This article is from page 46 of the 2008-03-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 46 JPG
SR ETHEL Normoyle’s heart is so big you’d wonder where she finds room for any other vital organs in tes mm BUS W AB Bes BO Non
She is clearly very uncomfortable when people describe her as “a liv- ing saint” or most often the “Mother Theresa of South Africa”.
The Lissycasey woman will look at you in bemusement and say “but I met Mother Theresa – she was a truly wonderful woman.”
Yet every person who meets Ethel will say there is a light about her, a huge ability to comfort, to pay atten- tion and to make the person she is speaking to feel like the only person in the universe.
When Ethel Normoyle told her family in Lissycasey she was going to join the Litthke Company of Mary, there were – according to those who know her – a few disbelieving eye- brows raised.
The attractive young woman who loved singing and the company of her friends and neighbours seemed an unlikely candidate for the veil, it TST BLO
When she was asked to go to Africa as a trained nurse, she has no hesita- tion in admitting she didn’t want to leave her beloved county Clare.
“My family predicted I’d last six months”, she says, looking back on more than 30 years in Africa.
Ethel’s first posting in Africa was to Pretoria and while this was a chal- lenging post, her next assignment left her totally at a loss at first.
She arrived in the township out- side Port Elizabeth and was totally stunned by the extent of the poverty and the need.
In 1988 she had no base, no build-
ing, no introduction and no blueprint for how to proceed.
A white woman in Apartheid South Africa, walking among people living in dire poverty in shacks, she was taking a huge personal risk.
“IT just kept coming back and talk- ing to people. I wore my veil in those days to try to let people know I was not siding with whites who support- ed Apartheid,’ says Ethel.
Her first breakthrough was when a township woman who had a tree
in the yard beside her shack offered Ethel the use of the tree.
“IT wondered at the time, what use can I make of a tree? Then summer came and I saw just how important a tree is in giving shade.”
She began with a small school for the children under that tree and moved on to set up a clinic in a metal container.
Shortly afterwards, sympathetic members of the business community in Port Elizabeth built three rooms
for her in the township and that was the beginning of Missionvale.
Over the years, she has suffered personal physical and verbal attack, being forced out of her home by white neighbours who didn’t want people from the township calling to a door in their neighbourhood.
Once, she was kidnapped and stabbed. The plucky daughter of Lis- sycasey fought off her attackers, and drove herself to hospital after being stabbed through the lung.
The love she has for people shines out of her.
She rarely talks to anyone with touching them, and she distributes hugs with genuine joy.
Her attenae is always tuned to be- ing helpful and when a deadline is approaching for stories to be sent to