Known and respected in Poland and abroad, she was called the Polish Mother Teresa. For more than 42 years she treated leprosy patients in Uganda, becoming one of the most eminent specialists in this field. She converted a rural leprosarium without any electricity into a modern medical centre.
by Jan Hlebowicz
Even as a child, Wanda Błeńska (1911–2014) knew what she would become and what she would do in the future. ‘As far back as I can remember, I always had two goals: I must become a doctor and I must be a missionary doctor. That’s it. I used to say that as a child, and it came true,’ she recalled. She pursued her resolution as a student at the Faculty of Medicine in Poznań, and as the editor of the first missionary journal in Poland. When the Second World War broke out, she had already been a physician for five years.
A doctor in conspiracy
She was appointed head of the Naval Hospital in Gdynia. After two weeks of warfare, the Germans entered the city. A high-ranking Nazi placed a gun before her and told her that he was now in charge and that she should marry him if she wanted to survive. She did not agree. In 1940, she became involved in the resistance movement. She joined the underground organisation Gryf Pomorski and became commander of the women’s branch of the Home Army. As ‘Szarotka’ and ‘Grażyna’, she was in charge of collecting medicaments and sanitary training, and above all medical care for those designated by the organisation. ‘I never knew who these people were. They would come and just say they were from the Home Army. There was always someone to guide me to the sick, but I often didn’t know this “someone” either. So there was always fear,’ she recounted years later about her underground activities. After a slip-up by one of her liaison officers, she and other Gryf members were imprisoned in Toruń. One day the warden got inebriated and fell asleep in the sun. When he awoke, he was badly burnt. The young doctor expertly dressed him and nursed him for some time. Thanks to this, the German, who felt indebted to Błeńska, allowed her and her comrades to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to pray out loud. After some time, the whole group was taken into custody in Gdańsk, where they awaited interrogation and trial. As she recounted, Gryf bought the freedom of the detainees through food. However, it was not possible to free everyone. One girl from the unit was shot.
To the West in a coalhole
After the end of the Second World War, Wanda Błeńska began working at the Gdańsk branch of the State Institute of Hygiene. In addition, she taught bacteriology and hygiene at the School of Nursing at the Medical Academy. At the time, she was living in Wrzeszcz at 6 Czarna Street, now renamed ks. Józefa Zator-Przytockiego. At this address she received the letter that changed her entire life. She learnt from it that her beloved brother Roman, who was in a German prisoner-of-war camp, was seriously ill and needed immediate help. Dr Wanda applied to the communist authorities for a passport. Her application was rejected and in 1946 she decided to cross the border illegally by ship. She obtained information that a Polish vessel would soon depart from the port of Gdańsk for Lübeck. She made contact with the sailors, and they agreed to smuggle her into Germany. All she took with her was a small parcel containing her medical diploma and her mother’s jewellery. She hid in a coalhole. This is how she reached her brother. She decided to stay in the West and carry out her great missionary dream. First, she became involved with General Maczek’s troops, the women’s military service, and worked in hospitals. She completed courses in tropical medicine in Hanover and, later, postgraduate studies at the Institute of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the University of Liverpool.
‘Of course, I was the only Polish woman. Such pre-departure courses are very important, because in Africa doctors and nurses encounter completely different diseases than in Europe, for example malaria,’ she explained. In England, at a hospital subject to General Anders, she worked at the laboratory and, after demobilisation, took up duties at Essex Hospital in Wales. For a year and a half, she waited patiently for her visa and permission to go on a mission. On the day she left the UK, she wrote in her diary: ‘Apart from physical fatigue, I have peace in my heart and some quiet peaceful joy – I am actually completely happy – having nothing but possessing everything’.
She changed the perception of leprosy
She worked as a physician in Africa among lepers for 42 years. In the Ugandan town of Buluba on Lake Victoria, she ran a leprosarium at the mission of the Franciscan Sisters. She converted a rural home for the sick without electricity into a modern medical centre. By her own admission, the biggest problem with treating leprosy was not at all the physical effects, such as paralysis or contractures, but the social ones – in particular the isolation of the sick by their families, who were unable to break down the barrier of fear.
To change the perception of lepers in the local community, when a patient’s particular condition did not require using gloves, she examined them without. In this way, she demonstrated to relatives and neighbours that they did not have to be afraid of the patient and isolate them. She taught principles of hygiene, while simultaneously familiarising others with the illness. ‘The sight of sick hands was often frightening. I then learnt from her to overcome my own prejudices and fear. I tried to behave in a similar way: she greeted the patient, I did; she smiled, I did; she talked, I tried too,’ said Ryszard Piasek, a traveller, reporter and author of documentaries about the work of Polish missionaries. ‘All these people are affected by pain. They are waiting to be relieved. So all such reflexes that are supposed to at least relieve their pain, be it physical or mental, are very important for these people,’ explained Wanda Błeńska, who herself did not contract leprosy in all her years of medical practice in Uganda.
