Ghana’s ‘Mother Theresa’ dies at 100

Madam Agnes Adwoa Afra, alias Maa Afra of Dormaa-Ahenkro in Brong-Ahafo Region, died at age 100 after a short illness.

Madam Afra, popularly known as “I go to farm” in the Dormaa Municipality, was noted for her charitable, humanitarian and philanthropic activities.

She cared for the sick poor, needy and neglected at the Dormaa Presbyterian Hospital.

Different profiles of Madam Afra suggested disparity in her age as a publication about her by the 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 Sunday September 7, 2003 edition that she was 80 years old then.

Based on the two reports, it could be concluded that Maa Afrah, who passed away on the May 11 this year at the Dormaa Presbyterian Hospital at Dormaa-Ahenkro, attained 89 years.

However, Madam Afra’s younger brother, Mr. Herbert Morrison Adjei, a retired Chartered Accountant and former Ashanti Regional Chief Accountant of the Ghana Education Service, who is 78 years old, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Dormaa-Ahenkro on Wednesday that her sister was about 100 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 and 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 their queenmother 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 to the sick at the Dormaa Presbyterian Hospital as well as the needy 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 Mr. Leonard Victor Amengor, a former Brong-Ahafo Regional Director of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, honoured her by proclaiming her as the “Region’s answer to Mother Theresa of Calcutta”.

What constituted the sources of funding for Maa Afra’s “one-woman officially-unrecognized non-govermental organization,” which impacted positively on the lives and health of many people in the Municipality and beyond?

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 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.

“My services knew no bounds- poor patients at the Dormaa Hospital, strangers in need, the aged and widows in the community, anybody in need”.

She told the Catholic Standard that though some people styled her as the Mother Theresa of Dormaa, she was nowhere near the Founder of the Missionary of Charity Sisters, a Catholic International Religious Charitable Organisation.

Maa Afra rather offered the type of services Florence Nightingale gave to humanity at the Dormaa Hospital, and the patients she assisted included Ivorian nationals who became stranded at the hospital.

The late Mad. 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, Madam Afra served the missionaries.

Maa Afra left behind five children, three females and two males, including Madam Georgina Adjei-Yeboah, a teacher by profession at Dormaa-Ahenkro and Reverend Kwaku Agyemang, Founder of Faith Foundation Ministry at Antwerp in Belgium.**