Ghana’s ‘Mother Theresa’ Dies At 100

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Created on Tuesday, 26 June 2012 00:00

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Ghana’s ‘Mother Theresa’ Dies At 100

30 June 2012

AGNES ADWOA Afra alias Maa Afra of Dormaa-Ahenkro in the Brong Ahafo region has died at the age of 100 after a short illness.   

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Madam Afra, popularly known as “I go to farm” in the Dormaa municipality, was noted for her humanitarian and philanthropic activities. She cared for the sick, poor, needy and neglected at the Dormaa Presbyterian Hospital. Different profiles of Madam Afra suggested a disparity in her age as a publication about her by London-based New African Magazine in its September 2001 edition indicated she was 77 years old at that time. The Standard, now Catholic Standard, a weekly newspaper, also stated in an interview with her, published its September 7, 2003 edition that she was 80 year old then. Based on the two reports, it could be concluded that Maa Afrah, who passed away on the May 11, 2012 at the Dormaa Presbyterian Hospital at Dormaa-Ahenkro, died at 89. However, her younger brother, Herbert Morrison Adjei, a retired Chartered Accountant and former Ashanti Regional Chief Accountant of the Ghana Education Service, who is 78, told the Ghana News Agency at Dormaa-Ahenkro Wednesday that his sister was about100 years old. Maa Afra for more than half a century provided free meals, money and drugs to the sick, and with her own resources buried accident victims who died at the hospital when their relatives did not claim their corpses. In view of her kindness citizens of the Upper West, Upper East, and Northern regions resident in the Dormaa municipality, installed her as their queen mother and the Dormaa Traditional Council recognized her as such. The late Mother Theresa of Calcutta, India, who passed away in 1997, was recognized and remembered internationally for devoting her life to caring for the sick and the needy. Maa Afra until her death rendered similar humanitarian services but she was not celebrated beyond the Dormaa municipality. But her good works were finally recognized when in December 2000, the Brong-Ahafo Regional branch of the Ghana Journalist Association, chaired by Leonard Victor Amengor, a former Brong Ahafo Regional Director of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, honoured her by proclaiming her the “Region’s answer to Mother Theresa of Calcutta.” Maa Afra told the New African Magazine in 2001 that “Until 11 years ago, I would set traps for wild game and then use the proceeds from the sale for my humanitarian work. I could set as many as 70 traps at a time. I also used part of the proceeds from my farms for the work. “Additionally I had a contract to supply firewood to the Dormaa Secondary School, and the proceeds as well as occasional donations from philanthropists, also went into my humanitarian work. The late Madam Afra was a devoted member of the Catholic Church at Dormaa-Ahenkro and she became a Catholic because of her contact and interactions with then Catholic missionaries through her late husband, Nana Akwasi Baah, a former Gyaasehene of Dormaa, who died around 1955. Nana Baah owned an imposing wooden storey building at Dormaa-Ahenkro and that was where the Catholic missionaries lodged. She left behind five children including Georgina Adjei-Yeboah, a teacher at Dormaa-Ahenkro and Reverend Kwaku Agyemang, Founder of Faith Foundation Ministry at Antwerp in Belgium. Source: GNA