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= Sister Catharine Maureen Bowes = Sister Catharine Maureen Bowes, born as Mary Catherine Bowes, was one of the first five Maryknoll sisters to go to the African Continent. As one of the leading woman to spread Catholicism in Africa, Sister Catharine Maureen was the head nurse of the Kowak dispensary, located in Kowak, Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Sister Catharine Maureen is remembered for the eighteen years she dedicated to Kowak, and she began the nucleus from which schools, dispensaries, clinics, and a congregation of African Sisters (the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa) grew. She died from illness on August 5, 2001.

Family
Mary Catherine Bowes was born in Jordan, New York on September 29, 1913. She was one of four children including two daughters and two sons. Her parents were named Edward and Sarah Kelly Bowes.

Education
Sister Catharine Maureen completed her early education in Jordan, New York and, after graduating from Jordan High School, she studied Nursing at Syracuse Memorial Hospital. There, she received her certificate as a Registered Nurse, specializing in Public Health Nursing. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1945 at Teachers College, Columbia University. Sister Catharine Maureen held extensive experience in public health nursing, and she also took a four month’s postgraduate course in obstetrical nursing in June 1948 at the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Calling
During her last semester, a close friend at Columbia asked Sister Catharine Maureen to, on her behalf, write to Maryknoll for vocation literature. After reading it over, she decided that she wanted to be a religious missionary. She applied to Maryknoll after her graduation in 1945, after acknowledging that at age 31 she was older than most applicants. Sister Catharine Maureen entered Maryknoll, New York from St. Patrick’s Parish in the Diocese of Syracuse on September 6, 1945. At reception, she received the religious name of Sister Catharine Maureen. She made her First Profession March 7, 1948 and was assigned to East Africa. Sister Catharine Maureen made her Final Profession in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) on March 7, 1951.

The Kodak Dispensary
Rome gave permission for the sisters to go to the north central area of Tanganyika since Anglicans dominated in the southeast in 1948. Sister Catharine Maureen was one of the first 5 Maryknoll sisters to enter Africa. They arrived on December 27, 1948 in Kowak, near Lake Victoria in the northeast corner of Tanganyika. The Kowak mission was the largest single group of Maryknoll medical and nursing personnel in the country, and Sister Catharine Maureen's dispensary soon became more popular than the religious services. Sister Catharine Maureen and the other founding Maryknoll sisters also learned Swahili, the everyday language of British East Africa.

Sister Catharine Maureen was a full-time nurse in the dispensary who had to deal with an area where illness, birth, and death were precedent. She had to diagnose disease, prescribe medication, make home calls, care of the dying, and deliver babies in emergencies. There was only one examination table and one bed for emergency deliveries. The sisters housed women who had to stay overnight in an abandoned hut that they had fixed up on the convent’s property. Maternal and infant healthcare, a movement dedicated to saving lives, was a global phenomenon by the interwar period. In the early years, birthday averaged two per month but increased between 1951 and 1956. Dispensary rates also rose over time; In May 1951, the Sister Catharine Maureen and the convent treated 1,167 patients, four years later they treated 2,653.

The Kowak dispensary served a large area since the nearest hospital, founded in 1934, was thirty miles to the northwest. There was also a government hospital about thirty-five miles away, but people had to cross a large bay on a daily ferry to get there, while a lorry conveniently passed the Kowak mission daily. Once a month the sisters operated mobile clinics that lasted three days, making the isolated areas more accessible to biomedical health care. Sister Catharine Maureen did have some trouble keeping the mission afloat financially. They charged a small fee, one to two American cents per visit as well as payment for any drugs. They had access to mepacrine, aspirin, and medicine for worms. Sometimes patients used the barter system and paid in chickens and fish. Other challenges included a lack of staff, and although the nuns studied the local language, they were not prepared for the mass of Bantu patients who spoke other languages. Indigenous sisters translated, explained customs to the American sisters, and taught health to the patients in their native languages. Occasionally, Sister Catharine Maureen did have the help of physicians. However, they were only supplied in emergencies by Shirati Hospital. Most of the time, the sister nurse had to assess the patient’s condition and use her own judgement as to whether or not to refer to the hospital.

Sister Catharine Maureen worked hard to overcome challenges, however. When the Kowak dispensary officially opened in 1949, the sisters had no x-ray machine or any equipment to perform elaborate blood and urine chemistries. However, by the 1950s, Sister Catharine Maureen’s work reflected the revolutionary period that had begun in the late 1940s with the discovery and dissemination of sulfa drugs and antibiotics. This increased her ability to actually cure patients. She gave out penicillin injections for infections and sulfa drugs for leprosy; cleaned, dressed, and stitched wounds; stanched blood flow from deep gashes; gave medicines for fever; and diagnosed diseases such as amoebic dysentery. This work demanded not solely autonomy, but it also demanded also specialized medical and nursing knowledge.

Conversions at Kodak
Sister Catharine Maureen was not just successful in healing patients, but also in converting the local population. The number of baptisms and candidates to the new African religious novitiate increased by 1956. However, Sister Catharine Maureen was inclusive of other religions and sometimes practiced pluralistic healing. In 1949, Sister Catharine Maureen delivered a premature baby who was not doing well. She tried to do anything she could to help the baby breathe but eventually gave up and baptized the infant. However, in the same room she also allowed an African woman to stay. The woman beat a cooking pot over the baby’s head, and chanted a song that was intended to ward off the evil spirits. The baby soon started breathing. Although Sister Catharine Maureen and the Maryknoll sisters would treat without discriminating based on religion, they did believe that they could not heal by biomedical means alone. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Maryknoll sisters adhered to a Catholic ethos that relied on sacraments, devotions, and prayers to the Virgin Mary as a means of access to the divine.

Ministry after Kodak
In 1971, after completing a refresher course in nursing, Sister Catharine Maureen became the Public Health Supervisor of the Catholic Relief Services in Kenya. There, she aimed to develop a pre-school health and nutrition education program. The purpose was to improve and make more effective the teaching children offer to the mothers and encourage the growing and using of their own foods. In 1979, Sister Catharine Maureen returned to the Center at Maryknoll and worked at the Nursing Home. Thereafter she returned to Kenya in 1981 where she served as regional bookkeeper and part-time pastoral minster for four years. In July 1985, she returned to America to take care of her sister until her sister’s death in 1987. Thereafter, Sister Catharine Maureen worked in Treasure for two years until she took on part-time work in Mail Desk for 8 years.

Final Years
Sister Catharine Maureen celebrated the 50th anniversary celebration of the Maryknoll Society in Africa by returning to East Africa in 1996. The sisters were happy to see their adopted homeland once more. Sister Catharine Maureen passed after illness on August 5, 2001.

Legacy
When Maryknoll work began in Tanganyika, there were just a few establishes missions, a few trained catechists, and there were no indigenous priests or Sisters. However, today the area has an almost entirely indigenous local church, and the Catholic population is growing. In 2011, Catholics averaged about 20 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. The Kowak Mission was the nucleus from which schools, dispensaries, clinics, and a congregation of African Sisters grew.