. Hers has been a long journey since the day she first left Ismay in 1958 for Irish shores, to become a member of the Holy Faith Congregation, to make lifelong friends among the Irish, among the people of St. Brigid’s, Siparia, Matelot and wherever else she has been.
For being brave, putting the needs of children first and standing up for the poor she has been recognised twice in national awards at Trinidad and Tobago's Independence and in several other places.
Maybe someday if I take the advice of her friends Trudy and Cheron Herrera and Anise Maybodi, we will write her story. I know it won’t come from her. That is because I am familiar with the story of her aunt Sr. Dominic Marie Turner, a Mary Knoll sister who lived in Hong Kong in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. They do what they have to do.
