She was a doctor of the Home Army, almost died at the hands of the Gestapo. She left occupied Poland by ship, hidden in a coal hiding place. She came to Uganda and treated lepers for over 40 years. She was 103 years old – will she soon become a saint?
- In the 40s, she was active in the underground, she was the commandant of the women’s division of the Home Army. She was arrested by the Gestapo, but her underground collaborators managed to buy her out.
- After the war, she left for Uganda to treat lepers. Upon her arrival, she wrote in her diary: “I know little about leprosy, and even less about Uganda. I am afraid of strangers and work and this responsibility »
- In Buluba on Lake Victoria, the work was enormous: 750 patients and a thousand patients. She had to gain their trust because the natives believed shamans rather than doctors
- Doctor Błeńska spent 43 years in Uganda. She stood in the operating room 4300 times with a scalpel in her hand.
“As far as I can remember, I have always had two goals: I have to be a doctor and I have to be a mission doctor. The end. Already as a child, I said that, and it came true “- this is how the doctor Wanda Błeńska, later called” The Mother of Lepers “, told Joanna Molewska and Marta Pawelec in the book” Satisfied Life “.
She also recalled the great impression she had made during World War II by the first leper she had seen. The Americans kept him in a cage, threw him food and cigarettes. And the ambulance he was brought was burned.
Wanda Błeńska made her dream come true: for 43 years she was a doctor on a mission and treated patients with leprosy in Uganda.
On the way to Uganda
Before Błeńska went on a mission to Africa, in the 40s she was active in the underground, she was the commander of the female unit of the Home Army. She also treated wounded Poles.
In 1943, the Gestapo arrested her. She was threatened with death for her anti-German activity, but her collaborators from the underground managed to buy her out.
In 1944, hidden in a coal hiding place, she escaped with Polish sailors to Germany to save her dying brother Roman. She looked after him for three weeks, but unfortunately his brother died of a stomach ulcer.
In Hanover, Błeńska completed tropical medicine courses, and then post-graduate studies at the Institute of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the University of Liverpool.
“I’ll take care of the lepers”
Abroad, Błeńska confided to a missionary from the Congregation of the White Fathers that she would like to go on a mission: preferably to India or Rhodesia, where Polish missionaries were active. However, the monk offered her to go to Uganda.
She was almost 40 when she got there, but she was happy that her life’s dream was coming true. Although in her diary she wrote: “I know little about leprosy, and even less about Uganda. I am afraid of strangers and work and this responsibility ”.
She ended up in Buluba on Lake Victoria, where she started an apprenticeship in a leprosarium run by Irish Franciscan sisters, i.e. a leper colony. She worked in a small medical facility located in the estate for the sick. They lived in huts made of mud and sun-dried bricks. There was no electricity or running water.
But the work was enormous: 750 sick people and a thousand patients. She had to gain their trust, because the natives believed rather sorcerers and shamans than doctors – and their skin was white.
4300 Błeńska operation
Małgorzata Nawrocka in the book “Her light. About the life and work of Wanda Błeńska “he writes about the Polish doctor:” Some have to have their fingers, hands and feet amputated. He does plastic surgery of eye sockets. Primitive conditions: instead of the operating table – a high camp bed. The operating room is a modest room covered with tiles. In order to have access to daylight, he has the tiles removed and the windows inserted. At the time when Błeńska treated lepers, the possibilities of overcoming the disease were limited. People suffering from leprosy have been affected by various other diseases that can befall a person, including typically tropical diseases. Doctor Błeńska had to face the challenges and play the role of a surgeon, ophthalmologist, orthopedist, gynecologist. “
In an interview for “Religia.tv” Błeńska said that she operated on about 100 leprosy patients a year. It is easy to count that after spending 43 years in Uganda, she stood in the operating room 4300 times with a scalpel in her hand.
This terrible leprosy
Leprosy, also called with the Greek “lepra” or “Hansen’s disease”, has aroused disgust and fear for centuries. To this day, in some countries it is considered a punishment for sins, it causes stigma. The sick are isolated from the rest of the community in special camps, which still function today in countries where people suffer from leprosy, especially in Asia and Africa.
