Nuns at Mafeking.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 13, 27 March 1902, Page 4

Nuns at Mafeking.

The following account of how the Sisters of Mercy are doing their noble work at Mafeking appears in the Sydney Freeman's Journal. It is written by Lieutenant McKenna (an Australian serving with the British forces in South Africa) :—: — ' What is gradually becoming one of the established features of our Mafeking Christmastide (says the writer) is the annual Christmas entertainment by the children of the convent school. Since the war the Sisters of Mercy, who have charge of the convent, have become such heroines, owing to their nursing and making of warlike stores during the siege, that one is sometimes getting back into the way of regarding them as an educational Sisterhood. A vibit to the scholars' breaking-up entertainment, however, would soon convince you that they are most certainly educational, and educational to a very varied extent. When one considers the fact that the Mafeking convent is the only school, in the accepted idea of a school, bstween Kimberley and Bulawayo, one can imagine that *he 700 miles of country is a fairly wide field of industry. And the scholars supplied from this wide field possess a wide and varied set of talents. W.e have the demure young lady of eight or nine years, who comes to school from somewhere where her father has a Btore on the fringe of the desert, and who has probably never seen more than two white people together in her life ; then she appears at the entertainment as a dainty exponent of a dainty minuet. Then the little toddling boy of tender years, whose experiences of society are such as a farm 50 miles from anywhere can offer, appears on the stage as the up-to-date masher singing an up-to-date song, and twirling bis curly-brimmed top-hat in the adopted Piccadilly style, although he ha 3 probably never seen a man with a top-hat on in his little life. There are people who would not regard the aforesaid abilities as educational, perhaps, but as a member of the public one has no opportunity of judging scholastic attainments, but can only judge by what he sees, and that is enough to assure anyone that children who be so capably taught the lighter studies of life must necessarily possess a high standard in the more serious walks. The convent institution is in every way quite a recent affair in our midst. The Sisters of Mercy had only just got their convent building erected when the Boers came along with big guns and blew most of it down for them. What little headway they had made with their pupils was necessarily brought to a standstill until it was decided which nation was to own the part of the country on which they had built their convent, and this affair took some time, so that it was not really until late in 1900 that they had a chance of making a start — little more than a year. Consequently there are no pupils that'have been long enough with the Sisters to show how far their educational advancement may be carried, but when one judges by the degree that has been attained in such a short space of time, one may well prophecy the most triumphant success, and that prophecy is the wibb. of everyone who haa any wish to see civilisation spread in these out-of-the-way --pots of the Empire. The Sisters are making an appeal to tin charitable public for funds to enable them to build a much needed Bchool, their present space being quite inadequate to the number of pupils attending, co that the Sisters had to give up their own refectory and cells, themBelve^ suffering the greatest privation and discomfort on thia account. Let us hope that our generous countrymen, to many of whom the Sisters are personally known, may help them in this work.