A different kind of mother – Sis Augustine

She may be a few months shy of 80, but Sis Augustine still beams with excitement and loves to talk about her children.

She has never given birth but this nun of 55 years has mothered hundreds of children in three African countries.

Formerly Rita Quarless of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Sis Augustine recalled how her passion to serve God was kindled as a teenager as she watched and admired a young nun who taught her at Providence Catholic Girls Secondary School.{{more}}

“I detected a love for God in her, I was attracted to her love for God,” said Sis Augustine during an interview with SEARCHLIGHT.

At age 12 she told her mother that she wanted to “fly planes” when she grew up, but at 25 she was being professed into the Convent and in less than a couple weeks later, was being shipped off to Sierra Leone to teach at a girls’ boarding school with a population of 200.

No one would have guessed the path her life would take if they saw her roller-skating around the Queens Park Savannah or cycling to the beach with her friends as a teenager.

She had become a qualified school teacher prior to her profession into the convent.

“Oh I love to teach,” she exclaimed with a face that mirrors a kid in a candy store.

This love for teaching she explained is a passion that has not wilted one bit since the first day she entered the school; all the girls, shocked that they were seeing a black Nun, stared at her – and stared at her some more, she remembers amusingly.

“All the Sisters were white, they were Irish so seeing a black face like theirs was a shock to the girls,” Sis Augustine explained.

It is there that she became a mother!

“We didn’t just teach them in school but took care of them in every way,” she said.

She recalled that several villages were served by that school, the lack of the modern commonalities like water and electricity – the challenge of escorting so many girls down to a river for them to refresh themselves and supervising their recreational time.

And there were the serious challenges of culture, illiteracy and poverty that made the efforts to see the girls excel an uphill task.

“They did not have a real appreciation for the education of girls back then, women were to bear children and support their husbands,” Sis Augustine said.

Health concerns also pushed the faith of the Nuns.

“I use to feel the pain when I saw girls come to school with open sores, sometimes they would come down with malaria, it was tough,” she said.

But all the challenges, the waking up in the night to the call of “Mother I am sick” or “Mother my head hurts,” (the girls called the nuns mother) were worth it.

Sis Augustine said that there was always a wonderful feeling when she saw or heard of her students excelling and becoming successful in life, as any mother would.

After 15 years in Sierra Leone, Sis Augustine was transferred to the Gambia where she spent another 15 years. This was followed by a one year stint in the East African country of Uganda.

Ironically, her longest sojourn in her homeland Trinidad after she started her walk with God was when, with the Church’s permission, she returned in the 1980’s to care for her two eldest biological sisters until their death.

Looking back, Sis Augustine is aware that she did not experience the pleasures that come with giving birth to a child or the sexual pleasure that is part of the process, but she is happy.

“Pleasure is transient, pleasures come to an end, but I am happy, really happy,” she declared with a smile that could repaint a darkened skyline with glowing sunshine.

Sis Augustine said that since she came to St Vincent in 1994 she has thoroughly enjoyed it.

“I am enjoying my life here, I am treated so well,” she said.

Sis Augustine is however a concerned mother; as she looks at the present generation and the struggles they have with discipline.

“I am glad I am not in the classroom now, I must admit,” she said, adding that she finds the gratitude expressed to teachers by the modern-day students a distant second to how things used to be – when she was in her heyday.

“There is so much discourtesy these days” she lamented.

Now the celebrated woman of God waits to die! As she puts it, no matter how great, rewarding and fulfilled life is, nothing can beat the glory of meeting God in glory.

“People don’t like to hear me say it but I long for that day,” she said, with as broad a smile and a clenched fist expressing the ultimate victory, the ultimate achievement in her frame of reference.