By Sr Sonia Sangel FdCC
Sister Sonia, who has written from East Timor in these pages before, was in Dili from 17 to 28 May. She was ushered back to safety in Baucau, where she’s based, by the Portuguese military.
By Sister Sonia Sangel FdCC
Sister Sonia wrote in our September-October 2003 issue about the Maestra di Campagna, or ‘Rural Teachers,’ whom she trains in East Timor. Here she tells us about an unusual way of working for reconciliation.
By Sister Sonia Sangel FdCC
‘If everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be!’
This is what my heart was singing as I began my mission in East Timor a few months after the war in 1999, my second mission ad gentes – ‘to the nations’ – after six adventurous years in Papua New Guinea. I wished to be one of many who might light just one little candle, particularly in the world of women. Women constitute 49.5 % of the population of East Timor. By their sheer number alone they can be looked upon as key economic and social agents in this newly born, struggling nation.
By: Sr. Sonia Sangel, FdCC
Dreaded Malaria
Enamasa brought her one-year-old baby, Sagira to St. Therese’s Clinic Port Moresby where I work as a nurse. The child is severely dehydrated due to three days vomiting and diarrhea associated with high fever. Looking at Sariga’s physical appearances I have the impression that she is positive to the dreadful Malaria Falciparum. She looks very sick, and is shaking with chill and she sweats. Her eyes are sunken and jaundiced and her abdomen is distended with a enlarged spleen. I at once took her vital signs and sent her blood slide to the laboratory for a malaria smear. I started administering the Oral Dehydration Therapy. The child is like a parched land, a thirst for water, I showed and instructed the mother to continue to feed her with Oresol to replace the water and salts that had gone out of her body over the past three days. For her high temperature, I gave her a cool bath and a Quinine intramuscular injection. Finally after an hour and a half the peak of crisis subsided a little. Still anxious that she might not fully recover I thought of baptizing the child.
