Area nun taking mission trip to Kenya
In 54 years of missionary work as a sister in the Roman Catholic Church, Karen Flaherty of New Salem never has had to speak Swahili.
As she embarks on her journey to Kenya, Africa, this week, though, she will likely have to do just that.
After serving as a sister with Rendu Services of Dunbar since 2009, Flaherty, 72, has volunteered to travel to Kitale, Kenya, to mentor younger sisters in the Catholic religious order of the Daughters of Charity there.
“They don’t know anything about religious life because sisters haven’t been around there, so my job is to be a mentor and to help them learn how to live the life of a sister,” Flaherty said.
The Daughters of Charity have five locations in Africa where the sisters provide education and social services, but Flaherty expects to serve in Kitale, located five hours from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
“Kitale has a little school and a clinic,” Flaherty said. “Our sisters there visit a women’s prison, sponsor the digging of wells and they also do home visiting, so I shouldn’t be bored.”
Flaherty has kept busy in the local community, becoming a member of the Uniontown Scrabble Club, Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers of Fayette and Meals on Wheels. Even with her many commitments to community service in Fayette County, she considered herself open to further service more than 7,500 miles away.
“The things I’ve been doing as a part of Rendu Services have all been part of our ministry and our spirit but not essential to the work,” she said. “I’m free, freer than most people would be.”
The commitment to stay in Kenya could last from six months to two years, and it will be Flaherty’s first foreign mission.
“I’ll miss familiarity with life,” she said. “It’s going to be a different culture. I’m going to be living with women from Ireland, Great Britain, Nigeria and Kenya. I’ll just miss always being comfortable and always knowing what to do because I’m not going to.”
It is thought to be five to eight years before the native Daughters of Charity will have the experience and education to perform tasks that nuns from the United States, Ireland and Great Britain are currently doing.
“Kenya’s quite a Catholic country, so there’s lots of Catholics there,” Flaherty said. “They might know a lot more about community life than I do. I think the challenge (for the natives) will just be living the life. You’re just not exactly on your own. You can’t just do what you want to do when you want to do it. That’s not the way we live.”
Flaherty, who grew up in St. Stephens, Neb., began to study to become a nun at the end of her sophomore year at the University of Nebraska. She moved to New Salem to join Rendu Services two years ago from Lake Providence, La., where she had been a community organizer.
“When I go to a place I like to experience what’s going on there,” she said.
One thing that Flaherty does already know about Kenya is that it will have everything she needs.
“At a conference I went to there were six people from Kenya, and they said, ‘Don’t bring a lot of stuff, everything is available here,'” she remembered. “I thought since we’re going to be working with kids, I should take a pack of paper, but they said, ‘No, no, no!'”
And although Flaherty may not be taking much with her to Kenya, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I don’t have anything holding me back,” she said.