A change in outlook following Ecuadorian experience

FATHER Colm Hogan left Shannon for the extreme weather and severe poverty of Ecuador in 2007 and earlier this summer, he returned to Ireland, having learned a lot from his three years in South America.

Speaking to The Clare Champion, he said that his time there had changed his outlook. “It was a life-changing experience in the sense that it puts everything into perspective about what people don’t have and how they can get on with so little. If something happens you after coming home, you’d look and say to yourself that the people you were with for the last three years had nothing and they were able to deal with it. They still had a smile on their face even if they didn’t know where their next dollar or their next meal was coming from.”
Expectations and standards of living in Ecuador are very different to those in Ireland, with very basic diets and access to education is hugely restricted. “They basically had a chicken and rice diet, they could have chicken and rice for their breakfast, their dinner and their supper, very little else. They wouldn’t have a healthy diet. The school year starts in April and a lot of parents would be really hopeful that they’d leave their child in school for the full year but then after a month or two, they’d discover that they don’t have the finances and they’d have to take the children out of school.”
While he said that people aren’t exactly starving there, a problem with malnutrition does exist, while he said that extreme rain that falls for four months of the year was another shock.
Father Hogan said that the support he received from Shannon and the wider Diocese of Killaloe was excellent and it allowed him to get through a lot of work there.
“I was always overwhelmed with the amount of support I got from home. During my time there, we managed to build a parish house, three churches and also a parish school and convent. Three nuns arrived in the parish from Columbia and they’re running the school now, it’s a great advantage to the parish. People sent me money to sponsor children’s education, which was a huge bonus. Before I came home, we managed to get a playground going and a football pitch. Father John Molloy (who served in Ennis for 12 years) is gone over now to replace me. He has kept up the connection and he will continue with projects like maybe putting on extra classrooms to the school and finishing off the football pitch.”
The local community had been pleased to have their own priest and had bought into the idea, he added.
“It was the first time to see a Catholic priest coming to live among them. They had no church services and when they had nothing they had a need for a sense of belonging. It was a great opportunity for them to have something giving them a reason to come together as a group.”
He said he wouldn’t rule out spending another spell back there and that he was glad that there would still be a connection with the diocese remaining. “When you have a connection with a place like that there is always a part of you there. It was difficult leaving it, but going was made easier by the fact that there will continue to be a connection with the dioceses,” he said.