Ciaran McGoey (left) and Eddie Finnegan (right) present Bishop Henry Aruna with a €21,000 donation for Yengema Secondary School in his Diocese of Kenema, Sierra Leone 
The after effect of Ebola, education equality and evangelisation of Sierra Leone are all in a day’s work for the Bishop of Kenema, writes Róise McGagh
Bishop Henry Aruna of the Kenema Diocese in Sierra Leone on his visit to Ireland was reunited with schoolteachers of his from the Holy Ghost Missions.
Today known as the Spiritans, they have been present in the west African country for 156 years. During these years an unlikely bond has formed between the people of this small green isle and dry lands in Sierra Leone. The Irish missionary movement brought men and women of all denominations to this foreign land.
Now, the Church in Sierra Leone is maintained by indigenous clergy and faithful, who are moving it forward and integrating it into their own culture.
Fr Henry Aruna became the first Sierra Leonean bishop of Makeni. He went on to become the Bishop of Kenema, his home place.
Missionaries
His life was heavily influenced by Irish missionaries who worked in Kenema, the third largest city in Sierra Leone.
“My education is really down to the fact that the Irish missionaries established a school there, many of whom would be my teachers,” said Bishop Aruna to The Irish Catholic.
He attended St. Paul’s primary school, Kanike, Fadugu and Kabala in the 1970s, all Roman Catholic schools. He got his secondary education at Holy Trinity in Kenema.
Bishop Aruna came to Ireland on the invite of the Sierra Leone Ireland Partnership (SLIP), who hosted a seminar in Maynooth on strengthening education for girls and young women in Sierra Leone and then a conversation in Kimmage about missionaries now and then. He was also welcomed by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin at his residence in Drumcondra.
SLIP helps support Sierra Leone through projects in Ireland and provides advice for people travelling there. They aim to keep Sierra Leone in the thoughts of the Irish government, business people and development agencies.
Dr Staneala Beckley, chair of the Teaching Service Commission of Sierra Leone was also invited to speak on the topic.
Two or three of those at the SLIP events were Bishop Aruna’s teachers. “One of the Irish missionaries, Fr Ray Barry actually took me in as a mission boy,” he said.
“I stayed with him in the parish house until I finished my schooling and then eventually, I went to the seminary, I was also taught by Austin Healey and Tom Wheelan.”
At the time of his schooling, many young people still went abroad as missionaries and there was a community of Irish people in the area, a mix of priests, nuns and lay missionaries.
After his final exams and then a year at St Kizito’s Pre-Major Seminary, Henry Aruna went into St Paul’s Major Seminary in Gbarnga, Liberia in 1985.
On April 16 1993, he was ordained to the priesthood in Kenema. He then went on to work in the Diocese of Kenema from 1993 to 1994, the then Archdiocese of Freetown and Bo for the next year, then in the Kankan Diocese in the Republic of Guinea from 1995 to 1996. He returned to Sierra Leone and worked from 1996 to 1999 in the Diocese of Makeni.
In between his studies he served in various capacities in the pastoral field. He entered the priestly formation ministry in 1996 at St Paul’s Major Seminary, Makeni and Freetown. Bishop Aruna lectured in the seminary; in History and Systematic Philosophy. He also was a Director of Pastoral Work, Dean of Students and Seminary Bursar in the seminary.
As well as these pastoral and seminary duties he was the in charge of the Blessed Michael Tansi Catholic Community at Goderich barracks in Freetown.
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Sierra Leone in 2020 is a place of opportunity, but also many hardships and challenges. Bishop Aruna said he hopes to do his best to help the local community face these challenges.
He said his main duty was of course, Church evangelisation but he “would also want to continue the tradition of improving on education. We have so many Catholics schools, I want to focus on the ethos and standards trying to maintain the ethos of the Catholic Faith.”
Curriculum development and the school environment is also important to the Bishop as keeping high standards of education has been an issue for many schools in Sierra Leone.
“There are advocacy issues, justice issues in Sierra Leone. Our peace and justice apartment want to strengthen that and play a key role in advocating for justice for the people of Sierra Leone especially in my Diocese of Kenema, for example gender issues, more males will have access to education, I want to bridge that gap” says Bishop Aruna.
Education has been a topical issue since schools reopened after the Ebola crisis that hit the country in 2012.
It was the world’s worst recorded outbreak of the disease. The issue of gender inequality is prominent in plans to move education opportunities forward.
Schools were closed for nine months, but with help from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2,700 schools were disinfected and 5,970 schools were cleaning supplies and hand washing stations. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) assisted the government to run two shortened academic years with an accelerated syllabus so that there was no loss in opportunity for students to be educated.
Education up to secondary school in Sierra Leone became free in 2018. Dr Staneala spoke about the Teaching Service Commission’s efforts to improve the standards of teaching and training. She said she was inspired by people who talked of possible improvements to the Sierra Leone education system.
“Going forward I would like to see a stringer partnership between Ireland, the education institutions and our institutions.”
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Eddie Finnegan from SLIP raised the point that often senior teachers are “snapped up by National and International NGOs in need of well-educated Country Reps, Field Officers, etc. on salaries they can never make in the classroom or even as principals or headteachers”.
“Nobody would say that every good teacher must spend their lives in the classroom but there’s an irony in finding struggling schools bereft of the best and brightest just because World Vision, Concern, PLAN, GOAL, or even CAFOD, Trócaire, CARITAS Internationalis or CARITAS-SL need competent and culturally fluent readymade reps at minimal cost in training or wages… schools should never suffer in the name of development.”
As well as a lack of fully qualified teachers, gender inequality persists in the country as opportunities to be educated are not granted pregnant women.
There was a large spike in teenage pregnancies of (18,000 girls) during the Ebola outbreak according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Rape, abusive relationships and prostitution contributed to the increase.
