Sister glories in helping Jamaicans

When she entered religious life right after high school in 1954, Sister Gloria Graves considered becoming a Maryknoll missionary.

Although she ultimately chose to join the Sisters of Mercy, she revitalized her "missionary spirit" recently as a support team member for Doctors Without Borders, bringing medical care to the poor in Jamaica.

Now, she is hoping to learn Spanish and travel to countries like Guatemala, Haiti or Puerto Rico with the trip's sponsoring organization, Global Health Ministry.

Biography

A native of Mohawk, Sister Gloria taught school for 40 years before moving on to work in the mailroom at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany.

An enthusiastic volunteer, she has previously joined Catholic Charities groups that traveled to New York City after 9/11 and to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

There, she had consoled survivors and helped them fill out forms to receive assistance. But the trip to Jamaica, she said, was "the best."

Jamaica

Sister Gloria learned about Doctors Without Borders through an email sent to hospital employees. She immediately applied to go to Jamaica, and learned that her teaching and volunteering experience qualified her.

From Jan. 13-24, she spent a couple of days each in about a half-dozen locations in Jamaica, filling prescriptions in a mobile pharmacy set up by Doctors Without Borders.

She recounted stories of doctors seeing patients behind sheets that protected everyone from the blazing sun; Sister Gloria then accepted their medication scrips and gave them the medicine they needed.

"I learned to count to 60 on the trip," she joked, referring to the number of pills she often counted out.

Drug problem

Witnessing devastation in the wake of U.S. disasters had not prepared Sister Gloria for what she saw in Jamaica. She was told that, had her group not been there, residents of the towns they served would have been fighting over drugs, which are a rampant problem in the country.

Some Jamaicans begged the group to stay longer just to keep the number of shootings down; one mother told Sister Gloria she had lost her son in a shooting just months before, presumably involving drug dealing.

The nun also visited a nursing home so run-down "you wouldn't want to put your dog or cat there" and encountered a couple of patients the doctors in her group diagnosed with leprosy.

"I didn't know leprosy was still around," she remarked.

Impressions

By the end of the trip, the sister said she didn't want to come home. "I wanted to stay and help the people," she explained.

Although she's nearly 72, Sister Gloria said that her "youthful dream of being a missionary" wasn't quite fulfilled by just one trip with Doctors Without Borders.

"As long as I've got the health, I said, 'Put me on the list'" for more trips, she stated.

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