In a small village of sandy, unpaved roads, where life is built on simplicity and hope, a community of Daughters of Charity has planted a new seed of the Vincentian charism. We spoke with one of them, a missionary in Diouroup (Senegal), who has returned temporarily to Spain and opens her heart to share her experience. From the beginnings of the mission to the current challenges, passing through the day to day contact with the poorest, this interview is a window to a vocation lived with passion, humility and dedication.

She speaks of health, education, inclusion, pastoral work… but above all of closeness, of a simple and transforming presence, of a faith that comes alive among the most humble. Through his words we discover how the message of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac becomes present in African lands, where “being” and “living” is already a missionary witness.

QUESTION: Welcome back to Spain, how were your first days in Spain? Have you noticed much difference from Senegal?

ANSWER: Very, very much. First of all, I did not bring warm clothes. When I arrived I almost froze at the airport, so they took me to a community and they gave me the winter clothes that I have stored in a small suitcase here in Seville. In Senegal I am in a small village where all is sand, there is no paved road… and of course, you arrive here and see everything paved, everything clean… that was the first impression.

Q: How, when and where did you feel the call to be a missionary and devote your life to the most needy?

A: I initially felt the call to be a missionary, before I became a Daughter of Charity. I was in a school run by the Daughters of Charity and missionaries came to tell us about their experience, and when I was 7 or 8 years old, it really got to me. So I always wanted to be a missionary. Later, since I was in a school of sisters, they told me what it was to be a Daughter of Charity and I realized that there I could serve the whole variety of needs of the poor.

Q: What was your first impression when you arrived in Senegal for the first time, and has that perspective changed since then?

A: I loved it, I have always wanted to serve the poorest. I am in a small farming village, where life is simple, where people live with the bare necessities.

Since then, that perspective has not changed. I really like being with the people, they know me, they know the sisters… because it is a foundation [a new mission] that we have started from scratch, there were no sisters there. It is the first community of Daughters of Charity in Senegal, I feel at home.

Q: What projects are you currently carrying out in Diouroup and the surrounding area?

A: When we arrived, we had to start from scratch because we had nothing. The first thing we did was to look for a house. A local man was building a house and when he found out that we were looking for a house, he rented it to us. After that, what we did was to find out the needs of the town, meeting with the parish priest, with the women’s associations… so that they could tell us what we could do. One of the first needs was a health center, so we started looking for a way to make it happen. The Church gave us an old parish that was abandoned and, thanks to COVIDE-AMVE, we were able to rebuild it. Then we built a small outpatient clinic with a training room.

At present we have three sisters who take care of the health center, taking care of the medical appointments, the cures, the taking of samples, etc. In addition, once a week they go to visit the surrounding villages to visit the sick who are unable to come. I started with a women’s literacy center that I was asked to set up, which I did thanks to the help of the Council of Gran Canaria and COVIDE-AMVE. Now I am in charge of the children’s scholarships in Diouroup and the surrounding villages. Also, two days a week we run a center for children with special needs. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to the center, we welcome the children, we give them cognitive stimulation, physical stimulation, we give them massages…. Finally, I am also involved in pastoral work because I am in Caritas.

Photo: COVIDE-AMVE. Sister Mª Jesús and Isabel, COVIDE-AMVE Grants Manager, work on the new grants for the next school year.

Q: What are the main challenges you face in your missionary work?

A: Right now the main challenge is to finish the health center, because that is what the people have asked for. Another challenge is to be able to give a little structure to the mission, providing a more quality response to the projects that we are doing. For example, we do not have the possibility of setting up this project for children with special needs. We want to organize it well once the health center is finished.

“We simply make ourselves available, we are among them and they are seeing humility, simplicity, charity side by side.”

Q: How do you convey the Vincentian message in the Diouroup mission?

A: By being. There, we can make a difference. They have a very clerical religiosity, religious life has a high status. The religious themselves see that they are like something special there. We simply make ourselves available, we are among them and they are seeing humility, simplicity, charity side by side. We dress as lay people, they already recognize us by the cross, we go to the market and they immediately greet us, they call us by the name they have given us from their Serer ethnic group (Mari Saram, for me). Everyone knows us.

Q: Senegal is one of the countries from which many migrants leave for Europe and, especially, the Canary Islands; do you work with migrants in the mission?

A: We in the village do not see much need to leave the country. That is more in the capital, if you go to the capital there are many poor people, many people begging, a lot of misery. In Diouroup the people are simple, they live from the land (peanuts, millet, mangoes when the season arrives…), they don’t lack food (they don’t have too much either). There is no lack of food, but they live with just enough.

Q: Speaking of agriculture, have you noticed the effects of climate change in Senegal?

A: Yes, they are beginning to show. Farmers are used to rain from the end of June to November. The first rains are to prepare the soil, then it stops raining for about two weeks and then it starts again. It is at that moment when they start sowing. This process is changing, sometimes the first rain has come, they have prepared the field, but the second rain has not come until 2 months later, so if they have sown something it is useless, it rots. The rainy season is getting late, and when it rains, it rains torrentially, which does not help the fields at all.

Q: Finally, what message would you like to send to all the people who have contributed to the Senegal mission?

A: First of all, thank you, because none of us really have a salary or pension, we live on what the province gives us. We could not do anything without the help of associations such as COVIDE-AMVE, Caritas of Badajoz, the AMM, the godmothers and godfathers who support our scholarships. I would also like to mention that it is important to learn to live with what is necessary, something that is very difficult in a society as full of needs as today’s. But I know that you can be happy with less.

Source: Magazine “Tu Misión al día”, published by the NGO COVIDE-AMVE, special issue 2, first half of the year 2025.
Visit the COVIDE-AMVE website, in Spanish: https://covideamve.org/

Foto: COVIDE-AMVE. Sor Mª Jesús durante una reunión con el Consejo Parroquial de Doudame, aldea cercana a Diouroup.