At Christmas in 1996, Mother Teresa told us that after our work we were to go out into the streets and sing carols. Some of the volunteers weren't so keen, but we did what she said. You did not argue with Mother Teresa.
I was living in Fiji in the mid-90s. My family is originally from Goa in India but we'd never been. My parents, younger brother and I were born in Africa—we were refugees who fled from Uganda to the UK when I was seven. In 1995, I somehow persuaded my family to meet me in Goa. When they agreed I immediately felt there was another reason for me going to India, apart from to see my family. An inner voice told me to go to Mother Teresa.
I wanted to work with orphans, but I was told that men weren't able to. So I ended up working with sick and dying people at Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart , a hospice for the dying Mother Teresa founded in Calcutta. Some volunteers romanticized it, thinking it would be holding sick people's hands and gazing into their eyes as they passed, but it was hard work.
Just to be touched, fed and cared for, and to have a roof over their heads was a huge deal for some of the men. Some of them were skin and bone, so one thing I didn't have the stomach to do was give injections. I was too scared. I volunteered at Kalighat for a month in 1995 and a month in 1996 over Christmas and the New Year. People from Fishguard and Goodwick, the twin town community in Wales that my family moved to when we left refugee camps, had heard that I was working with Mother Teresa, so they raised money and asked me to give it to her the second time I went back.
We were talking once about how busy she was with all the publicity she did and how little sleep she had. She said that if she had to be in the public eye to draw attention to the work, then she would do it. She told me that it wasn't about her, but about the work and serving the poorest of the poor. She wanted people to care. It put my ego in check, because she taught me it's not about me, it's about the work I do. That was really valuable.
I had fears when I started holding men's support groups, to help men speak about their issues, and even bigger concerns when I started training people to host their own support groups. But I know from her to just get on with the work, trust in God and that nothing else matters.