Her beloved group of patients were children. ‘She insisted that they had to be especially protected so that leprosy did not cripple them, so that they could have a future like “normal”, healthy children,’ explained Josef Kawuma, a Ugandan doctor educated by the Polish missionary. It is no coincidence that, seven years after Dr Błeńska arrived in Buluba, a grand building with classrooms for three hundred people was built in the village. In it, children suffering from leprosy gained their own sense of dignity, learning together alongside their healthy classmates. ‘Dr Błeńska is known for constantly saving some of her own food (which there wasn’t much of anyway) for some “misery”, a word she used to describe very sick children,’ Dr Kawuma recounted. The news of her unconventional approach to patients quickly spread around the world, and Dr Wanda began being referred to as ‘the mother or friend of lepers. She became one of the most prominent specialists in the field. Jerzy Król, a physician and professor at the Poznań Medical Academy, emphasised that the Pole enjoyed international prestige equal to the most eminent leprologists of the time. News of her attitude began to reach her home country as well. Inspired by Wanda Błeńska’s attitude, more Polish volunteers started coming to Buluba.
Meeting a bloody dictator
She was likely the only white woman left in Uganda during the bloody rule of dictator Idi Amin. This son of a farmer and prostitute, an illiterate, boxer and finally soldier, fascinated by Adolf Hitler, slaughtered nearly half a million people during his eight-year rule. He made Uganda flow with the blood of political opponents and the innocent. He was paranoid – he hated dissent and exterminated anyone who stood in the way of his vision for the state. Dr Błeńska heard the screams of people being burnt alive and saw thousands of corpses lying by the shores of Lake Victoria. One day Amin himself paid a visit to the Polish doctor. He wanted to see how ‘this famous leper centre’ operated. Although the meeting could have turned out differently, as Amin was known for his unpredictable behaviour and mood swings – the Polish woman decided not to show any fear. Photographs of her walking alongside the dictator have survived to this day. Amin looked round the centre and departed, leaving the ‘mother of lepers’ alone. Moreover, influenced by this meeting, he began to support the development of scientific research on leprosy and the improvement of medical treatment. His government financed the establishment of hospitals and leprosaria. He also decided to grant Dr Błeńska Ugandan citizenship.
‘We knew that we were unlikely to be attacked by anyone. At least we hoped so. And besides, it seems to me that when one relates to another person, an evil person, with full confidence, that evil person doesn’t expect it because they don’t normally encounter it. They are angry, everyone is afraid of them, everyone attacks them. And if they suddenly meet someone who trusts them, they do not dare disappoint, because it is something precious to them. That’s how I explained it to myself (…). Nothing bad has ever happened to me – in so many years! – and I was all alone. No one ever attacked me, no one ever hurt me,’ Wanda Błeńska explained years later.
A leopard, a hippopotamus, and a piki-piki
The sight of her riding a motorbike, called ‘piki-piki’ by the locals, always made others smile. When people sent her letters, all they had to do was write ‘Polish doctor Uganda’, and the correspondence would easily reach the addressee. Her charges called her ‘Dokta’ (from the word doctor) or ‘Mama’. ‘She loved Africans and they sensed it. They lined her terrace waiting for her to come to them. And she always had time for them. Even when she was tired, she would find at least a moment. She talked to them, checked them for leprosy lesions. She discreetly gave something to everyone,’ recalled Barbara Gawron, who spent three years in Uganda. In her free time, which she did not have much of, Dr Błeńska read books, hiked and kayaked. She was the first woman to climb the nearly 5,000-metre Vittorio Emanuele peak in the Ruwenzori. The long expeditions allowed her to forget, at least for a moment, the hardships of working with lepers. ‘Many seriously ill patients. Incidents of death. I went to the mountains, covering probably 40 kilometres. I walked for eight hours. I hadn’t laughed so much in a long time. What I see makes me want to cry,’ she wrote in her diary.
She also admired African nature and animals, although encounters with the latter were sometimes dangerous. ‘There was a tall tree in front of my house and birds lived there. But not only that. I once had such an unpleasant visitor. A leopard came to us (…). It sat in that tree and waited for my puppies for a few days, but it didn’t wait long enough, and it went away.’ On another occasion, she was attacked by an injured hippo. She was kayaking and at one point something made her turn her head. She saw a huge, open mouth. She then shouted across the entire lake: ‘Saint Raphael, save me and I will paddle!’ St Raphael heard the request. On her return to Poland, she mainly met with young people, telling them about her missionary work and her medical vocation, as well as travelling all over the country presenting lectures on leprosy. She also received invitations from foreign centres, participating in symposia and scientific conferences in the United States, Mexico, Israel and India. Even at the age of 95, she was still training priests going on missions in tropical medicine. For her missionary services, she received from Pope John Paul II the highest honour awarded to lay people involved in the life of the Church, the Order of St Sylvester.
Responding to questions from journalists about her many years of work among lepers, she replied: ‘How many people I have helped with my medical knowledge and how many I have prayed for, I do not know. I will only find out in the other world’. She added: ‘Everyone thinks that my work was a sacrifice, but for me it was happiness’. Wanda Błeńska died at the age of 103. Her beatification process is currently underway.
