Sister Joan Uhlen comes from an environment very similar to that of many Fairfield students. She attended Catholic schools and had a typical upbringing. However, she has spent her life serving the poor and marginalized around the world as a Maryknoll nun.
Fairfield invited, Juanita, as she is known in Nicaragua, to speak to its students. The school has a strong connection to Sister Juanita’s work through the service trips made during school vacations.
Paul Duffy ’05, former FUSA President, went on a mission trip to Nicaragua with Campus Ministry to help Sister Juanita during his senior year at Fairfield.
“The minute you get off the plane everything is different. You just get to the village and it is a bunch of huts,” said Duffy.
“As poor as the village is, they are rich in spirit and family. Their sense of a family and dedication to one another is unreal.”
Uhlen has been a nun for more than 64 years and has been living in her village, Chacraseca, for the last 34 years.
Chacraseca is a town of dirt roads in the dry rural area outside of the major city of Leon. The people are subsistence farmers who live off their crops of rice, beans, corn and coffee. There is rarely any fruit or meat in their diets. Very few of the houses have basics such as running water or even a non-dirt floor in their one- to two-room huts.
“It is a terribly tough life,” said Winston Tellis, assistant professor of information systems and operations management.
Sister Juanita, who grew up in St. Louis, entered Maryknoll at age 19 and has been a nun with them since 1942.
“I just knew that I wanted to be a nun. I had a calling from God to help people,” said Uhlen.
She added: “as Sisters of Maryknoll we go to countries to help. We can’t just preach the gospel when we see people suffering. Our social work is what allows these people to eat daily. Without us they would only eat once a week.”
More than 3,000 people from Spain, Italy, Austria and all over the United States have helped Uhlen serve the poor in the last 30 years.
Tellis is one of them.
He brings groups from Fairfield to help build houses, wells, schools and latrines for the people in the village.
“[the people] feel like they count for something when we care,” said Tellis.
Tellis goes to Nicaragua three or four times a year and brings Uhlen to campus to speak to students when she can travel to Connecticut. She said she enjoys speaking to Fairfield students because she feels they understand the message of Catholic social teaching.
“I want them to understand how poor countries live around the world,” she said. “I want them to do some thinking about how they have so much. It is nice to see people reaching out a helping hand: a hand of friendship.”
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