BORN in the predominantly Christian island-country in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sis. Celia Agius Vadala, now 68, early on saw that education could help ease the poverty that grips millions across the globe.
Eldest among five, she was raised by her parents in the little town of Sliema, which means peace in Arabic.
The Arabs colonized her small country in the distant past, said Vadala, who is superior of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy’s only community in the Philippines. That’s why they left traces of influence in the lives of the Maltese people.
The most recent foreign power that took over Malta was the British, the reason the Maltese speak English with a British accent.
Vadala was baptized three days after she was born. She got her primary and secondary education at the Sisters of Saint Dorothy’s school from the age of 5 to 16.
At that time, the congregation had only one school in Mdina, a small town in Malta, which, she said, is something like Intramuros, but much smaller in land area.
In 1963 she went to England to carry on her secondary education at Saint Bernard’s Convent in Slough. She returned to Malta after completion, but was sent back by the congregation in 1972, at the time already a nun, to obtain a teaching certificate at Digby Stuart College of the Roehampton University.
She joined the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Rome in 1965 at age 18. At the time, the novitiate was not in Malta, but Rome.
In 1980 she was back at Digby Stuart College for a teaching diploma, specializing for one year on children with reading difficulties.
Vadala taught at the congregation’s middle school. In the British education system, she explained, middle school teaches children between 9 and 13 years old.
In primary school, she taught all the subjects, while in the secondary level, Italian and Religion.
Before she came to the Philippines a few years ago, she taught at the congregation’s three schools in Malta.
“We are a congregation that educates,” she said. “I taught for about 30 years in my country.”
Malta has been host to a number of colonizers, from the Arabs to the Spaniards, the Knights of Malta, French and the British, she said.
The island has very good ports, she added. Perhaps, it was the reason various people had come to take over Maltese sovereignty.
In 60 A.D., Saint Paul (and 274 others) took refuge ashore the tiny island of Malta, after the ship taking him to Rome for trial was destroyed by a violent storm off its coast, she said. Consequently, he sowed the seeds of Christianity on the island that eventually spread across Malta.
Malta also saw Africans fleeing the civil war, which spun their country into unrest and poverty, onboard ill-fated ships, she said.
Some of them spent their fortune to pay the owner of the boat, Vadala said. But the vessels were in bad shape. They collapsed halfway to their destination, off the coast of Malta.
Her country helped them cross the Mediterranean to get ashore Europe, hoping to heal from the wounds that the war had inflicted upon them and piece together their broken dreams away from home, she said.
“Malta is a very small country,” she said. “We are not even half a million.”
Even though small, the Maltese have everything, Vadala noted.
“We have schools at different levels,” she said. “We have our own university, which is recognized in different parts of the world.”
“Our main source of employment is tourism,” she added. “Not so much agriculture. I think we do a lot of importing.” Malta has two official languages: Maltese, which is Arabic but written in English characters; and English, Vadala said.
It is a very peaceful and democratic country, she said. No armed resistance exists to threaten its government.
Away from home, Vadala is retired from teaching formal education. But together with her sisters, she continues to help educate less fortunate people, with an eye of providing them livelihood and employment.
The local community of the congregation has been hosting livelihood and employable skill trainings in the past years.
Currently, they train at least 25 women to a short course on baking at the community’s house in Barangay Pasong Tamo, Quezon City.
Since they arrived in 2003, the sisters, who are Maltese, Austrian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Malaysian and Filipino, have helped the government provide over 100 people with livelihood and employable skills.
The local government of Quezon City helps the teachers for the livelihood and employable skill trainings, Vadala said.
In the Philippines for a few years, she cannot yet speak and understand the Filipino tongue. But she has come to love eating balut and sinigang.
On March 19, 2015, she marked her 50th year as a nun. Just like every Dorothean who does not wear a veil, she is still effective without.
Image credits: Oliver Samson