Inspired Magazine vol 3

Above Moira in Botswana.
Right Moira in the
Bronx of New York.
she convinced a doctor there to treat the povertystricken
patients. “We’d sneak patients to this
hospital where poor people shouldn’t go and hide
in a surgery – we couldn’t be seen in the waiting
rooms,” she said. “We’d then sneak patients in
between wealthy patients.
AFRICAN POVERTY
After two years in Calcutta Moira felt called to
help elsewhere. She returned to Melbourne and
again worked and saved like crazy to fund her
next trip of service. She first travelled to Botswana
where she spent six months helping the Kalahari
Bushmen and then three months in Johannesburg
working in soup kitchens in the city’s most
desperate slums. She remembers looking out of
the sea of ramshackle homes, smoke rising above
the rooftops, and being struck by the sheer depth
of the poverty. She also recalls the violence – and
how quick uprisings could flare up among people
grappling with the frustration of daily life there.
DRUG AND AIDS-AFFECTED BABIES
Africa was simply a stopover en route to a place
that had long called to her – the Bronx of New York
City. Here she yearned to help babies withdrawing
from the crack cocaine habits of their mothers with
HIV/AIDS – a problem that was rife in the 1980s.
Moira made her way to a nursery in a New
York Hospital which homed these babies. She’d
spend all morning there cradling and playing
with the newborns. “You can never underestimate
the importance of being held,” she says. In the
evenings she’d venture out in a soup van to feed
those living rough on the streets.
ROMANIAN AIDS KIDS
Moira adored her time in New York and could
have stayed forever but, two years after she
arrived, she received a phone call from a priest in
Ireland. Could she come to Romania to coordinate
the volunteers at a Romanian orphanage for kids
infected with HIV/AIDS? At the time Romania had
one of the worst HIV infection rates in the world.
Moira couldn’t resist the calling.
She travelled to Romania in the early 1990s
to work in a building that housed an infectious
disease hospital with three floors filled with sick
and dying children. All had HIV. Moira organised
for babies to be homed on the bottom floor, a
palliative care ward on the middle floor and the
kids with the best chance of survival on the top
floor. “It was one of the most wonderful times in my
life,” Moira says. “And one of the saddest times. We
lost quite a number of children. Sometimes it was
the healthiest kid and the last one you’d expect
to go. Romania was a poor country with the most
beautiful people who are rich in spirit. But they fell
into these terrible circumstances with their children.
While I was there I met some of the most amazing
people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.”
A DEFIANT CHRISTMAS
Moira’s time in Romania was just after the reign
of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who’d outlawed
Christmas with a promise to imprison anyone who
dared celebrate it. Not one to be told what she
couldn’t do, Moira decided to put on a Christmas
celebration for the Romanian AIDS-infected kids.
She and the volunteers adorned the orphanage
with Christmas decorations, organised a doll and
new clothes to be gifted to every child, played
festive music on every floor, and enjoyed a
Christmas breakfast together. “That was really
special,” Moira says. “To see the kids – I’d never
seen them so happy.”
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MOIRA KELLY