In Nawrocka’s book, the doctor said: “Leprosy affects the whole person, and not only the leprosy itself needs to be treated, but most of all its effects. The result is paralysis, contractures that require massage and rehabilitation. Leprosy can be treated effectively, but when detected late, it leaves permanent injuries. So we taught the right exercises, trying first of all to convince the patient that it helps and that it must be followed to avoid contractures. Leprosy affects the nerves and it is very, very painful, especially in the so-called reaction when there is acute inflammation of the nerves. They suffered. (…) However, the biggest problem was not the physical effects, but the social ones: the isolation of the sick by the families. It was the greatest burden for them. Often, families were unable to break the barrier of fear. “
She did not use gloves
Błeńska was known for never wearing gloves when examining the sick. Joanna Molewska and Marta Pawelec said: “I put on gloves when the patient’s condition required it, so as not to infect him. If there were any wounds, you had to put on a glove so as not to harm the patient, not to smear the pus (…)
She was following the usual hygienic rules: “If I examined a patient, then I washed my hands. And I washed my hands not only after examining someone with leprosy, but after each patient – so that everyone could see that it was part of the doctor’s ritual (…) I treated leprosy patients like ordinary patients. Patients who suffer from an infectious disease. I was teaching the rules of hygiene, and at the same time I was telling you not to be afraid of leprosy, showing everyone that I am not afraid of this disease myself! I have always tried to show and tell the truth about leprosy (…). When everything is explained, the person is no longer afraid. He doesn’t touch what he shouldn’t be, that is, he is just sensible about the disease. And if someone follows the normal rules of hygiene, which must always be followed, there is no fear of becoming infected. Then there is relief. A feeling of relief that leprosy does not bite. “
Learned the dialect “luganda”
Wanda Marczak-Malczewska wrote about Błeńska that she had great contact with patients: “She was able to inspire their trust through conversation, not only about the disease. She knew the Luganda language in which she showed them her affection. She was so human … Not every doctor can be warm in contact with sick people. She could do it. So the Ugandans respected her very much, they showed their gratitude. Sometimes they brought an egg, other times a rooster. She knew how to enjoy it! I remember that she taught me that they cannot be denied a gift, because it is an expression of the utmost contempt for them. Humiliation.”
And Błeńska told about conversations with her patients: “There are several languages in Uganda itself and I couldn’t know them all. The most common language was Luganda. I knew him well and communicated with my patients in this language. I also spoke Lusoga. The other languages were a bit similar. I didn’t speak much in Swahili, I know English well. If the locals wanted, they understood what I was saying to them. “
In a white and red cap and on a motorcycle
In Uganda, she wore a cap in the national colors of her homeland and bought herself a motorcycle. The natives called the machine pi-peaks. Ugandans were surprised that a white woman was riding a motorbike, it was an unusual sight. Because apart from the sick Buluba, she also looked after lepers in Nyenga and Kampala, where she used to travel. In the capital of Uganda, she lectured at the local medical university and kept telling students that although she works with lepers and touches them, she does not contract this terrible disease.
And Father Ambrose Andrzejak mentions in the portal “Opoka” that in Uganda Wanda Błeńska was called “Dokta”. Or simply “Mother”: “she is a very modest and patient person, she even radiates joy. And most importantly – he is also a man of great faith and prayer. Small in body, but great in spirit, and the source of this greatness is probably daily prayer (…) It was, as her colleagues testify, in Africa, and it is also the case today, when often on weekdays she can be found at noon for Holy Mass. at the Dominican Fathers in Poznań “
Wanda Blenska Training
In 1993, John Paul II traveled to Uganda. In interviews she gave, she often said that her first thought after the Pope kissed her on the head was that she had unwashed hair.
Dr. Wanda Błeńska is often compared to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, also because she was very religious. To get to know the famous Albanka, she went to the hospice she runs for the poor, the sick and the dying. The Polish woman, however, did not have the opportunity to talk to her any longer: the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1978 dismissed her and quickly sent her off to visit the hospital. Błeńska later recalled that “the meeting was insufficient”.
Her day in Uganda began with the Holy Mass she attended every day at 7am. Then she ate breakfast and treated her lepers until late in the evening.
Thanks to a doctor from Poland, the Ugandan leprosarium of the Franciscan Sisters gained worldwide fame and is still called “Wanda Blenska Training”.
She lived through a whole century of Polish history
In the same year, when John Paul II kissed her head, Błeńska returned to Poland. Karol Wojtyła valued the missionary very much, as evidenced by the awarding of the Order of Saint Sylvester – the highest distinction awarded to lay people involved in the life of the Church.
She lives in a small apartment in Poznań Jeżyce. She was then 82 years old, but she did not think about her retirement: she traveled with lectures to the Missionary Formation Center in Warsaw, she also told young people in schools and pastoral care about her medical mission.
Błeńska could be found in Poznań’s trams, accompanied by a carer, with whom she always went to Mass at the Dominican Fathers at 12 o’clock.
On the hundredth anniversary of her birthday, friends and people from Poznań invited Błeńska to the Jordan Bridge and released one hundred lanterns. The then Prime Minister Donald Tusk also wrote to her: “You had the opportunity to experience the entire century of our Polish history, to experience the hardships and joys associated with it. Such a long life is a treasury of experiences for several generations of Poles ”. And President Bronisław Komorowski – in recognition of his scientific and research work in the field of tropical medicine and leprosy treatment – awarded Błeńska with the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
The “Mother of Lepers” is waiting for the beatification
Wanda Błeńska died in the capital of Greater Poland, she was 103 years old. Two years after her death, clergymen from the Archdiocese of Poznań began collecting testimonies about the life and deeds of the Polish missionary, asking for help from the faithful who knew the “Mother of Lepers”. Thus began preparations for the doctor’s beatification process.
In 2016, Father Jarosław Czyżewski told the Poznań Gazeta Wyborcza: “We must hurry, because the people who were helped by Błeńska live in Africa and there are fewer and fewer of those who knew her.”
In her hometown of Poznań, the Social School of Dr. Wanda Błeńska, and in Niepruszewo, near the capital of Greater Poland, a School and Kindergarten Team named after her was established.