ST MARTIN’S CHILDREN’S HOME

A report from Kathleen Moore on Our Lady of Lourdes Parish involvement.

One day in, 1984, Emily Gogra and an American Missionary, Sister Lorenz, were visiting Port Loko Hospital in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, and West Africa. They passed a small bundle of rags, which they noticed was moving or making a noise. The bundle of rags proved to be an abandoned baby girl. After unsuccessful attempts to find relatives for the baby, Emily agreed to care for her with help from the American Mission. They called her Kathleen, or perhaps, though they wouldn't admit it, they renamed her after I came. Soon other needy or orphaned children came to join Emily's rapidly growing family.

I came to live and work in Port Loko in 1986 and first met Emily. She then had over 30 children and had named the home St Martin's Children's Home. Emily had no paid help with all those children but some neighbours volunteered to help and Emily taught bigger boys and girls to care for smaller ones. They all went to school when they were old enough and to the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, Port Loko.

Whenever I visited I was made very welcome. Some of the bigger children wanted to sew, mend and make clothes. I managed to get them a sewing machine and was able to teach them how to use it.

In 1988 Emily married Peter Gogra. Peter is a wonderful man who worked away from Port Loko but spent his weekends at the orphanage doing whatever was needed. He was a great help to Emily and gave the children a father figure.

I left Sierra Leone in 1988 and some time after that a terrible civil war began which lasted about 10 years. There were awful war crimes and cruelties. There was danger of rape, murder and kidnapping. Kidnapped children were forced to fight. Port Loko became too dangerous. Emily and Peter loaded all the children on to a lorry with a few belongings and took them to Freetown. They found three rooms there in which they all lived for the duration of the war. Emily managed to get the children into overcrowded schools. Freetown was safer but crowded with displaced people.

During the war I lost touch with Emily and St Martin's. When the war was over Emily returned to Port Loko and found that every moveable thing including the doors and windows were gone from their house. This was in 2001 and Emily wrote me a desperate letter asking for help. I took the letter to Fr. Pat Sammon and wrote a piece for the Parish newsletter. We then set up a group of 20 people mostly in our parish who would pay £5 per month into an account for St Martin's and we could send £100 a month to Emily. We have had numerous other donations including one from OLOL School who gave a donation of over £400 when they made us their Christmas charity. These extra donations have enabled us to send an extra £100 three times a year before the beginning of each new term to help Emily with fees, books and uniform. Our money goes out to Emily by a safe route, which does not involve any bank charges.

The group has been running well now since late 2001 and is so nicely set up that it virtually runs itself. Many thanks to all who contribute.

There is no postal service into or out of Sierra Leone since the war. We communicate when we know of someone travelling to or from Sierra Leone. I have received only one letter from Emily this year and she did not receive any of mine. she included some photos. One was of "Little Kathleen", now a beautiful young woman of 20 years who has studied office accounting in Freetown and was looking for a job.

It is a great credit to this wonderful woman, Emily, that the first child she took in as a baby and many others have grown to be healthy, happy and educated young adults setting out on independent lives. Of course, there are always more young ones to be taken in and cared for but with "Little Kathleen" and her contemporaries St Martin's children's Home has come of age.