Sisters Jane Frances Nabakaawa (from left), Antony Tebitendwa and Maria Gorreth Nassali of the Daughters of Mary of Uganda order take a moment to admire a painting inside the Chapel of St. Ignatius.

Schooling Sisters for Service

by Cheryl Reid-Simons

Wearing her distinctive bright blue habit and veil, Sister Jane Frances Nabakaawa is easy to spot as she walks among the other students on the Seattle University campus. Sister Nabakaawa, 41, is working on her master’s degree at the School of Theology and Ministry. But she’s not the typical SU graduate student.

Nabakaawa is a sister from the Daughters of Mary of Uganda order. Typically, sisters from the order are sent to study at the university in pairs, but Nabakaawa’s partner left SU to get her master’s degree in biology at the University of Indiana. In late December Nabakaawa was joined by sisters Maria Gorreth Nassali and Antony Tebitendwa. Arriving in Seattle during a week of memorable snowstorms, the women—who had never before left their home country of East Africa—were captivated by the scenery. “They said, ‘Everything is white,’” Nabakaawa recalls.

Months later, Nassali, 29, still marvels at the weather. “I’m not yet used to the climate,” she says. “It keeps changing.”

Nassali and Tebitendwa are enrolled in English and computer classes in preparation for the start of regular undergraduate coursework this spring. Computer science will be the focus of Nassali’s studies, while Tebitendwa plans to pursue an economics degree.

Founded in 1910, the Daughters of Mary of Uganda is the oldest indigenous women’s religious community south of the Sahara. The sisters work primarily in education and health care, operating schools and clinics for the poor in East Africa. Their superiors in the congregation select those who come to study at SU. Since the program began, 19 sisters have graduated from SU.

Sisters Jane Frances Nabakaawa (left) and Antony Tebitendwa share a laugh over whether to cover their veils with their hoods on a cold winter afternoon.

The sisters are part of a longstanding tradition that goes back nearly half a century to the fall of 1960. It was that year when sisters Teresa of Avila and Maria Leonsia of the Daughters of Mary came to the university on full scholarships provided by SU’s Jesuit community. Except during the reign of dictator Idi Amin Dada in the 1970s, when the Daughters of Mary of Uganda were forced into hiding, the Jesuits have continued to give scholarships to sisters from the order. The scholarships typically cover undergraduate and graduate, or master’s-level, work.

While the Jesuits provide the funding, the Sisters of Providence provide everything else the women need, including room and board at the St. Joseph Residence in West Seattle. The Jesuits and the Sisters of Providence work together on the partnership as an answer to Pope John XXIII’s call for religious men and women to foster relationships with developing countries. Once their studies are completed, the women return to Uganda to use their newly acquired education in service to the poor in their communities.

“The community sends us according to the needs it has at home,” Sister Nabakaawa says. “They bring us here to train us to go back and serve in that particular field.”

Nabakaawa had a degree in education and worked as a high school teacher in Uganda before coming to SU in 2003, where she found herself in classes with students not much older than those she taught back home.

In 2007, she earned a bachelor’s degree in theology and is now working on a master’s in divinity from the School of Theology and Ministry. “They are preparing me to teach perhaps in seminar or the novitiates,” she says of her plans, post-SU. Over the years the sisters have earned degrees in a range of fields, from nursing to theology to accounting.

What they take away from their work at SU is much more than a degree. “My experience at Seattle U was very inspiring,” says Sister Catherine Gorreth Nakatudde, who came to SU in 1991, and went on to earn a degree in history and religious studies, and a master’s in pastoral studies. She says, “I learned to be creative, to be active in my teaching, and to embrace people of different cultures. I learned to address people without fear and to use my talent of teaching fully.”

Lynn Chappell, one of the Sisters of Providence who has worked with the Ugandan sisters, was in the same class with the first Daughters of Mary who came to Seattle, and has maintained a close relationship with them since.

“The sacrifices they’ve made in coming to a new culture so far from friends and family are amazing,” Sister Chappell says. “Some have had family members die [while attending SU] and didn’t get back to see them again. It’s a huge sacrifice for them.”

But such personal difficulties and hardships are minor compared with what many of the Ugandan women have experienced.

Sister Nabakaawa recalls when she was 9 years old and forced to hide for three months in a forest with her family to avoid Amin’s soldiers. When they came out of hiding they returned home to their farm, which was destroyed. The traumatic event was a turning point in their lives, Sister Nabakaawa says.

“God protected us, then my parents devoted themselves to helping the children who were orphans,” she says.

Sister Nabakaawa credits this period in her life for her devotion to the poor and to children, in particular. She marvels that at SU, students and faculty who have never known poverty want to do something to help the less fortunate.

“In me there is a trait of caring for the poor and the needy, having experienced suffering myself,” she says. “Looking at the spirit of helping here at Seattle University, I feel fulfilled.”