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When an only child became a nun
Sister Mary Angelita Acayo celebrated her golden jubilee in the vocation early this year. PHOTO BY CISSY MAKUMBI
What you need to know:
SISTER MARY ANGELITA ACAYO. Her parents had plans for her, which included marriage and motherhood. However Sister Acayo’s vision was to serve a greater power all her life. This year she celebrated her golden jubilee as a nun.
She remembers the slaps from her father, that day when he first visited her at the covenant as if it were yesterday. Twenty years old then, a perturbed Mary Angelita Acayo could not fathom why a dream she was so passionate about drew such anger from her father. Now 73, the nun who recently celebrated her golden jubilee believes her decision to serve God has changed her life.
Sister Acayo’s journey begun when at 19, she joined The Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Gulu Archdiocese with the help of her uncle, Alfred Ocen.
“I was born in the family that did not know God and as I was growing up, I knew little about God, but with the help of my paternal uncle, I was baptised at the age of 13 and this was the beginning of the salvation,” she says.
A secret mission
Later when she expressed her interest in becoming a nun, her uncle supported her. Being an only child, she feared her parents’ reaction and so opted to enrol in the convent secretly.
“It was hard to tell both my parents about my dream, as they were interested in getting grandchildren from me, since I was the only child,” she reveals.
Without telling her mother, the late Clementine Akwoko, and in the absence of her father Joseph Lalobo who had gone to West Nile to work, Acayo joined sisterhood.
A year later, her father returned home and went to the convent, called her outside and slapped her hard; it is the older Sisters in the convent who came to her rescue.
“Both my parents were hurt because of my determination to join the convent, but this did not make me reverse my decision,” she says.
God opened their hearts
Apart from her uncle, nobody else visited her while at the convent in the first years, but later they became more receptive as they realised that she was not ready to change her mind.
In 1963, when she made her first vow, her father was forced to go to the Cathedral, but he refused to come out of the car until they pleaded with him to take a photograph with her.
“He looked very angry in my pictures, but I kept on praying to God, that one day he will change his attitude,” she says. That year, her father after falling sick, also accepted God and was baptized though he died later. After the death of her father, her mother started visiting her at the convent and their relationship was cemented.
Trials come knocking
Her journey has had its upsets. When she made the 20-year mark in her vocation, she almost left the convent after one of her best friend left without telling her.“I almost abandoned Sisterhood, but through prayers and encouragement from my uncle Ocen, I remained in the convent and I was able to go through the 50 years.”
Prayers have been her formula to overcoming challenges this especially when she lost contact with her mother for two years and thought she was dead.
“I thought my mother was dead because she was missing for two years. She had run away because my father was mistreating her. I prayed and fasted and my prayers were answered. After two days, I got the good news that she was alive.”
Passionate about writing, Acayo has published a number of books with the help of friends; Aciro Must Study which emphasize girl child education, Poverty What Have I Done, Back to Culture and Do Not kill Me Mummy about abortion. She hopes to be able to publish other books about the lessons she learnt having grown up seeing her father mistreating her mother, a thing that has taught her forgiveness. She looks at her life as a nun as an irreplaceable experience.