Pregnant girls are barred from attending school. The education ministry felt that exposing these women to classmates would humiliate them and encourage others to become pregnant.
Only 56% of girls aged 15 to 24 are literate, compared to 73% of boys in the same age range, according to the United Nations. Around 15% of girls get to secondary school. The crisis highlighted the need for work on equality.
“Although there are many more girls coming into school now, because of cultural factors, many of them don’t continue until the end because of early marriage.
“I would say they have gone a long way, for those who stay on, they do very well but nowadays they don’t want to go into the teaching profession. Long ago there were many more women teachers than male teachers, but I think in a way we should not bemoan that fact too much because it shows that the girls empowerment is working, girls are now going into faculties of law, medicine. The girls don’t see themselves as limited anymore to being teachers or nurses,” said Dr Staneala.
The Ebola crisis not only impacted education but had a huge effect on the community in Sierra Leone. “It was quite the devastating,” Bishop Aruna tells The Irish Catholic. “Ebola was quite devastating we never knew it; we were never explained such.
“People are very ignorant of Ebola and the precautions to take against the spread of Ebola. They were very ignorant about that and people were also very superstitious.”
He said that the cultural aspect of burials in Sierra Leone where bodies are washed caused a lot of trouble. “People lost their lives and of course that influenced the economy.”
Projections
According to projections in 2014 from the World Bank Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone lost an estimated $2.2 billion of their GDP in 2015. Sierra Leone is only now beginning to recover from this blow.
“Eventually we got our act together and we partnered with agencies to sensitise people on the precautions to take. The no touch measures that helps to combat Ebola but I can tell you it was very devastating.
“Families were wiped out. We have a lot of orphans know who lost their families, their parents. Of those who survived, the after effects of the medicine that we used cause some to have eye problems, some to go blind, or have other health related issues.”
He said it is a very difficult task to care of and puts pressure not only on the communities but also the government.
I don’t think it would be easy for families to rise up against each other but not impossible, we have to keep an eye on things”
Bishop Aruna said people come to the Church for support and guidance, “They think we hold the answers to everything every problem, problems with school fees, problems of hardship, problems of illness, problem of relationships, relationship problems.”
Sierra Leone is also still feeling the affects of unrest in the country from 1991-2002. Dr Stanaela stated: “The challenges have lived with us although we are trying to overcome them, since we finished the civil war we are still feeling the effects in that we lost a lot of our human resources in all fields because people left the country and their spaces were filled by people who are less competent
“But now we were trying to build a capable work force. The good thing is that people are slowly returning to the country and young people are coming as well.”
Sierra Leone is rich in natural minerals including diamonds, rutile, bauxite, gold, iron and limonite. However, Bishop Aruna feels that the country has been left for poor by the multinational companies who come in and mine. “I want to see that the citizens benefit from the minerals not only the multinational companies who exploit it because they have the capacity to mine.”
Another issue, that has recently been prominent in some parts of Africa, namely Burkina Faso, is the threat of extremism. The Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone has estimated that of Sierra Leone’s population, around 77% population are Muslim, 21% are Christian, and 2% follow traditional African religions.
Bishop Aruna feels that the country currently manages the balance between religious groups well. “I’m confident that it would be very difficult to succeed in destroying this relationship. It’s not impossible but difficult because each family is mixed up. In my family there are Muslims there are bishops.
“So, I don’t think it would be easy for families to rise up against each other but not impossible, we have to keep an eye on things.
His parents became Catholics and attended catholic schools themselves. The Bishop says there used to be little signs of any extremism but they are slowly creeping in.
“When I was going to school, I never saw women dressed in all black in Sierra Leone but now we can see them. They are very much in the conservative the Islamic dress with the hijab covering up the head.
Extremism
These are signs of extremism and we want to respect them but also want to be very attentive to them.”
Bishop Aruna told The Irish Catholic that his week in Ireland was a welcome and relaxing break. He says he is saddled with a lot of these issues as people come to the church for guidance and as a source of hope.
On his visit the bishop received a cheque for €21,200 towards restoration of Yengema Secondary School in the Diocese of Kenema. The Fr Liam Lawton Concert at St Mel’s Cathedral Longford on October 25, together donations and marathon sponsorship, raised the funds.
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Ciaran McGoey, a native of Abbeyshrule now living in Carlingford, taught the Spiritan-founded school, in the late 1960s along with Fr John Flavin as Vice-Principal, Paddy McDermott, Joe Prior, Paddy Daly and Eddie Finnegan, as part of an international teaching staff. They are all now members of SLIP.
The founding Principal of the school was the late Fr Ray Barry from Drumshambo. Ciaran, assisted by his niece Kathryn Keenan and his old colleague Paddy McDermott, arranged the fundraising concert in tribute to those deceased Spiritan Missionaries of the Ardagh and Clonmacnois Diocese.
Around 70% of the total raised will be placed in a trust fund account for the school, administered by Bishop Henry Aruna for improvement of the school’s Catholic ethos, teaching, learning and curriculum enrichment once new and more reliable administration and leadership are in place, planned for the start of the new School Year 2020-21.
The rest, with an additional £6,000 from the Finnegan Family Fund, will be donated to Kenema’s Diocesan Pastoral Centre to be administered by Bishop Aruna, specifically for courses in Catholic school ethos and Catholic Social Teaching for young women teachers, as a means of restoring gender-balanced teaching staff for the co-educational Catholic schools of the Diocese.
“It’s really heart-warming to know that there are people here who worked in Sierra Leone and who still have a passion for the country despite the terrible things that happened to us,” said Dr Stanaela.
“Personally, I owe a lot to the Irish missionaries for my education and where I am now,” said Bishop Aruna who returned to Kenema on March 10.
