A chat with the head sister

The Missionaries of Charity is a Religious Congregation that was founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1950. The sisters serve the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low all over the world. The house in the Alagados neighborhood was the first house in Brazil and receives abandoned elderly women and malnourished children. The Missionaries of Charity don’t accept any government help. The house is run by 5 sisters and a couple of local women who cook, take care of the kids and help the sisters with the daily chores such as cleaning and doing laundry.

Today, I helped the head sister doing laundry. There are 3 sinks in a row, one for washing and 2 for rinsing. Everything is done by hand, the clothes, sheets and towels are scrubbed with a brush, rinsed twice and wrung by hand. The adults clothes are hung up on one side of the room with wooden cloth pins while the children’s clothes are hung up on the other side with plastic cloth pins (I am not sure I understand the logic...). While doing laundry I had an interesting conversation with the head nun, she told me a lot about the house and the children. The sisters go out into the neighborhoods every day to look for poor, malnourished children. One of the little girls, Vittoria, is still very small and thin but apparently she was unable to stand when she came to the house at age 1. Her little arms are still very skinny and when I fed her today, I made sure that she finished her food. The sisters also do home visits to the poorest families. I have asked whether I could join them one day but she wasn’t too keen on it but she told me that she would think about it. The sisters do such a wonderful job by providing these young children with food, love and a safe environment hoping that some day they will have a better life. The children stay at Madre Teresa until they are about 3 years old before they can go to a community school. Education is now compulsory in Brazil and families receive money from the government for sending their children to school.