10 May 2023 Anesvad awards the 30 years of Sister “Inca” as missionary in Liberia

Sister Encarnación González, a Hospitaller Sister who spent 30 years as a missionary at the Saint Benedict Menni Health Center in Monrovia (Liberia), has been awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Anesvad Foundation, which recognizes the career of people who have developed solidarity, cooperation and promotion of the right to health in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Liberian health center is twinned with the Aita Menni Hospital and, in addition to providing outpatient and general medical services, is developing a rehabilitation program for mentally ill women in collaboration with the Gipuzkoa-based center. Sister Encarnación —”Sister Inca”, as she was known in the African country— has played a crucial role in both initiatives.

The award, one of three given by Anesvad in the VIII Edition of its HEALLTH awards for solidarity and cooperation, was presented to her during a gala that took place yesterday at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. There, Inca was accompanied by the superior of Aita Menni Sisters Hospitallers, Sister Isabel Martinez, by its managing director, Mikel Tellaeche, and by other members of our Hospitaller family in the Basque Country, as well as by relatives of the nun who came from Burgos to accompany her.

The event was attended by the Mayor of Bilbao, Juan María Aburto, the Minister of Health of the Basque Government, Miren Gotzone Sagardui, the Minister of Equality, Justice and Social Policies, Nerea Melgosa, and the Director of Cooperation of the autonomous executive, Paul Etcheberry, among other personalities.

In addition to expressing her gratitude for the award, in her speech after receiving the prize, Sister Inca recalled with great emotion the hard times lived in Liberia —wars, Ebola… — but also the value of the solidarity work carried out there, and especially that carried out with women with mental illness through the initiative We Are Like You.

A life devoted to the Hospitaller mission in Liberia

Sister Inca has dedicated almost her entire life to helping and collaborating with the people of Liberia, playing a crucial role in providing health services to the population of the country, located on the west coast of Africa.

Born in 1949, she was assigned to England in 1967, where she professed perpetual vows as a religious in 1974. From 1988 to 1992 she was assigned to the Philippines, and after returning to England, her mission in Liberia began on September 21, 1992.

The first Community of Hospitaller Sisters was established in Virginia in 1966 and was composed of four Sisters who took care of children with polio. In 1989, the Sisters decided to move to Pipeline, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Monrovia, because of the insecurity in the Virginia area, the low population and the distance to the hospitals where the children underwent surgery.

It was in 1989 when the new Clinic was built in Pipeline and where a pavilion was also erected for the rehabilitation of children with orthopedic problems, many of them with sequelae of poliomyelitis.

The Clinic soon became the outpatient maternity center of reference for the Pipeline community to this day.

The rehabilitation center received children operated on at various hospitals and had a prosthetic workshop, thus showing the level of specialization of the center as one of the most advanced in Liberia.

Inca arrived in Liberia on September 21, 1992, in the midst of Liberia’s first civil war. A month later, Charles Taylor’s rebel troops surrounded Monrovia in their final assault on the capital. The Sisters were forced to leave the center with all the children and take refuge in the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital of the Brothers of St. John of God.

From the Hospital, Sister Inca traveled several times the 15 kilometers that separated her from the Health Center to check on the situation, until she saw how it was occupied and looted by the soldiers.

Faced with the escalation of the war, she and another sister went into exile in Ghana on November 29, two months after arriving in the country. She would return six months later, in May 1993, while the war lasted until 1996. The second period of war began in 1998 and did not end until October 2003. During this period she had to leave the country again for four months in 1998 and after the end of the war she was transferred to Ghana in October 2003.

Sister Inca returned permanently to Liberia in 2007, a post-war period full of fears and mistrust due to the horrors experienced. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 people died in the country, and more than one million had to leave Liberia as refugees.

The Ebola epidemic

Just when it seemed that the country was forgetting its worst nightmares, in March 2014 the worst known Ebola epidemic arrived. Liberia was the nation most affected by number of deaths, and the epidemic highlighted the structural fragility of the country, with all health centers being closed for four months.

Inca traveled to Spain in June and by July the borders were closed. He would return on December 1, 2014 with the mission to reopen the health center, once again putting his life at risk, as he had previously done during the war periods. The reopening of the clinic required adapting the facilities by building a new triage area and a new isolation area for possible Ebola cases.

Liberia was declared Ebola-free in June 2016, and in 2017, after successfully refurbishing the unused ward that had been dedicated to children with polio sequelae, Inca Gonzalez led the opening of a specific unit intended for women with mental illness.

The original mission of the Sisters Hospitallers since 1881, to care for women with mental illness, came to Liberia after many hardships and tragedies, in line with the hospital charism of the Congregation.

During the 30 years that Inca has been in Liberia, she has been the administrator of the center, assuming a complex and arduous responsibility due to the difficulty of running a care center during periods of war with the existing limitations and shortages and with the personal risk involved in obtaining supplies for the care of patients.

Sister Inca has been a fundamental pillar in the creation and support of medical centers in remote areas. She has enabled the training of local workers to improve the quality of health care services in the region and her tireless efforts and faithful dedication have earned her the respect, affection and admiration of health professionals, the religious community and the people of Liberia.

After 30 years of service in Africa, on March 29, 2022, “Sister Inca” received a fond farewell from the sisters and staff of Saint Benedict Menni and left for Spain. As the sister says, Africa “has been a place full of love and color” that she will never erase from her memory. Having completed her mission, she is certain that her message and her work will continue to resonate in the place where she learned to love without fear, and to be happy with what is really important.

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