A calling to care: Making an international impact through nursing

Over years of commitment to religious life, Sister Agnes Atai has mastered waking up at dawn for prayers, tending to animals and caring for others within the different convents she has resided in. What she didn’t realize at the time was how integral nursing and the practice of care would become to her life in Uganda and then in the United States.

However, when she first landed in the United States, she was most surprised by American food. “I never thought that you could eat bread as food for lunch. I thought bread was something eaten for breakfast because that’s how we used to do at home,” she laughed in reference to her home country of Uganda.

Growing up in Uganda, Sister Agnes was surrounded by religious people in every aspect of her life. Her family was devout and involved in the church, but it was her educational journey that had the most impact on her walk in faith. “I studied in a boarding school for girls. The principal of the school was a Sister, and we lived among Sisters. At that point, I really didn’t have any interest in religious life, but then all of a sudden, it felt like a calling,” Sister Agnes reminisced. “I started going to church; it was mandatory, but I got inspired by the way the Sisters used to handle us. They loved us, and I became attracted to that, and I thought, ‘Oh, I think I can live like them.’”

Learning a new rule of life

Joining the church in the capacity of a Sister is a lengthy process. “You don’t just become a Sister right away,” Sister Agnes explained. “There are levels. I joined as a candidate when I was 17, but because I was underage, I went home and came back to start when I was 18.”

Sister Agnes described the transition as difficult: She left her belongings and family, choosing to accept the dress and behavior standards for her new calling and role. “I reached a point where I felt like I wasn’t going to make it, but I had people around me who would encourage me and tell me that I could do it. I could make it, despite the challenges,” she said.

She suddenly found herself trying to navigate a significant cultural shift. Usually, they woke up at 5:30 a.m., which was a challenge for her, as she had never been accustomed to rising that early. After getting up, she would go for prayers. In that environment, owning a cellphone was not permitted; if someone wanted to communicate with their parents or anyone else, they had to approach the novice mistress and express what they wished to say.

Faith in action

Sister Agnes explained Christian community living is as old as the religion itself, where it was modeled in biblical teachings and accounts: “Whatever we do is from the Bible, and we try to follow what’s in there.”

Through the death of her mother and her experience of shared community living, Sister Agnes first encountered her love for caretaking and, later, the nursing profession. She used to take care of other Sisters within the convent she stayed at when she lived in Uganda. During this time, her Mother Superior saw how she cared for others and urged her to pursue a degree in nursing. “My mother died because of what I call negligence, and that inspired me to want to be different and change the way nursing is done back home,” she noted. “My community definitely influenced me, but also the death of my mom.”

Adapting to the everyday

Every culture has its own practical theology to order everyday living, and Sister Agnes found this to be true when she first came to the United States. Even though Catholic churches largely follow the same format around the world, there were still some elements of surprise that caught her off guard when she attended her first service here. “It was chaos in the church, it was like we were in the market, and everyone was talking to each other. Back home, when you go to church, everyone is quiet because it’s time for prayer. Here, someone has to stand up and really make everyone quiet.”

While there are not many African sisters living within the monastery, Sister Agnes was still able to celebrate her culture by sharing food with others, which also helped her combat her own feelings of homesickness. She has enjoyed going on walks and listening to traditional music from home, calling her friends and family who make her feel at ease and to soothe those ill feelings.

The ease of community

Despite these little cultural adjustments, Sister Agnes feels as though she has really found her place within the Benedictine community. “There are a great set of rules that are really emphasized here in the school, the Benedictine Living Community, and in the monastery,” she said. She is not from a Benedictine background, instead coming from the Sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary Institute. Of the Benedictine values that The College of St. Scholastica celebrates, Sister Agnes stated community as the most impactful because, “the moment you do things as a community, they become easy. You understand each other, you do things together, and everyone moves at the same pace.”

As her time at the College wraps up, Sister Agnes is grateful for the opportunities that she has been given while here. “I’ve learned many things from my friends, my professors and also from the workplace. Nursing is not a joke and it’s something that you can’t do independently. You need others to support you and others to work with. Sharing my talents and getting to know others has helped me build me and make me who I will be in the future, especially in my career. It’s a good thing that I have achieved here that I didn’t have before.”

Nursing from Duluth to Uganda

After graduation, Sister Agnes plans to go back to her home country, where she hopes to work with people to help them change their lives, teaching them skills that she has learned while studying in Duluth. She has had the opportunity to see the way the hospitals are run, observing the collaborative culture of communication and working together, which is wholly different from the autonomy that she has seen exhibited in the nursing systems of Uganda.

While there is not much differentiation in Uganda about the specific sectors of nursing that one goes into, Sister Agnes has particularly enjoyed working in medical surgery, the department in which people get surgeries and nurses work with patients post-surgery, monitoring their recovery, as well as being there to assist in case of complications.

In closing, she shared, “It’s important to be compassionate, to be resilient and to serve others. The more you are compassionate to one another, the more you build a wonderful community. It’s sometimes hard, but if we try, we can do it.”