Holy Rosary Sisters/ Missions&Ministries / Africa / Kenya

Founder's Cause History Today's Vision Global Community

Sr. Virginia, Matron, supervises preparation for mobile services to the Outreach.

Kenya

In 1956, two Holy Rosary Sisters arrived in Kenya to find a mild climate and great mountain ranges providing an almost-European landscape. Snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, vast arid plains where wild animals roamed— stretched before them as they traveled inland from the coast.

The region around Ortum, known as the "Forbidden Valley," lay 600 miles inland, was reached by a 300-mile train ride from Mombasa to Nairobi, and another 300 miles in four-wheel drive vehicles. Other than a small shop of mud and wattle, no buildings greeted the two missionaries; a fig tree marked the meeting place for those who came to Ortum for trade and social life.

Ortum was one of four small mission centers in the Diocese of Kisumu (one-fourth of Kenya). The sisters immediately began a primary school and a small hospital; the latter was not accepted initially because of fears of the stranger and new healing methods. But within ten years, with cooperation of the Kenyan government and help from local people, they built a "self-help" hospital.

Ortum Valley today.

In the almost-subsistence level economy, work expanded to mobile health care and development projects: home hygiene, income-earning schemes, disease prevention, safe cooking stoves, and most recently, projects to provide safe water to areas where women were carrying 20 litres for 5 or 6 miles. Training of teachers and nurses has gone on. With the changes brought by independence in 1963, the sisters helped to pioneer the ecumenical approach to religious education, to help in the formation of the Nursing Council of Kenya, Kenya Polytechnic, and the Community Health Department of the University of Nairobi Medical School.

The Holy Rosary Sisters opened several other schools and hospitals, which continue to thrive; much institutional involvement in health care has lately given way to preventive medicine and home nursing of those with AIDS.

In 1960, the congregation assisted in the formation of a Kenyan congregation, the Assumption Sisters of Eldoret Diocese.

And in 1997, a program for the formation of Kenyan Holy Rosary Sisters within the region began. A candidates’ house opened for these young women and other women from East Africa to begin their first year of preparation before entering the Novitiate.

Small dispensary in Kenya.

In 2003, a peaceful government transition, assisted by Catholic and Christian churches and men and women of all faiths, took place. Free and compulsory education is being implemented, the position of women is recognized with appointments to the Cabinet and Judiciary, and many of the ills of the people are addressed. Government support for health care ministries, withdrawn by a previous government because of the Church’s stand for justice, may again be introduced.

Today …
Twenty Holy Rosary Sisters work in six areas in ministries of health, development, and education of all kinds.

Cameroon Ethiopia Ghana Nigeria Sierra Leone/Guinea South Africa Zambia